Tis the season...for Christmas Bird Counts

 I have been consumed with birds the last few weeks. First I started going birding to remember some species I haven't seen for several years. Then I signed up to do four Christmas counts. Two of them were back to back and one a few days earlier. 

The Galveston Count will be remembered as super foggy and bird sparse. I drove an hour and a half through thick fog to get there, only to stand around and wait for almost an hour, until we could see anything but the gulls and great tailed grackles.

Then, on the way to our first spot on East Jetty, both our leader and I got stuck in the sand, for another half hour delay.  Then we could see shadows of birds but they weren't their usual colorful selves. We birded in the fog until about 11:00 AM.  Then we REALLY noticed the lack of birds. We missed species that are found every count year. Many of the avian scientists and experts think we lost thousands of birds in the big freeze last year, and the extremely warm temperatures are causing birds to linger further north.

Even the gulls didn't want to fly in the fog

This was a few hours into the count and we could see mergansers 

Sanderlings in the fog

The same group of birds an hour later 

Then came Brazos Bend Christmas count on a day with a 90% chance of rain.  Fortunately the rain waited until almost noon.  After the first soaking, our group of seven suddenly turned into a group of three: best friend, Natalie, Leader Bruce, a favorite partner in crazy adventures,  and me. We ate lunch under a group shelter and kept hanging out until the rain settled down to just a light rain. Natalie left about 4:00P to feed her dogs. Bruce and I continued to look for birds until supper time. 

It appeared that only about a tenth of those who signed up for the supper showed up.  We were urged to eat all the BBQ we could hold, then take home bags of leftovers.  All the windows were open and the night rapidly got colder. Soon we were shivering in our wet clothes and couldn't wait for the species to be called so we could leave. The first count was 137 species, several species under the expected 150 or so. 

The next day was the Freeport Count of which Brazoria National Wildlife Refuge is a part. I was signed up to count birds on a part of the auto tour with one other lady.  I soon found out why the Freeport count is always one of the top ten in the nation. We were divided into pairs and given a very small area to cover. I lucked out in getting a young woman as my partner. She was a fabulous spotter and took pictures of every bird or group of birds we saw.  We started off on an exciting note - we got a low flyover of thousands of birds. Most were laughing gulls. Emily took picture after picture of them and reported back that there were two ring-billed gulls in her pictures. Other flyovers included ibis, duck species, sandhill cranes and snow geese, all seen in black and white against a grayail sky. We sat for at least 30 minutes feet away from our starting point, till the sky finally emptied of birds. We didn't find a lot of expected birds or large numbers, except for flyover birds, and sleeping black crowned night herons. The best birds of the day were a Virginia Rail that Emily saw and photographed in the two seconds it was in sight, and the bird I begged for and got in the last bit of time we had - a white-tailed kite. 

Greater White Fronted Geese 

Virginia Rail (Photo by Emily Neale)

Snow geese flyover the following day in beautiful light

I went to the supper at the Wurst House in Lake Jackson. I enjoyed the German Food and was excited to find Victor Emmanuel was there.  He started the count when he was sixteen years old and apparently has helped with it ever since. I have met many of the people who run his tours and he showed me my first bobolink when I encountered him at a birding site in Pennsylvania, giving a couple a private tour. He talked to me because I was wearing my Anahuac rail shirt. And my friends and I had a wonderful tour of King Ranch with his Nature Tours people.  

Happy Holidays and hoping you all have a great next year.