Feb 25 - Island Birding & Afternoon Cruise

Sunday February 25 – Island birding outing by bus & Intercoastal Waterway afternoon cruise. 

We started the day at 10 am with the Festival’s Island Birding by Bus outing lead by Rita.  We visited Port Aransas Nature Preserve and Overlook and the north beach.  The highlight of the outing was watching the two Whooping Cranes who have spent the winter in the town at the Nature Preserve.  This is the first time in 15 years that this has happened and everyone is very protective of the two Whooping Cranes hoping that the cranes will return in the fall with a youngster and claim their 300 acres of wetlands necessary for their support.   It was really special to see this pair. 

We zipped home for a quick lunch when the outing was done and went on to Leona Turnbull Birding Center and the Port Aransas Wetlands Park.    We saw the usual suspects that we have seen the last couple of days.  At 2 pm we went on Woody’s sightseeing boat for the intercoastal waterway afternoon tour.  Rick was our guide and he was excellent.  He has lived in Port Aransas since 1974 and knows a lot of history and knows where to look for the birds also.  We saw Red-tailed Hawk, wading birds and Bottle-nosed Dolphin.  The first mate of the boat told us about the history of the old lighthouse and then demonstrated how fisherman run a shrimp net.  Then he took net captures and went one by one explaining the fish, or squid or shellfish we caught and put these in a pool of water for us to look at.  It was really interesting.  The sun was out and it was warm and it was the perfect outing to end the festival for us.  

After this we visited the Preserve Overlook off the highway and Paradise Pond.  The Preserve did not have anything special at that time of day, but at Paradise Pond we had a Black & White Warbler and he was in breeding plumage and gorgeous.  He showed up briefly and was chased away by a Yellow-rumped Warbler.  We only had a couple of looks at him and he was gone.  We met people in all the outings and they were from all over.  All of them were interesting people. 

The one thing the festival did not have was group dinner which would have been nice.    Most festivals have that evening along with a feature speaker.  This festival had featured speakers whom I would have loved to have attended the session but each time, it was in the middle of the morning or afternoon and we were booked already.  There were no evening talks which is the norm.

We are just chilling out right now as we leave here tomorrow and travel to San Antonio tomorrow morning and will do some birding there also.   Today was another good day for us.

Feb 24 - Birding & Beach

Another early morning start.  We birded Finnessey Ranch today located near Refugio Texas.  We were on the coach bus for 6 am and we took the Port Aransas Ferry over to Aransas Pass and drove on to the ranch.

For the ferry to take a Greyhound type bus on, counterweight of other vehicles was needed to balance the weight for the ferry and the 6 am ferry is not really a busy ferry time.  We had to wait a few 5 minutes for the minimum 5 or 6 cars or trucks needed as counterbalance.  The ferry ride is less than a 1/4 mile and takes only 5 minutes of actual sailing time.  It must be the most boring job in the world for a ferry captain.  Really just back and forth all day long.  The 6 ferries here run 24 hours a day.

We arrived at dawn at the ranch and we were met by the ranch manager, Sally.  She has managed this ranch for 24 years.  The Finnessey Ranch which comprises 3300 acres has been in the same family for 160 years and the fellow who owns it now inherited it from his great aunt.  No one lives on the property.  There are a lot of grazing cattle and this land is leased by the cattle farmers.  The ranch has great water sources and some oil pumping stations on it and it has the 26 mile Mission River bordering some of its property.  The ranch manager also has a nature and photography club and a conservation area that is part of a agreement with the A&M University.  The ranch manager says it is a lot of work to manage this ranch.  She never thought she would be at it this long.  The ranch manager does not live on the property.  There does not appear to be an old homestead or anything.

There are a lot of huisache and mesquite trees and bushes.  The ranch is rich with good water sources such as artesian wells and the river and in this area there are big trees.  The ranch was hit hard by the hurricane last year and some washrooms, pavilion and a boardwalk need replacement.  There are a lot of overturned trees and brush has to be cleared. out.  There are blinds also that need to be rebuild.

It was a fun morning as we got to sit on the hay wagon trailer and we were really out in the outdoors today.  Thankfully it was overcast but not cold and not too windy.  We saw the regular suspects and took photos of some of them.  There was Red-tailed Hawk and Kestrel flying about.  Cattle were in the pastures and separated into different grazing areas by electric fences.  In some places we went right by calves and full grown cattle and they were looking at us looking at them!  We went from the dry mesquite environment to the riparian and then the marshlands.   The marshlands were particularly vast but the bull rushes were thick.  This invasive species eventually chokes out and dries out the marsh.  So we had an enjoyable morning.  There were no bird species but we still enjoyed seeing the birds.

 

 

Sometimes there are funny moments that one remembers.  One of the fellows on the hay wagon was from Paris and he was an older gent who was wearing a bright bright  red sweater.  I am talking cardinal red.  So went we went by some bulls young ones who looked aggressive as we drove by,  They were skittish and wanted to charge or play at charging the wagon.  We were not in any danger, they wanted to play.  Others backed away.   I thought we should send this fellow in red out ahead of us, like a matador.  When we were at one of our stops off the wagon, one of the calves went right up to him.  I was walking with the gent and joked with him, maybe the young bull wanted to him to be the matador.  This elderly gent then broke out sang the matador song from the opera (and he did it very well).  He was very good and said he had not thought about the colour of his sweater until then. 

We returned the way we came and were back at the Civic Center parking lot shortly after noon.  We went home for lunch, it was hot and sunny at Port Aransas.  We changed into shorts and t-shirts and decided this was the day we would rent a beach buggy and drive the beach.  To rent one of these one needs to show a driver's license, proof of vehicular insurance and be 21 one years of age.  One can pretty well drive all over town in one of these on the regular streets like a car.  I had everything and signed the rental documents. 

Once on the beach with the beach or dune buggy, guess who drove???......  Barbr loved it (no driver's license on her, and no insurance ..... but what the heck!).

We went further than we were supposed to go down on the beach.  They don't have a mile marker for each mile and we were not supposed to go past 40 and we didn't see the marker until 41 showed up.   So Barbr turned around and it was not until there were lots of cars driving on the beach near town that we switched drivers.  We cruised around the streets also and at the end returned the dune buggy back to the rental office.  We had a fun time and Barbr said she had a great day!  She is fine driving and I am pretty sure she really enjoyed herself. We came back all sandy, in our hair, ears and sunglasses were so sandy, it was hard to see.

By now it was past 5 pm and we had a quick supper at home and then we both just got busy with stuff.  Thankfully tomorrow we have an island birding tour with the festival and it starts at 10 am, so we are both grateful for a lovely day of Birding and Beach today and a chance to sleep longer tomorrow...

Feb 23 - King Ranch birding & Port Aransas Beach

I was up at 5 am with the alarm.  Barbr was dressed already and said a noise woke her up at 4 am and she had been up since then.  It was a cool night but comfortable, not like Wednesday night when it we were frozen with the drop in temperature and no heat source in the rustic room.

We drove in the dark to the nearby meet-up spot at the Civic Center and got on the bus for 6 am.  The trip took almost 1.5 hours to get to the King Ranch.  King Ranch Santa Gertrudis section is on the way to Brownsville but not as far south as the Norias Section which Colleen and I visited in 2014.  The Santa Gertrudis section includes town of Kingsville and that is where we entered the King Ranch.  The leader of this outing is the ranch's tourism and bird operations director.  So Tom knew the ranch very well having worked for them since 1996.  In fact Tom was one of the ranch's tour leaders when Colleen and I had a birding outing there.  Tom is an excellent communicator and also has a good sense of humour.  What I did not realize that since this is the north end of the ranch that the southern ranch's bird specialties would not be here, such as Tropical Parula and Ferruginous Pygmy Owl. 

We were on a big chartered bus and it was a big group but the King Ranch employees are real professionals and experts and out group size was not an issue at all.  We traveled the roads that Tom had selected for the birds and we got out many times to walk a road, or go by a pond or view some feeders.  If someone called out something being seen we were all keen to get out and see what it was.  We had Vermilion Flycatcher, Long-billed Thrasher and all the usual Texas suspects (Green Jay, Great Kiskadee, Black-crested Titmouse, Olive Sparrow, Golden-fronted Woodpecker, etc.).  The weather was overcast, drizzly and misty.  Not the best light for taking any decent photos.

By noon the sun was out and it was hot.  We had a great  Texas BBQ lunch which was delicious.  We were not hungry at supper time so around 8 pm we only had snacks.  Then it was 1:30 pm and time to return to Port Aransas.  We were back at 3 pm and we went inside the Whooping Crane Festival Headquarters to view the exhibits.  All the booths were about birds; travel, other festivals, bird trinkets, bird paintings, bird T-shirts.  The only bird optics booth was Swarovski.  The Zeiss people were not there, neither were the Cannon people.  I had wanted to talk with the fellows from both of these companies but not this time.  We toured the exhibits and of course one will buy a book, a T-shirt or some other bird-related item!  We did.  We may go back tomorrow. 

We went back home and changed out of our birding clothes (long pants and long sleeved tops) and into t-shirts and shorts and sandals and off to the beach we went.  We walked barefoot in the surf and it was wonderful.  Sometimes there were some Willets beside us on the beach or a Laughing Gull.  It was a good long walk and we returned after 5:30 pm and just relaxed with the breeze and had something to drink.  A good day! Birds and Beach!!!

Feb 22 - Intercoastal Waterway and Whooping Crane families!!

We were frozen popsicles by the time we woke up this morning!   There is no heater in this place, just lots of air conditioning.  Overnight it rained and thundered and the temperature dropped.  Somehow they call these drops or changes in temperatures "inversions".

When we got up we turned on the oven and left the oven door open to warm up the room.   It was a

 cool and damp and drizzly day.  Not a good day to go out on a boat.  But today was the day.    I was waiting to find out if I was going or not.  If the water was rough, I would not go.  Barbr would go she has a good constitution for a boat.  We arrived at the mariner and the water was fine, 6 inch swells only.  So I took three Gravols and got on.  We went right to the top level.  There was no wind out there until the boat started moving.  Then it was pretty cold in the wind.  Since the hurricane, this was the first time the boat was out.  Normally the tour starts out in Rockport as there one just has to go 10 minutes and the Whooping Cranes are there.  But Rockport was devastated by the hurricane and there are no boating tours now.  So we started from Port Aransas and then the boat going at a good speed took 1.5 hours to get to where the Whooping Cranes are.

We had great looks at two families up close!  The youngster in each family was born last year and was just loosing its brown feathers and turning into white.  The Whooping Crane's favourite food is Blue Crab and we could see them catching these and shaking the crabs before eating them.  A Whooping Crane family unit needs about 300 acres of space and this is then their territory.  Up in Wood Buffalo National Park, the Whooping Crane family unit needs double that so they have an adequate diet of whatever they eat up there.  The birds were not bothered by us either.  We were so happy to see the Whooping Cranes and to see that they are doing well.

We also saw Dolphins, Gull Tern, Double-crested Cormorants, Laughing Gulls and some shorebirds.  We were caught up in the mud in one of the intercoastal waterways and it took a lot of black exhaust to get us moving again.  Many people including Barbr and myself napped sitting in benches in the interior of the boat on the way home.  I was so chilled even with four layers on from standing outside for about 2 hours, nothing could warm me up, plus I was sleepy from too many Gravol.  BUT I felt fine.  Whew.

When we returned back to Port Aransas we went and drove the beach for a bit to see how far one can go on the beach, and it is a long way.  There were people out on the beach walking, others surfing and some dog walking.  The beach is a jewel here.  I took a walk on the beach this morning and even in the cool weather, there were walkers, runners, and dog walkers everywhere.  People coming with coffee to sit outside.  I could see that being on the beach was a morning ritual for many people here.  I think I would be the same if I lived near a nice long beach on the ocean.

We then visited Paradise Pond which is on Cotter Street.  The place has been spruced up since I last visited four years ago.  The parking lot is paved, there is a white picket fence at the beginning and a boardwalk.  There is even a sign on the street.  Once we came down the boardwalk one could see that there was major damage from the hurricane.  The once nice copse of trees where I saw my first Dicksissel was gone.  The trees were uprooted and all in a jumble.  The boardwalk was fine.  Houses now surround the whole place.  So it is lucky this place was saved from the developers.  There were birds here today.  Lots of Yellow-rumped Warblers and our first Cedar Waxwings for the trip.  There was Ruby-crowned Kinglet and Northern Shovelers.  It was still inclement and we were still chilled.

We got home, had some splash to celebrate the Whooping Cranes and we turned on the oven again to warm up the place and I found a tiny heater that we set up in the bathroom.  The temperature is supposed to go up overnight and go up to 75 or 24 degrees tomorrow.  This will be a good day for the King Ranch birding outing that we are doing.  Our meet up time is 6 am and we go by bus.

So it will be a really early morning!  The alarms are set!