Practice Makes Perfect:

A while back, I drove through the foggy mist to the islands with the intent of stopping at an area known as Mollie Beattie Community Reserve [Packery Flats], with 1000 acres of mud flats and tidal pools protected for wildlife. It's on Padre Island, not far from the JFK causeway, between the channel residential area and the beach highway access roads. The flats were muddied by the weather patterns that have frequented our part of the world, and it was foggy...tricky walking without getting my feet stuck. The tranquil views of the flats can be seen here, on my personal blog, Hootin' Anni's. After making the rounds on the accessible sections, I left and then went to Packery Channel Jetty and walked the beach. Besides gulls, egrets, sanderlings, dunlins, and plovers, here's a bit of what I saw that morning:

...At Packery Flats

Tho there are two very similar yellowlegs, one lesser and the other greater, it can be difficult to decipher which is which if they're foraging alone.  Once you've seen the two, lesser and greater, it becomes easier to distinguish the differences - manily the length of the legs.

GREATER YELLOWLEGS
photos taken:  Packery Flats
habitat map:  Yellowlegs


LITTLE BLUE HERON
photos taken:  Packery Flats
habitat map:  Heron


Packery Channel and Jetty

Once I left the flats I drove a short time to turn off the highway to walk the channel jetty and beach at Packery Channel.  Here again, egrets, herons, gulls, terns, grackles, brown pelicans kept me 'entertained'.  And one in particular that I watched for quite a while from the jetty.  An immature Reddish Egret was practicing his newly-learned skills and the unique reddish egret maneuver, 'dancing' and canopying, [aka canopy feeding] while foraging for tasty tidbits!!  I went bonkers on the camera's shutter...it was so fun to watch.  Brace yourself, ahead - a LOT of this Egret....

REDDISH EGRET and SNOWY EGRET
photos taken: Packery Channel Zahn Beach Access
habitat maps: R Egret and S Egret

...walking back to the car, I spotted a couple of Blue Herons on the dunes:

GREAT BLUE HERON
photos taken: Packery Channel
habitat map: Heron

That day the dense sea fog never lifted out of the area....well into the night and following morning before it 'washed' out and remained overcast and warm.

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