Lots of birds in the Zooming slide show this month – from the Whooping Crane Festival in south Texas as well as Josey Ranch (Carrollton TX), the Springfield Botanical Gardens (Springfield MO) and Hagerman National Wildlife Refuge (near Sherman TX). I find myself picking images that show bird behavior rather than portraits.
There are spring flowers in this collection as well…more of those coming in April!
Enjoy the March 2024 slide show!
We were at the dock for the 7 AM departure of our boat on the third day of the Whooping Crane Festival.
I took a few pictures before we boarded – the moon over the harbor area.
Our destination was the Aransas National Wildlife Refuge where Whooping Cranes feed in the marshy/shallow areas…only visible via boat and it took over an hour to get there from Port Aransas. We passed familiar areas early on and saw a group of American white pelicans, morning light with moon setting over the shore, roseate spoonbills and white ibis in the distance, and the Aransas Pass Lydia Ann Lighthouse.
Then we entered an area that was different than our previous tours and more open water…with occasional platforms with cormorants and great blue herons hunkered in the chilly morning wind. There was a tall bridge as well.
Then there started to be a lot of small islands full of birds: Cormorants, great blue herons and brown pelicans. One area seemed to have a lot of great blue herons and I wondered if the island was their roost. There were also groups of laughing gulls. (Click on the small images to see a larger version.)
And then we started seeing Whooping Cranes. Even at a distance – they are easy to identify because they are so large…and so white. The young are rusty looking – particularly their heads. Many sightings were of 3 birds: 2 adult birds and a colt; it must have been a good year for increasing the whooping crane population!
There were other birds to see too between whooping crane sightings – roseate spoonbills, green-winged teals, willets, American avocets, more great blue herons, buffleheads, cormorants, an osprey, and reddish egret (that took off as a wave covered the spit of shells the bird was standing on).
I took some closeups of some shells…out of the water at low tide.
I also realized how wakes of boats impact the shoreline…why there are often blocks on the shore to reduce the erosion wakes can cause. It doesn’t take a big or fast-moving boat to cause damaging wakes in smaller channels.
And then we took a break as we headed back to Port Aransas – no more photos until the jetty with the usual brown pelicans.
We got back to the dock with plenty of time before our afternoon field trip for lunch; we then headed back to the Leonabelle Turnbull Birding Center.
Our second day of the Whooping Crane Festival continued with another boat tour after returning from the King Ranch and a quick lunch. The afternoon emphasis was on bird photography. The difference was subtle. The guide did suggest some settings to accommodate photographing in the very bright environment of a sunny day. I opted to take the normal opportunities to photograph birds as usual…but then took some photographic challenges too.
I started before we even boarded the boat. Grackles were taking snack packaging out of a trash can. The female seemed to be unimpressed with her partner’s antics.
I attempted to get a double-crested cormorant taking off from the water…managed to capture the form and splashes of water but the eye doesn’t show….plenty of room for improvement.
There were terns (probably common terns) diving toward the water for fish. I tried pointing my camera in that direction and pressing the button to take multiple pictures in fast succession. It was hard to hold the camera still as the boat moved! The shape of the bird as it nears the surface of the water was something I couldn’t study until I looked at my pictures on a bigger screen. This was my first attempt at photographing feeding terns!
The back of a white-tailed hawk – the only sighting of this species of the trip. It isn’t a great picture in the traditional sense….but it does tell a story. The bird was sitting in dead mangroves; the mangroves died during very cold weather a few years ago and recovery is slow; hurricane damage to the Aransas area would be even worse than before if one comes through before the mangroves can become established again.
The birds always seemed to be a little further away than optimal…and the boat was rocking. But I took pictures anyway: white ibis, little blue heron, osprey, great egret, and great blue heron. I tend to take photographs rather than make notes about what I am seeing…it’s easier with the camera already in hand!
And then there were the reddish egrets… with their pink and black bill.
And finally one started foraging…moving rapidly in the shallows. It seemed to veer off suddenly…something there that the bird didn’t expect?
I took group pictures of birds on small islands in the water…always interesting to see how many I can identify on my big screen later. In the one below, I see brown pelicans (adult and juvenile), American white pelicans, cormorants (double crested probably)…all in the foreground.
As I zoomed in on birds that were not in a group I noticed a black skimmer and some Caspian terns.
It’s always a thrill to see a bird I would not have seen without being on a birding field trip like this red-breast merganser. It was a single bird…swimming rapidly away from the boat…and I probably would not have noticed it without someone pointing it out. I’m not sure it was the guide or another participant that noticed it.
The same was true for another black-crowned night heron. I photographed one on the King Ranch in the morning! I was pleased that I was able to find and focus on the bird more easily than many of the others on the boat.
The light began to change as we neared the end of the day. There were enough clouds to try a non-bird landscape shot of the water the sky…a bit of land at the horizon.
I changed a setting on my camera to try an artsy image of a cormorant and the shore as we came back toward the dock.
And then the boat stopped just before we got to the dock….for dolphins. I couldn’t top my husband’s dolphin picture in the bow wave of the big ship, but it was fun trying to anticipate when they would surface!
And then one last picture before we got off the boat! It was a great second day at the Whooping Crane Festival. The next morning was an early one….getting on a boat at 6 AM to see Whooping Cranes in the Aransas National Wild Life Refuge. We headed to the hotel for an early evening to be ready for it.
The first tour of the Whooping Crane Festival for us was a birding-by-boat tour of Mustang Island on our first afternoon in Port Aransas TX. It was a sunny day…perfect temperature for the tour. We saw cormorants as we left the dock area for the main channel.
The bird sightings included a first for us: the white morph of the reddish egret. They are distinguished from other white egrets/juvenile herons by the pink and black bill. We saw more white morphs than the usual more numerous dark morphs! One of the images has a little blue heron along with the white morph of the reddish egret…for size comparison.
A yellowlegs was searching for food in the shallows. It is hard to judge the size. Does the bill look long enough to be a greater yellowlegs? Not sure.
There seemed to be a lot of great blue herons as well. The wind was blowing enough to ruffle feathers.
A white ibis strolled near the shoreline.
A pelican on a post kept our boat in view.
A ring-billed gull was also enjoying the view from a post…did not seem as keen to turn as our boat moved past.
Turkey vultures were doing cleanup on a coyote carcass. There is some trash in the background. I try to avoid taking pictures of trash. The area was relatively clean, but trash is inevitable even in wild areas within water or wind distance of developed areas.
A little blue heron looked very intent on something in the water…ignoring our boat.
The osprey swooped in…and missed!
The cormorants with white outlining their yellow chin are neotropic cormorants. There was a group of them on a sandbar as we went by. Most of them stayed facing the sun but a few looked our way!
Port Aransas is on a barrier island with a ferry to cross the channel. Our tour boat went past the ferry crossing…a different perspective than when we were on the ferry in our car!
On the way back to the dock, we passed the jetty again with gulls and pelicans….and a royal tern.
Tomorrow’s post is about the sunset dolphin cruise that was the finale of our first day at the Whooping Crane Festival.
We had registered for the Whooping Crane Festival months ago…and managed to attend it between my mother’s death and her funeral. Being out in nature at a birding festival was a healing activity. It helped that my husband did all the driving. We made the drive from our home in Missouri to Port Aransas TX over 2 days. We started out before sunrise…
The clouds gradually dissipated into whisps before the sky cleared entirely.
I enjoyed trying to take pictures as we went through Dallas…not something I get to do very often because I am usually driving.
We stopped near Austin for the night. We got to Port Aransas early enough for lunch and to visit Roberts Point Park. There were groups of brown pelicans and cormorants easily viewed from the park. I liked the pelicans at rest…images in high key.
There was a snowy egret on the rocks showing off his yellow socks. When I looked at my pictures on my larger monitor, I noticed that there are yellow strips on the back of the legs!
There were large ships visible in the channel.
We also visited the Leonabelle Turnbull Birding Center…quickly realizing that we’d have to return when we had more time.
There were black-necked stilts – with their striking black and white bodies, straight black bill, and pink legs.
Blue winged teals flashing iridescent color as they preened.
A very sedentary alligator was lolling below the boardwalk (although with its eye open).
A common gallinule was feeding nearby.
A group of American white pelicans were preening in the shallows.
A larger group was on the shore.
Green winged teals preening in the shallow water…or lazing on the shore.
White ibis were in the area…sometimes feeding together and sometimes in small groups.
We were there in the early afternoon, and it surprised me that the light made the water color and shadows so artsy for this grouping for birds – snoozing and preening. At this moment they must have all felt very secure.
Just before we left, I tried to get a picture of the whooping cranes that were feeding in the distance – an adult and colt (with brownish feathers on the head and parts of the body). These are the birds we came to the area to see. All the other birds are a big bonus!
We headed for our first field trip…a Mustang Island boat tour (the topic of tomorrow’s post).
The items below were ‘the cream’ of the articles and websites I found this past week. Click on the light green text to look at the article.
A New Day for the Ancestors’; Mounds - Archaeology Magazine – An Ohio Supreme Court ruling in December 2022 increases access to the earthworks. Soon, the mounds will cease to be part of the golf course at Moundbuilders Country Club!
How ‘tornado alley’ is changing - BBC Future – Tornado Alley is widening. Large tornado outbreaks have become most common in Alabama, Tennessee, and Kentucky rather than Texas and Oklahoma where the term ‘tornado alley’ was invented in the 1950s.
Knit One, Purl Two - Archaeology Magazine – Patterned silk stockings from the 17th century. Volunteers in the Netherlands tried to recreate them. It turned out to be exhausting and highly complex….and required hundreds of hours!
Rooftop Solar Grew Nearly 50 Percent Globally Last Year - Yale E360 – Great progress…the challenge remaining is to be able to use it when we need it. Upgrading electricity and storage infrastructure must keep pace.
50 Years of the Endangered Species Act: A Gulf Coast Success Story • The National Wildlife Federation Blog – The story of the recovery of the Brown Pelican. Now they are easy to see again!
The Fastest-Warming Continent, Europe Has Already Heated by More Than 2 Degrees C - Yale E360 – In 2022 Europe experienced 16,000 heat related deaths and $2 billion weather-related economic damages. With climate change, it is warming faster than any other inhabited continent.
What the Largest-Ever Study of Primate DNA Reveals About Ourselves | Smart News| Smithsonian Magazine – Evidently most primate species have more genetic diversity than humans do. However – primates at risk of going extinct are not helped by that diversity; their trajectory toward extinction is happening too rapidly.
Photography In the National Parks: Photo Documentation – Some tips on how to take pictures that help others recognize a special place/feature, understand a concept, or grasp the mechanics of how something happens.
Divers Are About to Pull a 3,000-Year-Old Shipwreck from the Depths | Smart News| Smithsonian Magazine – Pieces of wood…hand-sewn together. 23 feet of the 39 feet vessel are in very good condition.
We visited the Fort Pickens area of Gulf Islands National Seashore twice during our visit to Pensacola. We looked at the fishing pier area first --- searching for birds. Brown pelicans were searching for breakfast…not minding the fishermen on the pier nearby. They are probably in the area year-round.
Some of the structures were derelict. Water and salt are hard on concrete.
Several immature red-breasted mergansers were also finding food in the surf. They might continue north even though they are not breeding this year.
Willets and a great blue heron were wading in the surf.
Immature Bonaparte’s Gulls were on the beach…resting.
Looking toward the mainland from the Fort (on a barrier island), a lighthouse is visible. It is on the Naval Air Station which limits tours to people with military IDs.
We heard and saw small birds in the grass near the historical buildings/discovery center. Looking closer we saw that they were blue grosbeaks! They were probably refueling before they continued their migration northward.
Two osprey were building a nest at the top of a chimney nearby.
On the drive away from Fort Pickens after our first visit, we spotted a mature bald eagle in a tall pine. I’d spotted a large nest as we had driven toward the Fort….so we were looking closely for the bird!
We joined a ranger-led walking tour of the fort to learn a little about its history. Fort Pickens was built after the War of 1812 and before the Civil War….built with slave labor (many were skilled laborers specializing in brick structures). It was the largest brick structure on the Gulf of Mexico after it was finished and was a deterrent to conflict for a time. Its only active use was during the Civil War; it stayed in Union hands for the duration. Much of the brickwork has survived. The Fort was modified for other purposes over the years…with part of the structure used to store land mines! It served as a prison for Geronimo before he was sent to Fort Sill (in Oklahoma). Today – plants grow on the structure and in areas that were once busy with military preparations. The tour was a bit long (1.5 hours); I enjoyed the first hour but was tired for the last half hour.
I managed to pick 26 pictures that were my favorites of the year either because I liked the way they turned out or because of a memory they evoked. I noticed some themes after I had collected them.
All except one are outdoors (although two were taken through my office window so I was standing indoors when I took them).
Many were pictures of plants: bare trees, witch hazel, red yucca seed pod, button bush, joe pye weed, cardoon, sunflowers, beautyberry, and red buckeye (nuts).
7 were pictures of animals or evidence of animals (other than birds): whelk shells, horseshoe crab beginning to roll over, northern red-bellied cooter (turtle), tiger swallowtail butterflies, cicada, spider, gray tree frog.
6 were pictures of birds or feathers: pelican, ibis, gallinule, bald eagle (wet), red-bellied woodpecker.
There are two sunrise pictures: one from my front porch on the first day of 2019 and one from October when we were camping in southern Virginia.
More than half the pictures are from places I go that are close to where I live (i.e. not requiring an overnight trip).
October was a great month for getting out and about. The weather cooperated. There were birds and butterflies and colorful leaves…some flowers and frogs…even a sunrise. I had a lot of pictures to choose from for this zooming post! I use the feature on my camera for most of my pictures…to get the image framed the way I want…avoiding the need to crop. Enjoy the October slide show!
And Happy Halloween! A restaurant we went to recently had a clever Halloween decoration in one of their small bushes! I didn’t have to zoom for this picture…just stood on the sidewalk and took the picture with my cell phone!
Continuing the post about our trip to Smith Island, MD last weekend….
Brown Pelicans were the big bird show of the trip. I managed to get some birds in flight as herring and mackerel were thrown off the back of the boat and the birds flew in to get the fish before it sank below the water’s surface.
I took a series of pictures of a pelican flying away after getting a fish…and landing on the water…feet spread out.
There was another bird – close to the boat that took off from the water – a strong stroke of its wings as it raised the legs and then the big wings fully extended as it gained altitude over the water.
The pelicans use the man-made structures in or near the water like pilings,
Or partially collapsed buildings,
Or jetties. Other birds like cormorants and gulls also enjoy the same structures. But the pelicans were the numerous and the biggest. There were lots of juveniles…the pelican rookery had a good year.
After lunch at Dixie Crossroads, we headed over to a beach close to Titusville: Cherie Down Park in Cape Canaveral. It was a breezy cloudy day….a little cold. There were people fishing from the beach. At first it didn’t seem like there were very many birds. In some ways that made it easier to photograph the ones that were there.
The Sanderling at the water’s edge was the first bird I noticed.
The Ruddy Turnstone kept moving about. I’m not sure whether I photographed the same bird twice or it was two birds.
A Ring-billed Gull surveyed the beach from a pile of sand in the beach replenishment project area.
Further away a Lesser Black-Backed Gull and Herring Gull were doing the same.
A Pigeon posed with fluffed feathers…protection against the cold wind.
Lots of Brown Pelicans flew by.
I managed to catch a sequence of a group as it went by. The ones with white heads are the mature birds…the brown heads are juveniles.
A Willet walked along the water’s edge.
Just before we left a group of Black Skimmer’s flew by…a good high point for the last of the field trip.
After the long field trip to Central Florida, the next day we had a shorter one to hot spots around Titusville. It felt a lot easier getting to a 6:30 AM bus than the 5 AM bus the previous day. The first stop was Hatbill Park…just as the sun was coming up.
The Grackles were the first birds we noticed…because they were noisily welcoming the day.
As the light got better there were other birds to notice: a Little Blue Heron fishing in the shallows.
A Red-shouldered Hawk almost too far away to photograph but showing its very distinctive tail as it flew away.
There was an Eastern Phoebe and
Savannah Sparrow to represent smaller birds.
Some Brown Pelicans flew over the lake.
We headed off to or next stop – a walk back into the woods. There were very large Live Oaks with Spanish moss, resurrection fern, and ghost orchids and
Quite a few American Robins. Some robins stick around in Maryland but some push southward and accumulate in Florida.
There was a Red-Bellied Woodpecker that showed himself at just about every angle. They do have a little red on their bellies!
Florida has red maples just as we do in Maryland although the ones in Florida had formed their samaras months in advance of our trees.
Ball Moss – a relative of Spanish moss (both Bromeliads rather than mosses) – was growing in some of the trees. It looks tidy rather than raggedy like the Spanish Moss.
The Sabal Palmettos had ferns growing in their boots (the stubs of branches along the trunk). One of the other field trip participants identified it as a gold foot fern.
An Eastern Phoebe sat around long enough to be photographed here too.
One stop was a neighborhood pond that has a population of resident Black-Bellied Whistling Ducks. They were noisy. Hopefully they quiet down at dusk.
There were White Ibis in the pond as well. They seemed even more acclimated to people.
The next stop was a neighborhood park where there was a resident pair of Sandhill Cranes.
Then we headed off to Dixie Crossroads (restaurant) for lunch. I took a picture of the mural as I came out of the restaurant – it featured a lot of the birds we had been seeing.
The post tomorrow will be about what we saw after lunch.
After we picked up our registration material for the Space Coast Birding Festival, we went out for lunch then headed to the Kelly Park dock for a boat tour of Port Canaveral. It was a pontoon boat with bench seats. Shortly after we sat down – it started sprinkling then raining harder. We got off the boat to stand in the drier picnic pavilion in the park. The wind was blowing enough that we had to stand well under the pavilion roof.
I took a picture of a little blue heron that did not seem bothered by the rain and wind at all.
Then the rain stopped, the seats were dried off and we headed out only about 15 minutes late. I took some pictures of barnacles around the dock area.
We saw evidence of manatee in the water….the flat circles of water as they swim along…and then the tips of their noses when they come up for air. The ‘slow speed’ signs did indeed mark areas where there were manatee in the water.
We saw birds along the canal before we got to the locks: anhinga,
Great blue heron (looking scruffy from the recent rain),
Osprey,
And double crested cormorants.
We entered the lock and tied up. I took some brown pelican portraits while we waited.
Then the gates started to open.
The pelicans road the little water wave as the water leveled…and one took flight.
There was an immature brown pelican outside the lock area. The light on the water was perfect.
The high point of the trip was a frigate bird soaring overhead. I just watched it. My husband got the picture.
There was a cruise ship and the SpaceX barge (used for rocket recovery) in Port Canaveral itself. I was more interested in bird pictures…so didn’t document those sights.
We headed back through the lock. I turned back to take a picture of the white pelicans grouped on the bank and
The horseshoe crab shells that accumulated to the side of the lock.
I managed to take a picture of a bald eagle just before it flew way…a good ‘last picture’ before we docked back at Kelly Park.
Our third day at the Rio Grande Valley Birding Festival did not start out well: our bus has a mechanical problem and our departure was delayed by about 3 hours. Fortunately, the replan included a lengthening of the trip by three hours and provisions (picnic lunch). On the plus side – we avoided some rain showers that moved through while we were waiting; on the negative side – we could have slept later (getting up at 4 AM is common at birding festivals!). Our destination was the Laguna Atascosa National Wildlife Refuge. We didn’t seen any ocelots that the refuge is trying to protect…but we did see plenty of birds. The days was very cloudy and misty – not good for photographing. I picked a few that were good enjoy enough for identification.
There were snow geese coming and going. I liked this line because of the different morphs visible.
There was a Little Blue Heron fishing in the shallows
And a Great Blue Heron standing on one leg surveying the shore.
A group of Forster’s terns, with the black feathers around and back from their eyes) were grouped along the shore (looks like the birds behind them were snoozing).
The Forster’s tern is in the middle of this image. The largest bird is a Caspian Tern and the one in front is a Royal Tern. The Royal Terns I’d seen in Maryland always looked like they were wearing a black cap but that is only during the breeding season…not this time of year in South Texas.
A brown pelican flew above – following the shoreline.
White Ibis wandered through the other shore birds.
The Crested Caracara were new to me. Since the ones I saw on the field trip were a little far away – I took a picture of a captive bird as the Expo.
I took a close up of a prickly pear tuna (fruit)…note the spines.
Side by side – a Lesser and Greater Yellowlegs.
We were all on the bus when a male Northern Harrier swooped down into the field beside the road and hovered over prey. I did pretty well taking this series through the bus window since there was no time to do anything better.
There is a platform where aplomado falcons are nesting. This is an exciting recovery story since this bird was gone from the area for years and has only recently been reintroduced and is breeding again in south Texas. I took a picture of the captive falcon at the Expo just as I had the Crested Caracara.
We stopped at the visitor’s center and walked around the cards there. Red-winged blackbirds are all over North America!
The white winged doves are summer birds in south Texas according to allaboutbirds but there were still a lot of them around in mid-November; I wonder if they are really year round in the Rio Grande Valley.
It was a longer day that we’d anticipated but better than we thought might happen in the hour or so after we initially learned of the bus problem. In the end we decided that the Laguna Atascosa trip was well worth it.
Copyright © 2024, Gwen Morrison. All rights reserved.
Celebrating the whole of life....
Thanks for visiting my blog! Enjoy the photo picks from 2023:
Copyright © 2024, Gwen Morrison. All rights reserved.
Powered by Squarespace.
