(Mainly) Foto Friday

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So far this year I haven't focused on the birds in our yards. Let me remedy that now with photos of some of our current winter residents.

I'm not sure how many Orange-crowned Warblers we have but it seems that there's almost always one on our suet feeders from dawn till dusk. If you look carefully, you can see that this one has a touch of orange on its crown.

Although I may be wrong, we seem to have only one Pine Warbler.

He's a boldly-colored male who is not above giving me a very sharp look when I get too close.

We have at least four or five Yellow-rumped Warblers. They don't come to our feeders but they appreciate our birdbaths.

My favorite of all our winter birds is the Ruby-crowned Kinglet. 

Like the Pine Warbler, this Kinglet gives me some hard looks - and in doing so he sometimes shows a hint of his ruby crown.

American Goldfinch showed around Christmas and we now have up to a score at a time. 

Surprisingly, it took them until late last week to notice that we had hung out a sock feeder specially for them.

I keep watching the Goldfinches in the hope that a Pine Siskin will turn up with them. However, as this isn't an irruptive year for Siskins, I am unlikely to see one in our yards.
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Managing Monarchs

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This spring we decided to do our bit towards helping Monarch butterflies. So we bought a milkweed plant and put it in our backyard. Nothing happened for ages but then, in October, we noticed a Monarch on the milkweed. A couple of weeks later we had a caterpillar, which first turned into a chrysalis (below) and then into a butterfly.

Well, that was easy, we thought.

November brought visits by a couple more Monarchs and suddenly we had 9 caterpillars. It didn't take them long to munch through all the leaves on our milkweed and so I rushed out and bought a second plant. A few days later both plants were virtually bare, while our caterpillar population had grown to 14. I rushed out again and bought two more milkweeds.

By now we were really excited at the prospect of helping 14 more Monarchs into the world.

Unfortunately, we then had several cold spells in a row. A couple of caterpillars died and rotted away. Seven more disappeared, presumably eaten by anoles or bugs. Only seven made it to the chrysalis stage, including one which opted to hang out on our prickly pear.

Later, one of the butterflies emerged from its chrysalis but wasn't able to unfold its wings.

By early January none of the other chrysalises had produced a butterfly. So in the end 15 caterpillars - and four milkweed plants - had produced just one Monarch butterfly. We were very disappointed.

However, we felt slightly better on Monday this week, after Dee noticed that a butterfly had emerged from the chrysalis attached to the prickly pair. The Monarch spent a while on the ground, unfolding its wings, and then off it went.

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Looking for a Rarity

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I don't usually have time to go looking chasing after the rare birds that are reported in our area. However, Sunday morning I saw that a Common Merganser had shown up in south Houston, and I decided to drive down to look for the bird. I love Common Mergansers and this was the first one ever seen in Harris County.

I arrived at the Eldridge Retention Ponds at 8:40, only to be told by another birder there that the bird had flown off at 8:00!

The ponds had plenty of other birds. A score or more Great Egrets lined the water's edge, while there was a large raft of Cormorants, accompanied by several American White Pelicans.

Further back in the grass were 7 or 8 Great Blue Herons. I was scanning these when another Great Blue Heron flew past carrying a large fish. 

The bird landed well away from where I was standing and it proceeded to try to turn the fish around so it could swallow it.

It took the Heron fully 5 minutes to get the fish the right way around for swallowing.

Then the fish slipped out of the bird's bill.

I never saw whether the Heron managed to eat the fish, because a jogger appeared and the bird flew off with the fish in its bill.

After watching the Heron's struggle with its breakfast, I drove over to nearby Cullinan Park to make sure the Merganser hadn't settled there. on the pond. It hadn't and in fact the park's lake had very few birds.

A handful of Pied-billed Grebes were grazing.

A solitary Ring-necked Duck appeared, my first of the year.

An American Coot dove to bring up weed from the lake bottom before settling down to its morning preening.

After 15 minutes I headed home, stopping off for half-an-hour at Bear Creek Park. Unfortunately, many areas in the park were flooded and birds were very scarce: All I saw were a few Cedar Waxwings, Pine Warblers and Carolina Chickadees and a Red-headed Woodpecker. So it was a rather disappointing end to a rather disappointing morning's birding.
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Foto Friday

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A quick visit to the San Jacinto Monument park on Saturday turned up a nice selection of birds from Roseate Spoonbills and American White Pelicans to Ruddy Ducks and Green-winged Teal. 

The highlight was getting to watch American Avocets as they swept their upturned bills from side to side across the water in a search for bugs, seeds etc.

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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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