Egret Rookery at the Gladys Porter Zoo in Brownsville TX

April 12, 2012

OK here are the egret photos I promised. I didn’t carry my 500mm lens into the zoo. So I shot all these images with my 180mm lens. Enjoy.

Great Egret

Great Egret carrying nesting material

Great Egret

Great Egrets in courtship

On the nest

Snowy Egret

One more landing Neotropic Cormorant

Gladys Porter Zoo Brownsville TX

April 12, 2012

While I was staying on SPI, I took a trip to Brownsville to visit the Gladys Porter Zoo. http://www.gpz.org/aboutgpz.html
I was told that some local wild egrets had taken over an area of the zoo and formed a rookery. I’ve been spoiled having grown up with world famous St. Louis zoo that was curated by Marlin Perkins my entire childhood and a lot of my adult life. And of course I’ve had the San Diego zoo in CA. All that said this is a very nice zoo with large open enclosures for most of the animals. I won’t bore you with tons of zoo shots, but here are a few I thought worth sharing. I’ll post the rookery photos later.

Addax - An endangered antelope from the Sahara Desert



Mandarin Duck

Zebra Family

African Crested Cranes

Serval Cat (for the cat lovers out there)

SPI Migrants

April 12, 2012
A couple of days before I left SPI a few migratory birds started arriving on the island. Some of these little birds have come from South America and some will go up to the Arctic and Alaska.
They sure are tired and hungry when they arrive here.

Black-and-white Warbler

Nashville Warbler

Tennessee Warbler

Northern Parula

White-eyed Vireo

Orchard Oriole

Scarlet Tanager

Willet (Hey how did you get in here?)

Goodbye to SPI

April 12, 2012
It’s time to leave South Padre Island (SPI). I have mixed feelings about this. I’ll miss the birding, but I sure won’t miss the young, loud, obnoxious people whose idea of a good time is trashing the beautiful beaches here.
I’ll also say goodbye to a couple of new friends. Here are their photos

Me new mate.

Go for a swim anyone?

Arrived on South Padre Island TX (SPI)

April 3 – 6, 2012
I am now on South Padre Island TX. I have heard and read about all the great birding on and around the island, but I was quite surprised to see the development on the island. It looks like Miami. High rises everywhere and traffic is terrible. Whoever allowed the natural habitat here to be destroyed should be shot. I think if Texas cared about the migrating birds as much as they claim to, this would never have happened.
The island is a zoo during spring break, but that is over so I thought things would be quiet. I forgot that it’s Easter weekend. Thursday was actually a lovely day on the Island. By Friday noon the county RV park where I’m staying started filling up with young, loud people. I was young and loud once, but I’m old and quiet now. Loud annoys me. The county park employees do not enforce the rules very well, if at all. There are people who come from up north and stay in this park all winter. Most have left, but there are still a few here. They get the same campsite every year and some of them have landscaped their sites with flower beds and lawn ornaments. They are quite lovely. I wish I would have thought to ask for one of the sites that have been vacated by the snowbirds. I think that area of the park is much more quiet.
Linda and Carole drove over from Arroyo City to meet me at the SPI World Birding Center here and say goodbye. They are spending Easter weekend back in San Antonio and will be moving to NE Texas after that and then on to hill country before they head back to CA.  I don’t plan to be in NE TX for a couple of weeks. It sure was a pleasure having their company for the last couple of months.
I took a drive to Boca Chica beach near Brownsville and I visited Audubon’s Sabal Palm Wildlife Sanctuary. I drove through a huge opening in the “security fence” the border patrol has erected to get to the sanctuary. How secure is that? The border patrol did have a check point on the road to Boca Chica beach. No sniffing dogs this time. They just ask me if I was an American citizen. I said yes. They believed me and waved me on. Guess I don’t look like a drug smuggler or illegal alien smuggler. I have spent the last couple of months very near the border with Mexico and I have seen numerous border patrol employees. I’m not sure how effective it is to have all these people running around the desert. It almost seems like it’s mostly for show.
It was encouraging to see all the miles of wildlife management area on both sides of the road on the way to the beach.
Here are a few photos I’ve taken of the area so far. I hope to have more next week when(if) things quiet down a bit.

They will always be Moorhens to me

Clapper Rail

Sora

Tricolored Heron

White Ibis

Black Skimmer

Sanderling at Boca Chica Beach

Racoon fishing at Sabal Palms Sanctuary

Harlingen Area of the Rio Grande Valley TX

March 29 – April 2, 2012

I followed Linda and Carole to a small county park near the town of Arroyo City TX. The campground sits on the banks of the Arroyo Colorado. This is a major water source for this part of Texas. The nearest large town was about twenty miles away. That was Harlingen TX. The county park is near Laguna Atascosa NWR. We had a small section of the camping facility to ourselves. Linda and Carole hung some bird feeders and ran a water drip to attract a few local birds. They managed to bring in some Green Jays, Ground Doves, Cardinals, Olive Sparrow, and of course the ever present Great-tailed Grackle. We even had a Harris Hawk sitting on the light post one evening. Every night I could hear the call of a Common Pauraque, but I never saw it.  I took a drive through the NWR, but didn’t find much in the way of birds. Here are four birds I found.

Crested Caracara

Osprey on Beach

Lark Sparrow

Long-billed Thrasher

The county park has a boat launch area that is very popular with the local fishermen. The gulls flock to the area and beg for handouts, but the Terns have to do their own fishing.

Laughing Gull

Caspian Tern with Fish

I visited the town of Harlingen. They have a wonderful museum. I watched a film about the history of the Rio Grande Valley that was very well done. They also have moved some of the original buildings from the town to the grounds of the museum and you can tour the buildings. Just down the road at the Marine Academy is a memorial to the marines that lost their lives at the battle of Iwo Jima during WWII. It’s quite impressive.

Iwo Jima Memorial at Marine Academy in Harlingen TX

There is a small lake across from the Harlingen Library. I found several Black-bellied Whistling Ducks. An Osprey put on quite a show for me. Although it didn’t manage to catch a fish, it was fun to watch it try.

Black-bellied Whistling Ducks in Flight

Black-bellied Whistling Ducks Landing

La La La La La     Black-bellied Whistling Duck

Osprey

Osprey

Osprey

There were other waterfowl swimming in the lake.

Double-crested Cormorant

Red Head

I also took a walk through Hugh Ramsey Park in Harlingen. I didn't find many birds, but the cactus and other plants were showing off their blooms so I dusted off the macro lenses and gave myself a refresher course in macro photography. I apologize for the lack of better labels on the flower photos, but I'm not a flower person. If someone can identify them please add the names on the comment section of the blog.

Cactus Bloom

Cactus Bloom

Blooming Cactus

Bloom

Blooming Tree