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.
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.
What if all roads went underground? – Thought provoking…wish there were ways to make it a more practical solution since the aesthetics of a world that has more natural surfaces (rather than roads) is very appealing.
Endangered Whopping Crane Hatches at Smithsonian National Zoo Site – The egg was found on an abandoned wild nest in Wisconsin and given to a pair of whooping cranes in the zoo that had produced 2 infertile eggs. The live egg was put into their nest on 5/18 and the baby crane hatched on 5/26!
BLM, Forest Service, Five Tribes of The Bears Ears Commission Commit to Historic Co-Management Of Bears Ears National Monument – Wishing the best for this endeavor.
Fifth of global food-related emissions due to transport – The takeaway message for us in the US: eat locally! This summer I am visiting the local Farmer’s Market weekly…maybe next year I’ll join a CSA.
Antarctica’s ‘Doomsday Glacier’ melting at fastest rate in 5,500 years – Thwaites Glacier (nicknamed the Doomsday Glacier…Florida-sized) and Pine Island Glacier were studied. The ice shelf holding the Thwaites Glacier could collapse withing 3-5 years.
Finding mini frogs: these aren’t babies, they’re just little – And they hatch as frogs…no tadpole stage. They live in leaf litter…humid and moist but not near water.
New safe-sleep guidelines aim to reduce infant deaths – New guidelines have been coming out from time to time at least since my daughter was born over 30 years ago. When she was a baby, the recommendation was for babies to sleep on their tummy…very different from these current guidelines.
2021 Share the Experience Photo Contest (National Park Foundation) Winners – Special places…full of great experiences.
Los Angeles becomes the latest city to hire ‘chief heat officer’ – Miami and Phoenix as well as cities in other countries (Athens, Greece; Freetown, Sierra Leone; Monterrey, Mexico; Santiago, Chile) have similar positions.
One in 500 men carry extra sex chromosome, putting them at higher risk of several common diseases – A surprising result…most of the men were unaware they carried an extra X or Y chromosome. Those that are XXY had higher chances of reproductive problems. Both XXY and XYY individuals has higher risks of type 2 diabetes, deep venous thrombosis, pulmonary embolism, and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease.
The Virtual Celebration of the Cranes hosted by the Tennessee Wildlife Resources Agency is history…but there are videos available on their Facebook page. My favorite video is the hour-long Coffee with Cranes; it includes the morning activity of the cranes near the confluence of the Tennessee and Hiawassee Rivers and the intermittent commentary about cranes…a wonderful virtual field trip. I appreciated that I was warm inside while watching the birds in the light snow (with the bundled up commentators occasionally chiming in with sandhill crane info). The high point of the video is near the end – a large number of birds were startled from another field and flew into the mowed corn/millet field they were filming in the last 3-4 minutes of the hour!
I am full of plans for next January…attending this festival in-person and making a side trip down to Wheeler National Wildlife Refuge in Alabama (further down the Tennessee River and another location where there are lots of cranes in the winter).
If we wanted a road trip to see cranes earlier in the season – we might visit the Jasper-Pulaski Fish & Wildlife Area in Indiana. The peak number of birds at that location usually occurs in December and the birds migrate further south as it gets colder.
We could do a themed birding travel year around sandhill cranes:
September for Yampa Valley Cranes (Colorado)
November for Bosque del Apache Festival of the Cranes (New Mexico)
December for Jasper-Pulaski Fish & Wildlife Area (Indiana)
January for Hiawassee/Tennessee River confluence and Wheeler National Wildlife Refuge (Tennessee and Alabama)
March for Platte River migrating cranes (Nebraska)
Of course – there are other birds (lots of waterfowl and some raptors) to see along with the cranes at the various locations…and we’d see both western and easter flocks…mostly greater sandhill cranes but some lesser sandhills in the west. There might be some whooping cranes with the sandhills in the east!
Maybe I’ll find other locations to add before we set out – or maybe this turns into a multi-year series of trips. It’s post-COVID travel to look forward to! We know a lot more after all the virtual festivals we’ve enjoyed during our ‘stay at home as much as possible’ time since last March.
I attended the Patuxent River Conference last week. The conference was informative – lots of up-to-date information about the river. One of the branches of the river (the Middle Patuxent) is through the forest – downhill – from my house. The conference venue was the Patuxent Research Refuge and there was opportunity to look around the visitor center and onto a nearby trail. It has been awhile since I had visited the place and the visitor center was in better condition that I remembered.
The displays in the visitor center had been updated. The one I found most poignant was the whopping crane display. The Patuxent Research Refuge tried for years to raise whooping cranes to establish a new migratory flock but this year the effort was stopped. The whopping crane we saw down in Florida during the Space Coast Birding and Wildlife Festival (see my post here) began its life at this refuge.
During the morning break – a mockingbird sat in a nearby tree. It had quite a repertoire of songs.
I remember the timber wolf sculpture in front of the visitor center but the colorful screening on the front windows of the visitor center was new to me.
The refuge biologist let a hike during the last session of the day. A prescribed burn had been done on some of the areas around the visitor center to clear out biomass…keep the area grassland habitat rather than forest.
We hiked over the causeway and into the forest. The Refuge is doing an inventory of the forest trees and taking core samples to determine the age. One of the corers got stuck in an oak and they are still trying to get it out!
The trees are not leafed out…but some are easy to identify. Beech trees are easy any time of year.
A lot of the pines at the refuge were planted about the same time and are dying off together too. There are quite a few that have fallen over. But there are still a lot of trees that fill in the canopy. This will be a very shady area when the trees leaf out.
It was a good day for a conference and a visit to the refuge!
Continuing the third day of the Space Coast Birding and Wildlife Festival….this is the last post about our field trip into Central Florida. The high point of the day was seeing a Whooping Crane. This is one that started out life at the Patuxent National Wildlife Refuge (program now ended) and doesn’t migrate. It generally stays on a cattle ranch and enjoys cattle feed! We stopped at the ranch’s entrance, so the pictures are a little blurry with the max zoom required to take the picture. There were some sandhill cranes around as well and it was obvious this bird was different – bigger and very white. Our guides told us that the dwindling numbers of whooping cranes in Florida will be captured and relocated to join a non-migrating group in Louisiana.
Even though it was chilly while we were in Florida, it was still much warmer than in Maryland. There were flowers blooming and going to seed.
The deciduous trees had lost their leaves. The guides pointed out bald cypress domes…the tallest and oldest trees being in the center.
I was pleasantly surprised by the paint job in the rest room of the place we stopped for our picnic lunch. Very artfully done!
A cow escaped the pasture and was in tall grass heaven near one lake. Fortunately, the grass held the cow’s attention and it didn’t wonder up into the picnic area.
We stopped when we spotted a Scissor-tailed Flycatcher on a fence post. It moved to the fence wire and I got another angle.
We were just getting ready to retreat to the bus when a Crested Caracara flew in with some prey followed by an entourage of Turkey Vultures. The big lenses and binoculars were trained on the caracara trying to figure out what the prey was. Maybe a snake.
They stayed around long enough for me to take a portraits. The crest of the caracara reminds me of a bad toupee.
The vultures kept a respectful distance but would move in as soon as the caracara left.
We made a last stop before the end of the day at the Helen and Allan Cruikshank Sanctuary where we had spent a very rainy morning a few days before. This time we saw an Osprey before the scrub jays.
But the Florida Scrub Jays showed up soon enough. One alighted on the hand of one of our guides – probably thinking there would be a peanut for it…no peanut appeared.
Another bird stomped on the hat of our other guide. The bird obligingly turned around for him to get a selfie. That was the last event of the day. Note that all the jays we saw were banded…sometimes multiple times.
Our day in the field (5AM to 4PM) was probably the best of the festival…so much seen in a relatively short period of time!
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.
Transmission Upgrades & Expansion Are Necessary to Meet Increasing Demand for Wind & Solar | CleanTechnica – The key barrier is planning that requires coordination across regions. The Central US contains the most technical potential for wind and solar development but the largest growth in energy consumption is along the coasts…hence the need for transmission upgrades.
How Birds Survive the Cold: Feathers + Food = Warmth | All About Birds – A timely article about bird survival strategies. I was pleased that I see quite a few of the birds featured in the article in my backyard: juncos, finches, blue jays, chickadees, downy woodpecker, and blue birds.
A Wild Year for the Whooping Crane: The National Wildlife Federation Blog – Still on the edge of extinction…but the numbers in the wild flock that migrate from Canada down to Aransas National Wildlife Refuge is slowly increasing.
Forensic Facial Reconstruction Reveals 9,000-Year-Old Face – It seems like a lot of facial reconstruction has happened recently. This one is for an 18-year-old woman from Greece (9,000 years ago).
People with tetraplegia gain rapid use of brain-computer interface -- ScienceDaily – What a hopeful result – both for people with disabilities and more broadly.
On the Chesapeake, A Precarious Future of Rising Seas and High Tides - Yale E360 – We live very close to the Chesapeake Bay…so I always take note when it appears in my news feeds. The 15-minute video about Dorchester County is well done. I am familiar with Blackwater National Wildlife Refuge; it was the first place I saw a bald eagle in the wild….28 years ago. It has a lot more open water now and by the end of the century will be completely under water.
The Intelligent Plant | The New Yorker – An older article but new to me. It was referenced in a lecture I went to recently. Very readable…a new way of understanding plants.
Understanding the Nomadic Habits of Snowy Owls – Cool Green Science – We only see snowy owls in Maryland in winter…and then rarely. There’s always a possibility.
Canyonlands National Park – I’ve only been in that part of Utah once – and it was in October 2013 when the government was shut down….so I didn’t get to visit the park. This article has given me the idea that it would be a good place to camp – take the telescope for the night skies and hike in the mornings.
Air quality is leading environmental threat to public health: Switzerland tops the report while India falls to the bottom tier -- ScienceDaily – The US places 27th of 108 countries (strong scores on sanitation and air quality…but weak performance on deforestation and greenhouse gas emissions. We’re near the back of the industrialized nations.
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.
