Sunday, May 01, 2016

Looking for Migrants (4)

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After leaving High Island, we drove west along Bolivar Peninsula to catch the ferry to Galveston.

As usual, the Bolivar harbor was busy with Cormorants, Laughing Gulls, American White Pelicans and Brown Pelicans (below).


Apart from the usual hordes of Laughing Gulls, on this trip the ferry was followed by numbers of Royal Terns.


There were other terns also. At first I thought these were Forster's but then I noted their yellow-tipped bills and realized they were Sandwich Terns.




Once on Galveston, we did a quick drive along Sportsmens' Road. My first Reddish Egret of the year was too distant to photograph but a Great Egret and a Great Blue Heron were a little closer.




The roadside ditches were empty except for a couple of Willets and the only other bird we saw was a solitary White Ibis.




Although I had high hopes for Lafitte's Cove, it turned out to have only a few resident birds and even fewer migrants. In fact, the only migrants we spotted were a Gray Catbird, a Gray-cheeked Thrush and two Scalret Tanagers (below).


As this was our last birding stop, it meant that our trip ended with a whimper rather than a bang. We weren't too disappointed, though, because overall the trip had been quite productive: We had seen 90 species, of which almost half were new birds for the year. 
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