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.

A Visit to Sheldon Lake State Park

Sunrise on Sheldon Lake

Last Wednesday,  a friend invited me to lunch. I couldn't stand to not spend some time outdoors.  She hadn't quite decided on the time and place, so I texted her that I just needed an address and a time to meet her before I set off on about a thirty minute drive to a very urban state park. It is located just minutes out of Houston proper and was originally built to provide water for the war effort.  It has become a very valuable wild place in a mostly concrete area. It also was once a fish hatchery and still has ponds that are going wild. It provides important environmental education to school children as well as to aspiring master naturalists and the general public. 

I have fond memories of taking my inner city Outdoor Club there for a day of birding, fishing, and a cookout lunch of hot dogs and S'mores. I had only been able to raise enough money for half the binoculars I needed and the kids had to pair up to look at birds. I had to slow the volunteer from the Environmental Center way down as the kids were entranced by every bird, even the most common. We brought our own worms and the Park staff provided fishing gear. The pond had just been stocked, and the kids caught fish the size of their smiles.

This day, I started at the fishing parking lot, on the north side of the lake, squeaking in just in time to catch the last minute of sunrise through cypress trees standing in shallow water. Then the glowing cypress trees caught my attention, and I spent several minutes trying to capture their awesomeness.

Cypress at sunrise

The sun on the trunks caught my eye

A few minutes later, I was trying to figure how to detour around closed roads to get to the south side of the reservoir where I wanted to walk the bank fishing trail. A few minutes after that, I was back on track and approaching the boat launch parking lot. The light was still beautiful on the trees in the lake. A pair of fishermen were the only other people around here, although there were at least a dozen vehicles at the north end.  I walked the fishing path, stopping to frame pictures at each opening. I got down to the fishing pier and stopped to enjoy the views and to look for wildlife. 

I noticed a swirling cloud of birds, looking like gulls.  But when I put my camera on them, I found they were a huge gulp of double crested cormorants. (I had to look up the name for a congregation of cormorants. Isn't it appropriate?) 

A small part of the gulp of cormorants

The gulp landing
 

Then  they swirled down to land on the west side of the lake and began swimming towards me, then around me.  Mesmerized, I just kept snapping pictures. I picked out ones with the most action to share. It seemed the back birds would leapfrog through the air to land back in the water in front of the pack, only to have the last line of birds repeat this action. Two more small gulps flew in and joined in the fun.

 

The birds came close to the pier

They were still leapfrogging,  as they passed the pier, then began flying away.  The splashes
are from their little runs to get in the air.

They became a column of birds circling back to their start and disappearing into the sky

Finally there was only one

I was happy to see something was eating the invasive apple snails -mabe the limpkin?

A great egret flew in as I passed this tree

Another few minutes of driving got me to the entrance to the main visitor area. Again I had to stop as flying V after flying V came over the horizon.  Again I found each was a gulp of cormorants, There were at least ten gulps of them.

I took a stroll through the prairie to look for the pothole I had helped plant after staff located it in the old rice field by doing soil samples, then evacuating foreign soil. But I couldn't find it, and think the entire prairie is being taken back to a wet prairie and perhaps has engulfed it. 

The rest of the time, I wandered the wooded trails between the ponds, finding few birds, but a few lovely pictures.  Enjoy.

Lincoln sparrow

What passes for fall color in Texas

atu

Nature's painting

A rare oak whose leaves have fall color

My favorite picture of a closeup of cypress needles

When all you need is one leaf to show all the colors of fall

My friend texted me to come meet her, so I started back, only to discover that tower was open. I raced up five flights of stairs to grab a picture in the now unforgiving light.  (I still have all those extra red blood cells I need to work in Colorado at 7500 feet.) Then I had a wonderful time and lunch with my friend and another mutual friend who stopped by to visit me in Colorado, changing from a virtual to a real friend.

The tower....

...Gives you a view of a good part of Sheldon Lake

Paddle on Champion Lake

I wanted to go paddling, and since my right arm is still not up to my old paddling standards, I asked Natalie to take me in the bow of her canoe.  I also reminded her that she needed a set of cypress tree pictures showing fall color. Natalie decided to go to Champions Lake, which is really swampy lake full of cypress. I told another friend, who told two more, and on November 11, Natalie and I arrived at the boat launch to find three friends waiting on us and a fast moving storm just arriving. We all ran to the covered open area at the front of the restrooms and did a little catching up with each other. 

The blue dot is the boat launch

Waiting out the storm

Champions Lake is now part of Trinity River National Wildlife Refuge.  Natalie printed out the duck hunting map.  I always paddled it without a map. I just go up obvious trails, then either bushwack to the next trail or just go back to the open area. 

The on-line map for duck hunters

Cypress trees draped in Spanish moss

The three kayakers, enjoying the view

There are many little open areas, as well as thick forests and streams within the lake

 

The Spanish moss glowed silver under the lightening sky

We loved the dark and somewhat mysterious views of the cypress forest, but soon saw the sky getting blue patches and then turning a bright blue. 

We found a lot of black vultures drying their feathers after the storm ...

... As well as many anhingas

Milling about, looking for trail numbers

Tracy got us on it

After all that strenuous looking and picture taking, plus paddling a little over two miles, we stopped for lunch in our boats. 

Natalie getting her serving of tuna salad and spoon. She eventually got her crackers

I  got distracted by the reflections while turning back around after lunch.  Picture by Natalie

Great blue heron drumsticks

A tree full of white ibis

My shoulder, although recovering from overusing my scuffle hoe on weeds around the Discovery Center - part of my duties at Brazoria National Wildlife Refuge, did fine until we hit a patch of water hyacinth, mixed with alligator weed and duckweed. I'm still icing it down. 

A nasty mix of water hyacinth, alligator weed, and duck weed made paddling ten times harder

After about a quarter of a mile of slogging through invasives,we had another short, easy stretch back to the landing.  Everyone but me helped each other load their boats. Natalie and I killed another hour or so walking down to the dam.  We had to continually stop for butterflies, caterpillars, birds, a young buck and 

the only alligator we had seen all day. 

The requisite 'gator picture

This paddle was a record for me - the slowest and shortest paddle I've ever done. It was three and a half miles of paddling. The paddle, including lunch, took four hours.  I took about 300 pictures and then had to hold the canoe for Natalie to take hers. 

I have written about Champion Lake before.  Check out this link if you want to see more of this gem of a lake.  A Birdy Paddle on Champion Lake

Please leave your questions or comments below. I love to hear from you. 

I'm Volunteering Again at Brazoria National Wildlife Refuge

Twenty twenty was hard for me because I couldn't work and didn't have a home. So I bought Dora the van and am converting it. (More later.). This year I got my 2019 volunteer job back at Monta Vista and Alamosa National Wildlife Refuges. There I hauled off recyclables for the first week - no one seemed to have done it in 2020, and then kept up with taking them over to Alamosa recycling as needed. I also took back over keeping the vault toilets clean and stocked. I got a new assignment - to take down three miles of barb wire fencing, some three wire and part four wire. My boss also wanted me to pull the T-posts with a hand jack. I quickly found out that I could pull one in five and could get knocked down if the chain didn't stay attached. So I gave that part of the job back and just cut the wire, pulled it off the posts, rolled it up, and hauled it to the wire pile.  My boss replaced me with two guys and a tractor  to get the posts pulled - best fail ever. 

But soon it was time to spray our invasives, and I spent about 35 hours a week on spraying filling up my tank with the herbicide and adjuvant and water and heading off to spray. Then I emptied the tank and repeated. For the first part the year, I got the little spray system of a 50 gallon tank on a utility vehicle with a spray wand.  But when the summer maintence guy had to move into a full maintenance position, he no longer had time to spray so I took over his 100 gallon rig that had both a boom and a hand sprayer and upped my war from using 150 gallons on a good day to often spraying 400 gallons a day. I ended the summer with having treated 510 acres and working 898 hours. (Actually I listened to at least three books a week, while enjoying the outdoors.) And I still have two miles of fence to take down and half the refuge to spray. That ought to give me job security. 

I had to get off the rig to spray the sides of a dry canaland stopped to take a selfie - 
this was the coldest day - first time I wore a jacket all day while spraying

I lucked out and got a winter job only an hour away from my best friend's house in Houston, where I stay when I'm not working. Brazoria National Wildlife Refuge is one of the Coastal Refuges and serves as winter refuge for shorebirds,wading birds, and ducks. It also has a huge program to help monarchs numbers increase and another program raising American beauty caterpillars to give to teachers so the class can see them pupate and then become adults, before they release them. I'm still learning about all this. More later.  

I'm living in my van, but have cooking, washing, and showering privileges. I worked to get a comfortable set up in the van and got everything packed except my clothes for the day.  I got up the morning I would report for work, and put on my bra, then realized my underpants were missing.  So were my socks. Upon further inspection, I found I had acquired two balls.  That meant that Willie, Natalie's golden retriever, had "traded" one ball for my underpants, and another for the socks.  This is first dog I've met who is both moral and understands a one to one relationship. I did finally find my clothes and got myself ready and started out. 

Willie's trades

I came over a hill, aka overpass, and saw a beautiful little sunrise.  My next turn was at base of the overpass, and I was able to find a good place to stop and get a picture - only took two U-turns. 

Sunrise on the way to check in to my winter volunteer job

Not long after, I was turning to go under the high bridge over Bastrop Bayou. A few hundred yards later, I was at the Volunteer Village, meeting Stan and his dog, Oreo, who immediately offered to become my new best friend. Stan has worked here for six years, with little time off, raising thousands of milkweeds and butterflies. He and his wife were the only ones here during COVID and he still works fifty or more hours a week. He was hard at work, bumping up milkweed he had started from seed, from four inch pots to gallon containers. Within ten minutes of arriving, I had taken over that job, and he moved on to clear the garden the volunteers grow crops in.  

My first view of Stan - after bailing out of Dora

Dora in my yard

Then I started  my work here - bathroom, kitchen,
butterfly lab and plant nursery

 

Butterflies in their habitats - little net cubes

My new best friend, Oreo

Since then, I've learned the routines for managing the Discovery Center, helped deep clean it after being closed for eighteen months, helped weed the gardens around the Center, and planted cuttings of milkweed. Last Saturday, I got to go to an Open House, at our sister refuge, San Bernard NWR. I'll post about that later - pictures are on my Facebook page. 

I'm looking forward to the rest of my winter assignment. One of the best parts is getting to visit with friends. So far I've had a pair of friends visit me and take me out for supper.  And I got to go paddling with four women friends on a beautiful, swampy lake. This week, I'll get to go to the Museum of Fine Arts, and the Houston Botanic Garden with friends.  

And I'm looking forward to visiting with you, dear readers.  Please leave me a comment or question below. How and what are you doing, as we get back into the world? There is a free campground/fishing/crabbing spot across the road from me.  So bring your rig and come visit.

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