Best Christmas Gifts- Adventure Two

December 20, 2016

I continued my first day with Steve and Chari, with a drive to Thibodaux to visit the another of the six Jean Lafitte National Park sites, the Wetlands Acadian Cultural Center. Since we finished out Chalmette tour in late morning, we figured we could easily drive the eighty mile drive. We enjoyed the little museum while waiting a few minutes to join a tour.  Actually, we WERE the tour. A ranger took us around several blocks of the town to discuss the history of the town as expressed through its architure.

Just across the corner from the Visiter Center was an Acadian cottage.  The cajuns had brought the steep roofed cottage from a land where houses needed to shed snow.  The young men of the family lived upstairs an most of the houses had a separate entrance to the top floor.

The style of house the Acadians built, when they first arrived

Around the corner, we passed the cemetery, and stopped to hear stories about some of the important movers and shakers buried there.

The graves are above ground, in most cases,  because of frequent flooding

 Then we passed Victorian homes, a bunch of different arts and crafts homes, and Beaux Arts Building. We also stopped to admire a church that incorporated several styles. We ended the tour at one of only two Second French Empire homes in Louisiana.

This dress shop was in what once was a bank.  The safe was too large to remove so it forms part of the beautiful decor. 

St. Joseph Co-Cathedral

The Thibodaux courthouse is a Beaux Arts building. 

A closer view of the courthouse

Close up of some of the fancy work on the courthouse

A beautiful topping

I think this was the first instance of the Louisiana State Seal. It is a picture of a brown pelican feeding here three babies from her own flesh. Birders and biologists know that pelicans only lay two eggs, and usually only one bird fledges. And they are fed fish.

Loved the ornateness of this building

Second French Empire House - belonged to a doctor

Detail of the Second French Empire house

We ended the day with supper at Fremins, which started life as a pharmacy but now is is beautiful, upscale restaurant. Loved the smoked oysters. And the rest of our entrees were also delicious.

This was on our tour but I took the picture as we stopped at our restaurant 

I loved how the evening lights had brought out the detail in the plaques 

A tour I hope to take another time is the boat tour on Bayou Lafourche.  The bayous were the first highways, so all the houses were built to face the bayous. But this tour is only offered in fall and spring. 

We were full, tired, and happy when we arrived back at the RV.  We only had time for a cup of hot chocolate before going to bed. We planned to go to New Orleans the following day. 

I spent Christmas in Louisiana and then went back to Galveston for parties, a Christmas bird count - another Christmas gift. Now I'm back in Louisiana and getting Physical Therapy for my shoulder.


Happy New Year to all of you.  I hope you achieve your goals and find it the best year ever.

PS.  I intended to get this out a week ago but had various computer and operator troubles. Computer is fixed.  Now working on fixing the operator.

Seabirds at Sunrise

January 3, 2016

I love being on hand to enjoy sunrises and see what each new day has brought me. But when the days get really short, I all too easily get diverted and miss the leaving time. And, at this time of the year, many mornings are  cloudy or foggy.

The first visible sunrise of the year happened January third.  I missed the first several minutes of it - got diverted - but had a wonderful few hours. My destination was East Beach in Galveston. But there were several pictures needing capture along the route so the sun was just making its appearance as I arrived at East Beach.

Below the Seawall

Dawn reflection, gulls, and waves

There I found most of the resident birds already out fishing,  although I was able to wade out into the surf to the top of my boots to take pictures of some skimmers, terns, and gulls. Then I walked on over to the ship channel and watched clouds of birds fishing.

Waiting for sunrise

Fishing time 

This group was still lazing around - I waded into the surf to get this picture. Skimmers were the bird du jour, but royal terns and a few species of gulls were hanging around as well

Skimmers look really different if you see them from the front versus from the side

 Then I walked on down to the ship channel and watched clouds of birds fishing.

The big ships started leaving and the birds flew to hunt in their wakes

Thousands of birds and scores of big ships shared the ship channel

At one of the fishing stops along the road, I found more masses of skimmers, terns, and gulls.

Skimmers rested shoulder to shoulder several deep and hundreds long

If you look carefully, you can see the lower mandible is over an inch longer than the top one - the birds fly with their beaks open and their lower mandible in the water.

Finally, I stopped on the way back at the beginning of the road to East Beach to get my final pictures, and a few more species.

Resting brown pelicans 

The first black-necked stilts I've seen this visit

They were in with gulls and skimmers

The pelicans were to the right, the stilts to the left, and on the light over the road was an osprey

I'm joining Wild Bird Wednesday.  Click on the image below to find great blogs on wild birds from around the world.  And be sure to share your bird blogs there.  It's easy and fun.

I'm writing this blog on January 10. January three still holds the record for the most awesome day of this year.  It had BOTH the best sunrise and sunset.  Gotta share one more picture.

Sunset from Galveston Island State Park

Best Christmas Gifts - Adventure One

A pair of my volunteer friends, Steve and Chari, suggested we get together while we were only an hour away from each other - they in the New Orleans area, and me just across the pond, aka Lake Pontchartrain. Plans morphed into an invite to spend two days with them and do touristy things together.

Our plans finalized with a decision to spend day one visiting some of the units of Lafitte National Park. I met them in the Chalmette Battlefield Section of Jean Lafitte National Park. This section is on the site of the Battle of New Orleans. Jean Lafitte and his pirate crew, along with a motley assortment of militia fighters, frontiersmen, slaves, and Indians joined Andrew Jackson to win a decisive battle against the British.   The British lost 2036 men: Jackson lost 71 men. This visitor center celebrates that battle and gives us its historical details.

The visitor center

The entrance to the exhibits and videos on the Battle of New Orleans

Inside the exhibit

We got a sense of how the English soldiers dressed

Signage showing the geography of the battle

We got to listen to a song we all remembered, the Battle of New Orleans. You can enjoy it again too, by clicking the link.

Malus-Beauregard House - built 18 years after the battle

Steve and Chari reading the signage in front of the house

We drove out of the driveway leading to the visitor center to the next driveway to visit the Chalmette National Cemetery. We listened to a few stories about the dead buried here on the audio tour.

 We finished this tour late in the morning and decided to drive to another visitor center - this for the Wetlands Acadian Cultural Center in Thibodaux, a mere eighty or so miles away.  There we had our favorite adventure of the day.  Stay tuned.

But I am grateful for all my friends, the old, new, the fixed and the moving.  Another friend gave me the gift of a 15 mile canoe trip to help with a Christmas bird count - and he did all the paddling as I still can't use my arm.

I'm going to post this blog VERY late as I am juggling traveling, PT, getting organized to live in Louisiana, and partying. Oh yes, I did a few Christmas bird counts.  I'll try to be more timely with at least one blog a week.  A friend just gave me a wonderful gift.  He paddled me the 15 miles we did to find birds along waterways within the  San Jacinto Wilderness Count Circle, just north of the city of Houston. More on that in a future blog.

On the Hunt

One of my paddling friend, Robert, has taken up photography.  He enjoys getting pictures of birds but doesn't know a lot of birding spots yet. So I invited him to join me in Galveston. Then when I left my hat in his truck, I invited him to bird in Houston at a Arthur Story Park, which was a wonderful hot spot for birds when I lived near there.


Our best spot of the day was at the end of Eight Mile Road.  At first we saw nothing and then we found birds popping up everywhere.  Some were wandering around close to the truck, while others flew over, safe from my camera as I still can't quite use the viewfinder.

This semipalmated plover was almost next to our truc

Think this is just bonding, not breeding behavior on this resident pair of American Oystercatchers

Whimbrel 

We found a small group of six sandhill cranes - think most of them are still further north

Then we backtracked a block and explored Sportsmans Road in the deteriorating  light. This road has expensive mansions on the right side, along the bay, and a marsh along the left side. We heard a rail, probably a Virginia, watched a big female osprey siting down in the grass too far away to photograph.

We spotted a juvenile yellow crowned night heron sleeping in the grass

A dock had several species of birds: here (I think), western willets, dowager sp, and ruddy turnstones

Is that rufus bird a Hudsonian godwit?

The little blue herons wouldn't explain why they were acting like shorebirds

Gulls weren't flying but we found a few ring billed gulls in the the reset of the pier birds

A few white ibis were feeding in the marsh

We also found a few adult yellow crowned night herons further down the road

Then we stopped by LaFitte Park but didn't find many birds. photographable birds. But we took scores of pictures of this nutria as he swam ever closer to us, then stopped and ate weeds that were just under the water.

Nutria

We were both starving so finished out outing with lunch.  Thanks for the treat, Robert.

A day later, I realized I had left my hat in Robert's truck so suggested another meetup, this time in the park closest to my old Huston condo. This park is also a flood control plain, so changes from lots of pretty deep water to just a few streams and large ponds.

Bird are just not yet migrating all the way to Texas in great numbers and we didn't find many of the expected birds. But we enjoyed the park and the few birds we found.

We saw lots of double crested cormorants and snowy egrets

We spent a lot of time taking lots of pictures of this cormorant trying to get this fish eaten

Snowy egret in a tiny puddle

The only phoebe we saw in two days of looking

Now I'm settling into living in Louisiana.  I've been spending a lot of time trying to get started on Physical Therapy and getting another doctor's appointment.  So far, I finally got my first secession with PT, just to get me evaluated for what I'll need. Now I have to wait to see if I can get in next week.  After that, I'm booked for three times a week until March. Still trying to find a doctor who takes my insurance for my other problem.

 My friend, Hulin has been fighting a bladder infection for about a month and is still under a doctor's care, although he is finally starting to feel normal. But we had to cancel our trip to California.

 I'm going to visit some of my favorite volunteer friends in New Orleans next week.  Stay tuned - we always have the BEST adventures together.

Hope you are staying sane in this stressful time of the year.