...riding the wave

It was a gray day. Cloudy, threatening some rainfall from the dark, ominous, swiftly moving cloud-cover as we drove over the islands on our way to Port Aransas. Port A [as we locals call it] is just a small fishing/boating community along the Gulf Coast, and the Port of Corpus Christi's shipping channel that must be crossed by ferry in your automobile. Finally, we were there once again. Even tho it's been just a short two weeks of schools' Spring Breakers that inundate the beaches where no one else wants to traverse the area until they leave and go back to school....it seemed like months since we've been in the area. We went Monday. And the sadness of it all is the city crews were once again out in the grass covered dunes and along the island highway picking up truck loads of trash and litter from those above mentioned revelers. On the beaches, those with metal detectors were out in full-force. Bud and I stay away during the Spring Break, but we're always anxious to get back to traipsing the island shores and the birding refuges. One area we didn't bother to stop for was nearly completely dried up, lack of rainfall/drought, so we continued on our way. Our first stop we hit pay dirt!! There were a couple of great blue herons high up on the tree tops as we walked down the boardwalk to the first viewing area. The pond, tho quite dry still had a bit of water and in the water we saw white ibis, pintail ducks. Along the bank, one lone green heron. Off from the left of the pond, eight yellow crowned night herons. To the right of the pond, back in the trees, three adult black crowned night herons and two immature black crowned night herons. Hidden among the tree branches, in the far back reaches of the refuge land border, a lone black vulture was perched. One male cardinal sang to us as he flitted from limb to limb. It was quite a fruitful, shutter-snappin' kinda stop. After we viewed the birds for about an hour's time, we hopped back in the car and drove to our second stop. A vast area of water and reed [cat tail grass]. Altho there is a resident alligator in this area, we didn't see him. Here, there were cormorants, brown pelicans, gulls, moorhens, coots, ducks galore and a tri-colored heron. Then, off to the Marine Research Center on the other side of the village...where there is a facility called ARK, a rehabilitation for injured birds. One lone hawk in the cages. Just outside this research area/building complex, there is another pond. There, we saw a great blue heron, a couple of snowy egrets, cormorants, and sea gulls. From there it's just a short few minutes' drive to the ship channel and the beach. All the time at these three areas, the misty rain continued. By the time we made it to the beach and ship channel, the rain had stopped but the dense cloud cover remained. We walked the jetty and a few yards along the shore. Here we saw sea gulls, cormorants along the shore playing in the waves, diving just before the larger waves hit, and one snowy egret searching for fish at the rocky jetty. Some royal terns and one lone [in amongst the royals] sandwich tern as we walked the shoreline. I took several photos the entire time, until the camera's battery was exhausted. The one I'm showing today is several photos of pelican which I had fun watching...a brown pelican. A 'surfer dude'!! In surfer lingo...he was 'riding the waves'.

BROWN PELICAN
photo taken: Port Aransas Ship Channel Jetty - Port Aransas, Texas
Habitat Range:




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