Birding with Laurel: Brazos Bend State Park

January 7, 2020

We spent our last four birding days at Natalie's house.  Natalie was able to go birding with us  one day and picked Brazos Bend State Park.  That park still has enough birds to be fun.

Blue winged teal were the ducks de jour

You know birding is tough when coots start looking good

I think this was the only little blue heron we saw on our tour

Common birds looking pretty - Great egret and white ibis

Vermillion flycatcher - one of the few birds holding their own or even expanding their territory 

White ibis

Tricolored heron

We saw ring necked ducks only twice on our tour - but there were several in forty acre lake

A serendipitous find - I practically  fell over an American pipet when I stopped to find a restroom 

We have to take an alligator picture or two here

I saw my first ever black bellied whistling ducks here my first Christmas count in Texas - I think 1990 -
since then,  their population has exploded

This ibis was under the roots of a tree making it possible to get a good picture in bright sunlight

I don't know where the cormorants are - hopefully still up north - but we only saw a few on our tour

When there are few birds, turtles will do

A little orange crowned warbler that made me work hard for this picture

I got separated from my buddies, but they had no problem entertaining themselves

I joined them on the bench and we sat there, recuperating and enjoying the black bellied ducks, when a couple biked past us exchanging hellos. I was in the process of chasing down the orange crowned warbler when I realized they had screeched to a halt and were coming back.  I heard "Marilyn".  I said yes and the woman said, "it's Chuck and Jill. Do you remember us?" I replied, "Chocolate Peanut Butter Unbaked Cookies. " (We had camped together a few decades earlier, and Jill had taught us to make them. ) We enjoyed a visit with them - they were camping at the park-  then they asked me to take a picture with them. We also asked them to take a picture of the three of us.

Jill, Chuck and Yours Truly

The three stooges

We had a wonderful time birding and visiting.  We didn't find either woodcock or snipe, although both had been found on the Christmas count. 

Our adventure will end tomorrow - at Anahuac National Wildlife Refuge.

Bird Watching at Brazos Bend State Park

Take a friend, a beautiful warm fall day, and a few good birds and you have the recipe for a wonderful outing.

My friend, Becki, and I hadn't birded together in over a year so it was great to meet her at Brazos Bend State Park and do a little preview for the Christmas count. We agreed to meet there at 8:00 A.M. but we were both there by 7:30 A.M. and immediately started looking for birds. We started at Creekfield Lake and found these white ibis and blue-wing teal, and pie-billed grebe. The lake is very shallow and there were few species or numbers of birds about.

 We also found these beautiful camphor daisies.

 Then we walked through a mostly empty woods, seeing only some cardinals, and a few sparrows, although we heard a titmouse. Soon we were walking towards the tower. We kept seeing this immature male vermillion flycatcher and I was finally able to get at least this ID picture of him.  The other flycatchers we saw were lots of Phoebes and a probable western kingbird.

 Both of us took lots of pictures of these three birds feeding together, singly, in pairs and all together. From left to right is a little blue heron, a young tri-color heron, and a white ibis.

 There were lots of great egrets fishing. I particularly liked this one with coots all around.

 We saw several great blue herons.  They are usually harder to find since they mostly sit very still.

The only ducks we could find were blue-wing teal and black-bellied whistling ducks. These were the closest to us.

 When we got to the day use area, we found this kestrel to far away to get a decent picture of it. We also heard and saw red tail and red shoulderd hawks.

  

The day was so warm we saw three alligators out. Alligators don't when the weather gets below  61 degrees but they will come out and sun on warm days.

 Most of the black-bellied whistling ducks were sleeping in large groups, but a few were awake and  feeding. I saw my life black-bellied whistling duck here when I did my first Brazos Bend Christmas Count in 1990 and have loved them ever since. 

 We only found a few juvenile white ibises. I am often asked what species of birds these are. The birds get more and more white on them as they grow up.  It takes at least two years for them to turn completely white.But I only saw maybe five juveniles all day. I hope they had a better year than it appeared from the few juveniles around.

 Surprisingly, we only saw two killdeer. This was one of them.

We saw several turtles but only this time saw two species together.

Becki and I also visited the nature center since she had never been there. We had a good visit with the two volunteers and one of them got out one of the baby alligators they keep for a short time in a tank. This little guy was three months old.  He was one of a group of eggs hatched  by the volunteers they will later be released and replaced by new babies. 

It was not the wildest day I have had watching birds, but we had time to catch up a little while we walked five miles and took lots of pictures. All in all it was a lovely, relaxing day.