We left Port Isabel and took the long bridge over Laguna Madre to Padre Island. This island is essentially a huge sandbar which is over 100 miles long and a mile wide. Most of the island is reserved for wildlife but the south end is heavily built up with many large tourist hotels.The highest point on the island is maybe 30 feet above the high tide line so this is not the place to be if there is a serious storm or tsunami.
Among the large hotels is the second best birding site in the lower Rio Grande Valley. South Padre Birding Centre is on the Laguna Madre side of the island and has an extensive, elevated boardwalk that takes you over the marsh.
All of the large and small wading birds are here. The island acts as a natural barrier and restricts water flow from the Gulf of Mexico into the Lagoon. This results in higher salt concentrations in the lagoon and a thriving microbe ecosystem. Ducks and wading birds flock to this energy-rich feeding area.
We saw all of the herons and egrets that you can see in southern Texas, and got good photos of most of them.
Great Blue Heron
Little Blue Heron
Tri-coloured Heron
Great Egret
Snowy Egret
Reddish Egret
Long-billed Curlew
White Ibis
167) White-faced Ibis
There were lots of other interesting birds at this sanctuary including large numbers of Redheads and other aquatic birds.
Redhead
Common Moorhen
In the afternoon, we went to the beach on the Gulf of Mexico side of Padre Island.
Beach at South Padre Island
A Day at the Beach
Sona was experiencing ocean surf for the first time. It was not her cup of tea.
Feb 19 - 20
We drove to the Palo Alto National Historic site. This was the location of the first battle between the USA and Mexico at the start of the Mexican American War of 1846 to 48. We had a nice walk around the old battlefield and saw 168) Eastern Meadowlarks.
The Mexicans expected the Americans to attack and had a good game plan if that had happened. Instead, the Americans went into a defensive stance and used their superior canons to devastate the larger Mexican force. Battlefields leave me feeling sad.
Palo Alto National Historic Site
We drove north toward Kingville. As we drove through the Kenedy Ranch, we saw thousands of 100-foot windmills with their blades whipping around. These windmills are recent additions. This area is like a funnel for migratory birds flying between South and North America and these windmills are a killing field for birds.
At Altamont Pass in California, more than 10,000 migratory birds each year have been killed by the windmills there. This includes more than one thousand raptors and eight golden eagles annually at this site alone. The Kenedy site is right at the bottleneck of two migratory flyways.
Have you wondered why you don't see birds the way you did as a child? What will your grandchildren get to see? We hammer the oil industry for violating the migratory bird act when they kill migratory birds in their slag ponds. Yet, Canada and the USA are giving the wind turbine industry a free pass to kill hundreds of thousands of migratory birds annually.
Wind power is not clean energy at all. It is a young industry that is poorly thought through and largely unregulated. Their language includes phrases like "Our bird kill is average for our industry". I wonder what the DDT industry said about the side effects of their product as they were busy wiping out Peregrine Falcons and other birds at the top of the food chain?
We have the migratory bird act for songbirds and hawks and it should be enforced. Under the act you pay a fine and risk jail time for killing migratory song birds and hawks. We should enforce the law for the wind industry not just the oil industry.
The Passenger Pigeon is now extinct. It migrated in huge flocks numbering in the millions. Humans lined up along its migratory route and gunned them down by the hundreds of thousands each year. Once the tellegraph was perfected, hunters used it to alert their neighbors so they would be ready for the slaughter.
Is placing wind turbines in the middle of migratory bird routes really any different?
We turned east at Riviera to arrive on the seashore by Coya Del Grullo Bay.
We spent two nights at aptly named Sea Wind RV Park.
169) Caspian Tern - The two red-billed Caspian Terns are in the foreground with an orange billed Royal Tern in the background.
170) Brown-headed Cowbird
Feb 21
As we approach Corpus Christi, the farmers had tilled every square foot of ground. There were no hedge rows or brush cover of any kind for wildlife. Wind was blowing hard and taking away the top soil. The sky was grey with dust. We drove through the intense Corpus Christi traffic and onto the northern end of South Padre Island. We spent the afternoon at South Padre National Seashore.
Long stretches of South Padre Island are a nature preserve which is essential for sea turtles to lay their eggs and for migratory birds to rest when they fly across the Gulf of Mexico. It's nice to see people showing foresight rather than the short-sighted unregulated greed of the past few days.
South Padre National Seashore - Visitors Centre
South Padre National Seashore
Along the seashore we saw 171) Black Skimmers;
172) Black-bellied Plover
173) Sanderling
174) Ruddy Turnstone
We camped for the evening along the beach by the Gulf of Mexico.
February 22
I went on a guided bird tour through the South Padre Island National Seashore. It was a cool and windy day but it's always fun to go birding with a guide that knows the area. We saw 40 different species including :
175) Forster's Tern
176) White-tailed Hawk
Going north along South Padre Island we crossed to Mustang Island and stopped at Packers Channel. We saw:
177) Red-breasted Mergansers
178) Bufflehead
We drove along Mustang Island to Port Aransas and took a free ferry back to the mainland. Many Laughing Gulls followed the ferry as well as a few 179) Bonaparte Gulls.
We drove through Rockport to our campsight at Goose Island. We had a campsight right on the beach and our neighbors were fishing within feet of our RV.
180) Common Loon
February 23
I joined the morning birding tour through the Goose Island Campground. We saw 16 different birds including a 181) Buff-bellied Hummingbird.
In the afternoon, we drove to a 1,000-year-old Live Oak tree.It had a circumfrence of 35 feet at the base and was surrounded by a grove of its offspring.
Live Oak - Big Tree
On the way back to our campground, we saw three whooping cranes. They were a good way off but they are big birds and hard to miss.
182) Whooping Crane
In a nearby field, we saw the aptly named Cattle Egret. They typically follow along behind cattle eating the bugs that are disturbed. Initially an African bird, it has adapted to cattle ranches in the southern states.
183) Cattle Egret
Cooper's Hawk
We drove into Fulton to experience the atmosphere of a gulf-coast fishing village. As the sun set, we had dinner on an outdoor patio overlooking the harbour.
Fulton Harbour
Sunset view of Fulton Harbour from our restaurant table.
February 24
We drove back to Fulton for an afternoon boat cruise and a closer look at the Whooping cranes in Aransas National Wildlife Refuge.
Whooping Crane Boat Cruise Aboard The Skimmer
We saw 30 different bird species on the tour including: 184) Horned Lark,
185) Western Sandpiper
Whooping Crane
Here are two Double-crested Cormorants and a Neotropic Cormorant on the right. Note the smaller size of the Neotropic Cormorant and the larger, yellow bill of the double-crested Cormorants.
Neotropic Cormorant - Close Up
White Pelican
186) American Oystercatcher
187) Belted Kingfisher
The whooping cranes were not out in the marsh as they usually are. Their preferred food is the blue crab but this food source is now scarce. Blue crab need more fresh water coming into the salt marsh to breed effectively. The recent drought and increased human consumption of fresh water has had a ripple effect.
Fewer blue crab means the whooping crane population starves or finds alternate and riskier food sources. Whooping Cranes are relatively safe out in the middle of the marsh but several were back against the neighboring oak forest. They can substitute the less nutritious acorns for blue crabs. However, this takes them out of the marsh and into bobcat and coyote territory. This year there were very few young Whooping Cranes with their parents. We saw one young crane. Ripple effect!
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