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Although the lake in the Bay Street Park was empty of ducks, it did have two American White Pelicans, a Great Blue Heron, a Great Egret and ten Snowy Egrets. I enjoyed watching the latter running and jumping around, stirring up prey with their yellow feet.
The most common species at the duck pond was American Coot.
The ducks there included a solitary Lesser Scaup, a few Northern Shovelers (below) and several Gadwall (below).
The sky over the park was busy with Laughing Gulls and Brown Pelicans.
Dee and I were excited to see a male Vermilion Flycatcher hanging out near the parking area. We never fail to be impressed by these stunningly brightly colored birds!
A score of Savannah Sparrows (below) were grazing on the grass while eight Eurasian Collared-Doves (below) shared the trees with Great-tailed Grackles.
Judging by the noise coming from them, the reeds near the lake were full of Red-winged Blackbirds. We didn't see a single Blackbird, though, perhaps because a Red-shouldered Hawk was lunching at the edge of the reeds.
Our picnic over, we drove up to San Jacinto State Park, where I once again spent 15 minutes vainly looking for the Harris's Hawks that have been wintering there. One of these days I'm actually going to see these birds!
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After Anahuac on Sunday we drove to High Island, where we planned to have a picnic lunch in the Boy Scout Wood sanctuary. Bad idea! The mosquitoes were really ferocious. So we headed down to the coast and along the Bolivar peninsula to Rollover Pass, where we set up our chairs on a sandy spit that projects into the sea.
It turned out to be a great place for lunch: Hardly any people and no mosquitoes! Even better, from where we sat we could see more than a score of bird species.
The larger wading birds - Great Blue Herons, Great Egrets and Rediish Egrets - were too far away to photograph but a couple of hundred Brown Pelicans were resting on nearby sandbars.
They shared the sandbars with hundreds of other birds, including many Laughing Gulls and several Tern species.
The black birds on this sandbar were Black Skimmers.
A few dozen Least Terns were outnunbered by large flocks of Royal Terns.
The calls of the Royal Terns as they flew overhead drowned out even the noise of the Laughing Gulls.
Amazingly, the Terns were able to make just as much noise even when they had their mouths full!
This pair of American Oystercatchers were taking a break from feeding.
Another Oystercatcher decided that we had parked too close.
Willets were everywhere, their drab plumage blending in well with the colors of the sand and sea.
Of course, thery stop being inconspicuous as soon as they spread a wing!
There were a few less common and more interesting birds at Rollover - but let me leave those for my next blog post.
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We made a quick trip down to High Island to see if the recent bad weather had caused a fallout of migrating songbirds. We missed the best day - when 31 warbler species were seen! - but we still saw enough to keep us busy for several hours.
Early morning at Boy Scout Woods was dark and misty, as you can see from this shot of a Green Heron.
Gray Catbirds were everywhere. In spite of how many there were, the bad light meant I never got a photo of even one. An Inca Dove was easier to see and photograph.
Indigo Buntings were plentiful and one finally moved up into the light.
The stars of the show for Dee and myself were the Rose-breasted Grosbeaks. These, too, were plentiful and they were too busy wolfing down mulberries to be disturbed by watchers and photographers. Most of the Grosbeaks we spotted were males but we saw a couple of females. One female was sharing a good tree with two males.
Here are just a few of the other photos I took of these beautiful birds.
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.Last weekend a cousin from Utah came to stay with us for a few days. As she isn't very familiar with this part of the world, we decided to take her to Brazos Bend State Park. We've been there so many times that it feels almost like an old friend - and it never disappoints us or any visitor that we take there. We were hoping to show to give our guest close-up views of alligators - and I was hoping that the park would produce one of my favorite Texas birds, the beautiful Purple Gallinule.
As we turned into the entrance road, we noticed that the park now has a new sign.
After seeing the sign, the first priority for our cousin was naturally to see an alligator. So we walked down to 40 Acre Lake and almost immediately spotted a medium-sized gator posing on a log.
A couple of minutes later we passed - in our cousin's case rather nervously - another medium-sized gator lying by the side of the path.
The walk around the lake produced ten more alligators and it also turned up plenty of birds.
The trees by the trail were attracting male Red-winged Blackbirds, who were busy singing for mates.
The sky overhead was criss-crossed by Great Blue Herons, Great Egrets, White Ibis and Black-bellied Whistling Ducks while the edge of the lake had numerous American Coots.
There were also lots of Common Gallinules, until recently called Common Moorhen.
A few Pied-billed Grebes were swimming and diving.
A Green Heron was too secretive to photograph but a Black-crowned Night Heron was less concerned by our presence.
A few yards further along the path we came across a Yellow-crowned Night Heron.
Then we saw our fifth heron species of the day, a Little Blue Heron.
By the time we reached the observation tower we still hadn't seen a Purple Gallinule. However, we had gone only a few yards down the path towards Elm Lake when one appeared in the marshland to our left. Purple Gallinules normally wander along quite slowly when they are feeding but this one was positively hurrying, moving quite literally in leaps and bounds.
Having seen more than enough to satisfy our guest, we headed to Elm Lake to have a mini-picnic before driving home. Since it was Easter Sunday, the Elm Lake section of the park was crowded with families enjoying lunch at the picnic tables and on the grass. Every parking space was taken but we managed to squeeze in among the scores of cars parked by the roadside. While Dee and our cousin had a quick tailgate lunch, I strolled down to the lake.
Faced with so many human visitors, most of the lake's birds had retreated far out into the water. A few Black-bellied Whistling Ducks were the exception.
As usual, our visit to the park had been very enjoyable and we had seen a range of interesting birds. We must remember to come back in a couple of months, though, when we'll be able to enjoy watching the Coots and Gallinules raising their chicks.
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Our final bird at Neal's Lodges was a Curve-billed Thrasher, spotted as we left the dining room.
From Concan we drove to Utopia, where we were to stay the night at the lovely Utopia on the River B & B.
Shortly after we arrived, we were entertained by two male and two female Black-chinned Hummingbirds arguing over feeder rights.
Nearby, Black-crested Titmice were busy exploring the trees.
There were several Golden-fronted and Ladder-backed Woodpeckers (below) as well.
Oddly enough, the most abundant species seemed to be Eastern Phoebe. I lost count of how many I saw or heard.
Flora and Butterflies
Although our trip did not produce the range of bird species that I had hoped for, any disappointment was more than offset by the abundance of wildflowers, including many roadside swathes of Texas Bluebonnets (below), Black-eyed Susans and Indian Paintbrushes.
Butterflies were abundant everywhere we went, too. Red Admirals were the most common.
However, there were also plenty of Monarchs, Gulf Fritillaries, Clouded Sulphurs and Pearl Crescents.
All in all, we both enjoyed the trip a lot - but I'm hoping to persuade Dee to take another trip to Uvalde and Concan in April, when bird numbers should be better!
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