Bolivar and Texas City

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After our picnic lunch on Friday, we headed for Galveston via the Bolivar Peninsula. I was looking forward to Bolivar because Rollover Pass and the Bolivar Flats Shorebird Sanctuary are reliably excellent sites for seeing a range of tern and shorebird species. So I was very disappointed when the low tide meant that there were virtually no birds to see at either site.

We pressed on to Galveston via the ferry. As usual on the ferry ride, we were accompanied by Laughing Gulls.

As usual, too, a few Great-tailed Grackles hitched a ride on the boat.

That was the end of our birding for the day, as we stopped in at Mario's on the Seawall for an early dinner and then drove to Texas City, where we had reserved a motel room.

Saturday morning I was on the Texas City Dike before dawn.

When daylight arrived, it disclosed large numbers of gulls, shorebirds, Pelicans (Brown and American White) and Great Blue Herons along the edges of the dike. Laughing Gulls and Pelicans huddled together on spits and sandbars.

Many of the birds spent the first part of the day bathing and preening but this American Oystercatcher opted to look for a shellfish breakfast instead.

The morning sunlight cast a warm glow over the birds.

Herring and Ring-billed Gulls

Black-bellied Plover

Willet

Ruddy Turnstone

My first Snowy Egret of 2014 fished for a while before wandering over to check me out.

The dike is a prime spot for seeing Common Loons and I spent quite a while watching half-a-dozen of these beautiful birds as they dove for fish.

My final sighting at the dike was an unexpected look at two Crested Caracaras feeding off something hidden in the grass at the entrance to the dike. 

Before returning to the motel to pick up Deanne, I decided to have a quick look around the Texas City Bay Park, where I hoped to see my first-of-year Eurasian Collared-Dove and Blue-winged Teal. My luck was in and I saw both species within a few minutes.

All in all, it had been a pleasant (early) morning's birding and made up for the disappointment caused by the lack of birds on Bolivar.

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Texas City Dike

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Sunday I was up bright and early to drive along the Texas City Dike. It's a great place for watching and photographing birds because the latter are used to vehicles. So groups of gulls, terns and shorebirds will let you park close beside them.

Unfortunately, Sunday morning dawned cloudy, wet and windy morning, hardly the best conditions for photographing wildlife.

The end of the dike had a few shorebirds: Sanderlings, a Black--bellied Plover and a single Willet.

A Magnificent Frigatebird and several Brown Pelicans were fishing and a dolphin was patrolling the waters but all were too far away for photographs.

At other points along the dike groups of Laughing Gulls, Terns and Black Skimmers hunkered down while waves crashed against the shore.

Most of the Terns were Royal Terns, both adults and speckled-backed juveniles.

However, a few Forster's Terns were also present.

I noticed a handful of Sandwich Terns, too, easy to ID because of the yellow tips on their bills.

Black Skimmers looked ungainly with their huge lower mandibles.

One puddle of water on the road held an American Oystercatcher that had been banded.

Nearby a Willet perched rather forlornly on the rocks, a length of fishing line looped around its neck and bill.

My final sighting was of a Great Blue Heron, looking magnificent against the gray-green water.

After Texas City Dike we drove back down to Lafitte's Cove on Galveston, hoping that the cold front would have brought in some migrants. However, the woods were even quieter than the previous day and so we decided to cut our trip short and head home.

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Birding the Bay: Part 1

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As the weather was good this weekend, we headed down to Texas City on Saturday morning to meet up with some friends and, hopefully, to see Common Loons, shorebirds and some different ducks.

A drive along the dike was rather disappointing, yielding mainly Herring, Ring-billed and Laughing Gulls, some Forster's Terns and a few Sanderlings. 
 

 

 

However, we did see three Common Loons, one of which came close enough for reasonable photos.

The area where the dike joins the mainland had more gulls, along with a couple of Royal Terns. It was odd to see Great-tailed Grackles and Rock Doves/Pigeons wading with gulls.

 

A Willet was prowling in the shallows.

Willets are very drab birds - until they unfold their wings!

Apart from Willets, the only shorebirds we spotted were half-a-dozen Ruddy Turnstones.

The area also had several Brown Pelicans, a couple of which allowed me to approach within a few feet.

After an hour at the dike we drove the short distance to the Texas City Bay Street Park, where we had a picnic lunch. As I will show in my next post, the park had quite a range of birds even though it didn't add to my year list.
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