Spring Comes to Reimer Ranch

Last Monday, I was ready to leave my daughter's house with plans to visit the Lady Bird Johnson Wildflower Center on the way home. But I found it was closed on Mondays. My alternate plan was to go to Reimer Ranch, a huge county park, along the Pedernales River.

I arrived, just as the morning fog was lifting to an almost empty park. The park doesn't charge fees to old guys, so they gave me a map and a list of birds seen at the park and waved me on my way.  It is several miles from the entrance to any of the parking places. Since my last visit, when the park was very new,  beautiful rock buildings have gone up and a lot of the paths are accessible. I came to a place with signs to a rock climbing area.  It also now has beautiful bathrooms and drinking water.

I parked and  took the easy trail to the canyon and then walked along it.  The recent rains had started to recharge the aquifers as well as had just run into the low places so there was a little water in the bottom of the gulley.  As I walked along it, I was amazed at the difference between the plants in it and the plants on the surface.  The top is full of cactus and stunted live oak as well as grasses, while the canyon was a place of ferns, sycomore and cypress trees.  It even had a resident canyon wren that repeatedly sang it's wonderful descending song.

View down the canyon

The old and new leaves and berries of a sycamore growing in the canyon floor

Huge cypress, grow from to floor to out of the canyon - these were blooming and leafing out

I followed the trail along the canyon until it ended on an overlook over the Pedernales River.  I climbed over a waist-high stone wall to follow an accessible trail back to the car. This area was more meadow, cactus, wildflowers and small trees and held lots of mocking birds and titmice, as well as a few lingering white-crowned sparrows.

I loved the backlit cacti all covered with spider webs and condensation

Baby blue eyes were blooming in small groups and large masses

I got back in my car to go to my original destination, a trail that runs along the Pedernales River.  But I found the road branched and the right went to an overlook to the right and my remembered river trail to the left. I took the right road to a parking lot and then found a path down to the river.  There were lots of titmice and wrens foraging. The trees were covered in ball moss, a favorite nesting site of northern Parulas, although none had arrived to sing their little zeeee -up sewing machine call.

View across the river 

A patch of ball moss in bloom

Black and turkey vultures started flying off the cliffs while I enjoyed the view

The Pedernales River

 I climbed back to the car and drove to the other access point to the river. This has a covered picnic area and more restrooms, all made of the native limestone. I had to share this parking lot with three other cars, but only saw two other couples on that trail.

Several species of butterflies were very active.  

Within just over a mile, my path came to a side creek coming down through a canyon, I think the first one I visited. It turned to go up the hill, so I did too and was soon in a lovely, shady forested area, which I really appreciated, since the temperatures were reaching the high 70's. I first turned left when I reached a fork in the trail, since it seemed to parallel the river and thus would be expected to take me back to the car.  But I soon came up to a group of guys that were rock climbing.  My trail disappeared about that time and the guys said that I couldn't get through by walking. So I turned around and took the right trail which soon wound upward along the creek.  This was a lovely moist area and wildflowers and ferns were everywhere.

Honeybees were industriously harvesting pollen and nectar from spiderworts

Baby ferns were sprouting and unrolling

View along the trailside

The further I went, the rockier it got, until I got to what looked like a cave that had fallen down.  It even appeared to have remnants of stalactites and stalagmites. Water was dripping all along the front of this area and a strong stream of water was keeping all the moss  and ferns on an old stalagmite well-watered.

This old stalagmite was about as big as me in both height and
width and was getting a good shower

Ants were working furiously to get fresh leaves into their burrows

This trail too, finally went over rocks I wasn't willing to climb, covered as I was with my iPad, camera, and binoculars, so I turned around and retraced my steps to the car.  It was definitely a great day. 

Looking downstream at the Pedernales 

Best Tour for the Price - At Laguna Atascosa NWR

Winnie, my hostess in Corpus Christi ,had signed up for a field trip at Santa Ana National Wildlife Refuge. She got her son to let us, and her three dogs, visit him so we wouldn't have to leave at  5:00 A.M.  And, since we had to travel so far, we decided to do a weekend birding blitz.  We got down to Rio Hondo Friday in time to eat an early lunch and then run over to Laguna Atascosa.  There we found that the afternoon tour still have some places left, provided we were willing to spend the grandiose price of $3.00.  (People under 65 are penalized by having to spend an extra $1.00 for the tour plus the $3.00 entry fee.)

We had both a driver and a guide for a group of 6 people.  We were in a van because of the weather but the tour usually goes in an open tram and holds twelve.  The tour takes you along the old auto tour. That was closed to the public after someone ran over an occelet, of which there are only about 50 left in Texas. So you almost HAVE to go on this tour to see much of the close birdy parts of the refuge.

Although we had unusually cold and cloudy weather, we saw sixty-one species total at the refuge.   Winnie and I probably saw about a dozen species that weren't on the tour, including an Altamira Oriole.  Because of the poor light the pictures are not very good.  But hopefully they will give you an idea of this wonderful place, one of the refuges that manages both for birds and the very endangered ocelot.

South Texas (known as the valley) gets lots of birds that mostly live in Mexico and points south. One of the most common is the green jay, one of my favorite birds. Other birds associated with this area include the plain chachalaca, the white-tipped dove, several species of orioles, the gray hawk and some thrushes.  The aplomado falcon is being reintroduced at this refuge, and, I think, others within the valley. Young ones have been seen as far up the coast as Goose Island State Park.

The green jay is always in evidence where birds are fed

The altamira oriole is another speciality here (photo by Winnie Shrum)

Plain chachalacas - the dawn chorus of several hundred of them yelling out their name definitely got me going at Bentsen Rio Grande State Park many years ago.

Even though we have a had a long cool and rainy spell, spring flowers are starting to appear.  We particularly loved the blooming yuccas.  These require the yucca moth for pollination.  The moth lays its eggs in the seed case and the larva eats a few of the seeds. We saw shrike, northern mockingbirds, kestrel and caracara sitting on on the yucca plant. The big caracara was able to sit on top of the bloom spike. 

A view of the vegetation between the road and the laguna

A male kestrel hunting from a perch in a yucca

The white-tipped doves are easy to see around feeders but often to hard to find in the thick underbrush

A large patch of verbena was blooming at the viewing platform

A view through a yucca of the fields/brush on the far side of the road

Closeup of yucca flowers

Open areas with trees or even little shrubs make for good hunting for vermillion flycatchers, here getting a little blown about by wind.  (by Winnie Shrum)

The ponds along the road, as well as the laguna were full of coots, ducks, waders, and grebes. We saw at least 19 tricolored herons there.  But the dull light and foggy conditions made it impossible to get usable pictures.

The refuge also offers kayak tours and is a wonderful destination.  They even have alligators, which, of course, were smart enough not to be out in the cold weather. The thorn forest intermingles with coastal wetlands, the most ecologically valuable lands in the world, there. Click here for more information.

Sorry I'm a little late.  Came back to Galveston yesterday so today felt like Monday.  Just back from getting released to do anything I want, including paddling.  Now just have to work on getting more strength and flexibility.  And of course get in shape to get my canoe on top of my car. 

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Making Old Birds New Again

There's nothing better than a new bird except getting to show old birds to new birders. I got to guide a van full of new birders (although one grandfather was a duck hunter and rice grower) thru Colusa NWR yesterday, and had probably the best time of everyone.

I had already seen that there were way too many people on the refuge to expect to see the falcated duck so, after I gave everyone binoculars and a guide to waterfowl, and gave them a little discussion of what ducks we would see, we drove the auto tour.  We started out by checking out the over-sized feet of the coots in the road and discussed how they differed from ducks. Then we saw a big bird that wasn't a duck sitting on a little island.  In the binoculars, it turned out to be a peregrine falcon which then tried to fly off with its coot.  But it dropped it and then circled around several times for our extra enjoyment.  I thought it was circling back again but realized we had a harrier coming through.  We got to see another harrier later in the trip and some of the group could already call it. What brilliant students they were. 

We learned gadwalls, shovelers, mallards, and ring-necked ducks before we even got to the bridge.  Then we enjoyed two great egrets and a great blue heron sunbathing.  Soon everyone could decide what duck they were seeing. We found lots and lots of greater white-fronted geese, and got one good, albeit distant view of a male bufflehead.   We stopped to look at some golden-crowned sparrows and watched a couple of pie-billed grebes. Then we got to see a two cock pheasants and a deer in short order, and almost immediately after the deer crossed the road in front of us, we found an American Bittern sitting out in the open.   We rounded the last corner and enjoyed a close-up view of a red-tailed hawk, got a glimpse of a red-shouldered hawk, and got several looks at a kestral. And then I had to stop because I saw a single long-billed curlew on a levee. We also got distant looks at snow geese, none close enough to be able to find Ross's geese. Finally we enjoyed all the night herons in their roost just before the bridge.

The sunning great blue heron - (thanks for snapping the picture Charles)

Immature female red-tail hawk

Same bird front view

We got back to the viewing platform about  3:00 P.M. and were told by the other twenty or so people there that the falcated duck was actively feeding.  So I set up the scope and everyone got to see it and also enjoy closer views of the ducks and geese we had already learned.

Me and the birding group minus the photographer

The viewing platform after I removed the nine of us

It was hard to break away but I had strict orders to get back to Sacramento NWR by 4:00 P.M.Otherwise all of us were ready to continue birding until dark.