Baytown to Sheldon Lake

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After Baytown Nature Center I headed over to the Evergreen Golf Course, where I spent 20 minutes looking for Bald Eagles. A pair nested there in previous years and at least one adult bird has been seen in the area recently but I didn’t see any.

So then it was on to Thompson’s Bait Camp, where the jetties were busy with birds, including many Brown Pelicans and Laughing Gulls.

A few Royal Terns and several Ruddy Turnstones were mixed in with the gulls.

 

Red-breasted Mergansers were trawling the waters around the jetties.

 

Two local birders, Frank and Margaret Farese, told me they had just been watching two Western Grebes on the far side of the channel. With the help of my scope I could just make out two whitish birds. However, I couldn’t see them clearly enough for a positive ID and so I didn’t add them to my list.

As the morning was not proving to be very successful, I decided to round it off by paying a quick visit to Sheldon Lake. Surely that would turn up some birds that I still needed for my year list!

While the first pond at the Environmental Center had no birds, it did have a young alligator.

I had quick glimpses of two new year birds, a Blue-gray Gnatcatcher and a Common Gallinule, and then much better views two more: a Little Blue Heron and three Yellow-crowned Night Herons.

 

 
So, in the end, I had seen several interesting birds and a few new 2013 ones also. However, I’ll have to keep looking for Bald Eagles and Grebes.
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