Birding with Laurel: A Paddle on the Trinity River

January 6, 2020

Natalie invited Laurel and me to join her on a trip from Lake Charlotte out to the Trinity River and down to the I-10 bridge.  Since both of us are paddlers, we quickly accepted. Natalie also has plenty of boats and can haul a few.  Natalie and I decided to share her canoe, since she is used to paddling for her daughter  and could get me back, if I found I was unable to handle wind on the river. This was only my second paddle since I damaged my neck and shoulders in the accident that totaled my car and destroyed my canoe, canoe trailer, bike, bike trailer and other possessions inside the car. So I'm still finding out how much of my old activities I can still do.


Our leader, Tom is active in the bay conservation and was preparing to give a talk on where the water in the Trinity went when it flooded. He had paddled it when the water was so high, he could paddle over the natural levy and then paddle in lakes/streams behind it. On this trip, he wanted to find the places where pour overs had occurred and take pictures of what the land looked like in non-flood conditions.  He has a group of cohorts, mostly also my friends,  that paddle with him on these missions.

We met up at a gas station on the intersection of I-10 and the highway to Charlotte Lake. We decided to make the trip easy and run a shuttle, starting at the park on Lake Charlotte and taking out under the I-10 bridge over the Trinity. Otherwise, we would have taken Lake Pass back up Lake Charlotte and crossed it over to the east side where we put in.  I was glad we only did the shuttle because my neck and arms still lock up from my accident and I get both very tired and start hurting. Natalie keep us going when I needed a break.

As usual, we saw very few birds. But we noticed a bird not like the others in a line of grackles sitting on a wire by the gas station. It is a leucistic female great tailed grackle.  It was the only bird I photographed on the trip.  We saw only a few snowy and great egrets, a couple of great blue herons, and a cormorant or two as well as a lot of resting terns, we saw at a great distance but which included either Caspian or royal terns. I took no other bird pictures.

Leucistic female great tailed grackle 

A beautiful little cove reachable just past our shell beach put-in

Getting ready - I'll be paddling bow in the green canoe

Leader Tom telling us our trip route and that we'll be relocating several pour overs from the Trinity

Tom had to take a requisite group picture - we may end up in his talk

Starting across lake to Mac Bayou entrance - visiting friend Laurel is leading the pack

Turning into Mac Bayou

After we turned into the sulfur cut, we had a particularly beautiful sky

Laurel looking happy in Natalie's kayak, Miss Piggy 

Natalie and Tom on way to look at the paddling route in flood waters

Joe and I joined them

Loved the palmettos along the natural levy before we got to a meadow

Hiking down a road that had been a stream in flood

Tom explaining what it had looked like in flood - looking at a ditch with a big motor boat jammed into it

Joe wanted a pic of Natalie/Marilyn - and no, we don't look alike but our friends and their friends keep mixing us up

Meanwhile back at the river, Laurel grabbed her favorite lunch - soup

Tom checking out another pour over spot - none of us volunteered to go with him  around this water to look further inland

Ken taking a rest at one of the stops

Joe managed to catch all of us on one of the check spots  - we elected to hang out in our boats while
the rest explored that pour over

Fun all done 

Nice to have guys to help carry boats to vehicles and load them.  WAY
easier than fighting to get ours on top of Natalie's van. 

Laurel and I still have two days left to go birding. Stay tuned

Birding with Laurel: Bolivar Peninsula

January 5, 2020 afternoon


We planned to spend the afternoon visiting as many birding hotspots as we had time to find on Bolivar Peninsula. This requires a ferry ride and often a wait for the following ferry(s). But we got right on the ferry and prepared to enjoy the ride.

Laurel (far left)  stayed on the bottom while I went up to the top deck

I always get a kick out of the gulls that hitch a free ride, often jumping off to catch a bite

The S.S. Selma a concrete war ship laid to rest here in 1922 - I think she is going to last past my lifetime

A sister ferry

Our birding luck took a turn for the better after we hunted for birds missing from Frenchtown Road and the town of Bolivar. We went to the Bolivar Jetty, which faces east and is the place to get  afternoon pictures of some of the birds that use Audubon's Bolivar Flats Shorebird Sanctuary.  I thought we were going to be mostly skunked again.  Most of the birds were either very distant or were western willets. But then, it seemed the dinner bell rang, and birds started flying in to join the willets feeding there. We spent an enjoyable few hours taking lots of pictures of the same birds in different poses.

This was probably a fourth of the group of white pelicans - one of the few birds that seem to be holding their own

A Forester's tern offered to give me practice chasing flying birds

Resting laughing gull (l) and ring-billed gull

Then the cafe opened and more birds started showing up

I couldn't quite make our what this long billed curlew was saying

Lesser yellowlegs,  marbled godwit, western willets and laughing gull

We caught greater and lesser yellowlegs together.  The bill of the lesser is about the same length as the diameter of the head, while the bill of the greater is about one and one-third the diameter of the head. 

Marbled godwit and greater yellowlegs

Willets and greater yellowlegs - I probably saw at least twenty willets here

Incoming marble godwit

Long-billed curlew and godwit

Several flocks of avocets flew in, fed a few minutes, and flew back to the sanctuary -
ring-billed gull and greater yellowlegs in background

A few black-necked stilts liked the avocet hangout

Love those prison uniforms

Marbled godwit and lesser yellowlegs

We still had a little time left so we stopped by Fort Travis.  I was full of people enjoying the outdoors but not many birds. We mostly birded our way to and from the restroom but picked up a few new species.

Immature double crested cormorant

Long-billed curlews enjoy feeding in the lawn grass

The ship channel is always fun - but it was Sunday and these boats were at rest. 

Starlings are still doing fine everywhere but I usually don't photograph them

The following day, we completed our tour with a visit to Anahuac National Wildlife Refuge. We were not able to get there until the sun was high and had very few birds with the exception of black bellied whistling ducks, roseate spoonbills, and northern shovelers. My Facebook post is here.

Birding with Laurel: Galveston Island

January 5, 2020 - morning

Laurel and I left most of our upper coast birding for last, as I was going to be Natalie's house sitter while she went to be with her daughter for her grandson's birth. I figured we could easily bird as long as we got back in time to let the dogs out.  I was pretty sure we could get the early parts of our tour in before that happened. We started our last four tour days with a visit to Galveston and Bolivar Peninsula birding hotspots.

As usual for this tour, I promised many more birds than I could deliver. We stopped at Lafitte's Park on the way to Galveston Park and found only a handful of birds. Often the ponds outside the boardwalk part of the park can keep me entranced for a half hour.  This day they only had a pair of ring billed ducks.

A ring-billed male  duck 

And his female

On  the other side of the pond, around the block, we did find a healthy number of sleeping black crowned night herons. I took a picture of one right by the road.

Black crowned night heron

There were NO birds visible at the start of the boardwalk. We have seen up to five species together there.  We walked on to the large pond and only found a great blue, a pair of buffleheads, and a trio of white ibis.

Great blue heron and bufflehead pair

The back pond only held another bufflehead pair and we found no birds along the walks. This place is best in migration, but we usually find hawks, doves, and small wintering birds here. 

In only a few minutes, we proceeded on to Galveston State Park where I got to visit with my friend who was on duty there. We couldn't access the beach - it is closed for two years as the park gets rebuilt with a permanent visitor center.  But we looked high and low elsewhere until we were too depressed to continue. 

I practiced chasing flying birds on this Forester's tern

Just before we left, I spotted a bird in a bush and walked out far enough to find it was a white tailed kite, one of my favorite wintering Texas birds.  It was kind enough to come closer and stoop, giving me several pictures.

White tailed kite

Stooping

Another picture in the stooping series

That's all folks.  We saw a couple of grebes and a few white ibis through grass but nothing else that was close.  We did see a few little birds but didn't chase them.  And this in a place where a morning walk usually brings in twenty or more species. 

However, I checked back on my blogs on Galveston Island State Park and found I was already complaining of missing expected birds. Check that visit from 2015 here. 

Our day continued with a ferry ride to Bolivar Island and finally to the Bolivar Jetty where we had enough birds to entertain us for a few hours. Stay tuned. 

One of my favorite spring visits to this park gave us forty-seven species and includes one of my favorite bird group picture. Click here for that blog.