Day 40 - Rockport: Goose Island

Birds! Birds! Birds! I never understood what the fun was in watching birds until I picked up a good pair of binoculars and joined a bird watch group with two very expert docents. 

The lens gives details to what looks like a simple brown bird from a distance. You can see the symmetrical pattern of black, white, and brown feathers, the beak shape and color, how it moves and sings and eats.. They are so cute!

Damage from Hurricane Harvey

After visiting other parts of the area for two days, today we decided to visit the location where we are staying, Goose Island State Park. The best way to do this is to follow around Les and Jane, who are the bird hosts and they have been coming to this island for the last 19 years. Les can tell you the name of a tiny bird hiding in the bushes in seconds and he is always right, because he shows you the picture from the book and then you see the bird with your binoculars. Les is amazing. He tells you also their morphology and their habits, the differences with other similar birds, when they show up in the season, and where.

Les and Jane have witnessed the devastation that Harvey has brought to this area. They count the birds and which type, and they rejoice when one kind finally shows up again. 

Laughing Gulls

Tri-color Heron and Great Egret

Great Egret

Great Blue Heron

Coot

Long-billed Curlew

Northern Cardinal

Savannah Sparrow

All the birds we saw in a two hour shore bird
walk!

In the afternoon we went to visit Les and Jane at their camp site, where they have feeders and seed bags. There is always somebody talking to them as they are very friendly and love to talk about birds.

They told us to go back to the marshy field of the whooping cranes, toward the end of the day, because that is when all the birds are coming back to roost for the night.

Sure enough, we saw whooping cranes flying over our heads. We saw great egrets flying in one or two at a time and landing all in the same area. At the end we counted 10. There was some noise from the pond in between the cattails. We were wondering if there were ducks. It was actually a small alligator hunting for dinner...

Whooping Cranes

Great Egrets

Turkey Vulture

The Big Tree wounded by the hurricane.

Les told us about the difference between a turkey vulture and a black vulture. Turkey vultures are bigger and have stronger beaks to tear flash apart. So they are the first ones to show up at the scene. Once the carcass in nicely rotten then the black vultures swoop in to finish the job of cleaning up. In the animal world everyone has their niche. Also turkey vultures look like ...turkeys