A Texas Tuesday

Our third morning in Winnie, we had more hard decisions to make. The wind was still coming in from the south, so we didn't know if we could expect to find anything interesting at High Island, but that's the place we'd come to see, so it was hard to pass it up for two days in a row. On the other hand, if the passerine birding is poor, one can always count on shorebirds. Our plan ended up being a morning stop at High Island, and then to spend the rest of the day out on the Bolivar Peninsula.

It was still slow at High Island. Still, at Boy Scout Woods, we found our first ever Gray-cheeked Thrush hanging out at dried puddle called, optimistically, Prothonotary Pond. That was pretty cool. Buoyed by our success, but oppressed by the deadly silence embracing Boy Scout Woods, we headed over to Smith Oaks where we found more silence. Some berry eating birds were feeding in hackberries there, which was fun to watch, but the highlight of the morning was our first Chestnut-sided Warbler of the trip. That's an incredibly pretty bird, so we took the time to property enjoy it.

Then it was off to the Peninsula!

The Bolivar Peninsula is a long sand bar that stretches off toward Galveston Island. It looks to be a popular vacation destination, with many houses (on stilts) along its length. After Hurricane Ike in 2008, it was stripped of many of its buildings by the tremendous storm surge accompanying that storm, but it's being rebuilt and looks mostly cheery, now.

Though, there are still many signs of the hurricane.

We picked up a few lifers on the peninsula. At Rollover Pass, we found our first American Oystercatchers and Piping Plovers. We had some help from a friendly Brit with the former, but had to scrape the latter out with our scope from a distant sandbar. We also enjoyed watching the many terns' graceful antics, especially the pretty Black Terns.

We also tried for Nelson's Sparrows in the marsh grass. Supposedly you can pssh them up, but we didn't have any luck, despite trying in whatever hopeful marshy places we could find. We did have a couple of Magnificent Frigatebirds at these stops, soaring in the distance. Those are some friggin' birds.

The weather continued poorly with an absolutely buffeting south wind coming in off the ocean. When we stopped at Bolivar Flats, which is supposed to be one of the premier shorebird locations in the entire country, we had a hard time keeping the scope up. The wind was probably constantly blowing at 20 mph with stronger gusts. The birds were hunkered down, and we had sand in our eyes, hair and mouths. That's what birding is all about!

Blowing Away at Bolivar

We made it out to the tip of the peninsula, where an industrial-looking lighthouse towered over a frothy brown sea and a grassy old fort. We tried to loop around on a different road, but found the hurricane had washed out a bridge and had to turn around. The low traffic, though, allowed us to slowly admire the many shorebirds in some ponds there. We got right up close to some, which was very nice.

Bob Road was a great stop on our way back, with more shorebirds that allowed close approach. We got our first Stilt Sandpipers for the trip, and the only Wilson's Phalaropes. It was interesting to see the phalaropes out of the water. One of them was walking in frantic circles, much like the way that they forage when they're swimming - which is how we normally see them.

Then we dropped by High Island one last time. We found a couple more warblers that evening, including our first Tennessee and Black-throated Green Warblers for the trip. We ended up back in Winnie for a late dinner at a Cajun Steakhouse. Libby got a fantastic dish of grilled alligator, and I got some nice fried crawfish. It was definitely the most memorable meal we had on the trip, and we really felt like we were partaking of the local cajun flavor.

Pictures from the day are up on Flickr.

Space Camp

Not really. Ok, so Monday afternoon we got to visit our ol' college chum Christine! It was great to catch up with her after five years(!) of post-Biola life.

She also works at NASA, so we got to take a tour of the Lyndon B. Johnson Space Center. There are lots of neat things to see there, though some may have been off-limits due to the scheduled Endeavour launch that only finally just took place.

We got to see the old Mission Control. This is the room they ran the Apollo missions from, among others. Apollo 11 told this room that the Eagle had landed, and Apollo 13 told this room that they'd had a problem. Famous!

Apollo 13 is a reminder that space flight carries inherent and grave risks. I was impressed by the many memorials in the parts of the Houston complex we visited to those who have lost their lives in the manned space program. On the right side of the room there is a collection of all of the mission patches from the missions run from the room. These patches began on the left side of the room, and then were moved over to the right side after their successful conclusion.

There are two patches that remain on the left side of this old Mission Control room: Apollo 1 and Challenger. It was sobering to see, but gives a sense of the open-ended nature of death that strikes me as appropriate.

Most of our tour we spent in the room where Christine works.

This room runs experiments on the effects of long-term space flight on the human body on the International Space Station. We were in the envious position of actually being able to talk in depth with Christine and one of her co-workers that was at work when we got there about what that involves. I was really impressed by the incredible complexity of running even this small element of a space flight.

Christine then took us by some more of the rooms that you can visit on a tour of the Space Center. We got to see the modern control room for the International Space Station. It's a little fancier than the old ones from the '60s.

After that, we visited the mock-up room. There's a room full of scale models of different spacecraft. These are used by the astronauts and engineers to plan and train missions. They have models of the space station, the new Orion module, a Soyuz capsule, and several parts of the Space Shuttle. They also have displays of new technology, a space suit, and more memorials to those lost in the space program.

One use of this module is to train for emergency egress. The far side has a worn track from where astronauts have rappelled down the side.

The last thing we got to see was Houston's Rocket Park. This is just inside the front gates of the center, and anyone can visit it during work hours. If you're ever in Houston, you should stop by and see a Saturn V.

So cool! The Saturn V is the most powerful transportation device ever built by man. It's the only rocket ever built that could take man out of earth's orbit. They have a nice display here with each of the three stages separate so that you can see the engines, and they have a Command and Service Module from Apollo (probably would have been used on 18) right in-line there, too. It gives a great sense of scale!

After that, we went out to dinner with Christine for some good old fashioned Texas barbecue. This was maybe the best part of the day, and we had a good time catching up with her.

There are lots of pictures up on Flickr.

Anahuac NWR

The Monday of our trip was very interesting, but it divides so cleanly into two parts that I can't help but describe it that way. Hence there will be two blog posts for the day instead of one. In this post I'll talk about our trip to Anahuac NWR, but after that we'll visit Houston and the Johnson Space Center.

Since the wind wasn't letting up, we decided to forgo High Island on Monday. Looking through the book for possible locations to visit, I noticed that Anahuac National Wildlife Refuge was to our west, and therefore closer to Houston than Winnie. Great, since Anahuac is a must-see spot, it worked out perfectly.

On the way there we scanned the fields we were passing to see if any were flooded rice fields. We didn't even really know what a flooded rice field looks like, so when we didn't find any, we weren't sure if we were doing something wrong. Flooded fields are like magnets to certain species of shore eschewing shorebirds. Texas birders call them "grasspipers," and we hadn't seen several of them. Even though we didn't find any flooded fields, we did find an Upland Sandpiper in a dry pasture.

Photo by Johnath via Wikipedia.

At our first stop, we took a windy walk along a sidewalk. Brown-headed Cowbirds, Eastern Kingbirds, and a fly-by Yellow-billed Cuckoo were the highlights of the stop, but we also got to enjoy some of the non-bird wildlife of the area. Check out this Little Brown Skink:

Our next stop was in the main refuge, where we helped a turtle cross the road. It was just past a slight bend in the road, and had only narrowly escaped a grisly fate from a passing truck when we first saw it. The crazy thing is that when I picked it up to move it an enormous amount of water came pouring out of this thing. It was like a water balloon inside the shell had popped or something. I barely dodged the deluge, and was left with a renewed appreciation for the water-carrying capabilities of the common Red-eared Slider.

There used to be some patches of trees in the refuge that are supposed to be good for migrants, but they seem to have taken a pretty heavy battering by the recent hurricanes that have torn through here. Ike was a big one, and the tallest trees in the willows in the refuge were snags. Still, we got a few more Orchard and Baltimore Orioles in what was left of them.

Then we drove around what is called Shoveler Pond. At this point in time, it's a muddy ditch with a little water in the bottom of it, and the "pond" is a bone-dry field on the other side of that ditch. It's been incredibly dry in Texas this year, and it was really evident. Still, the muddy ditch attracted dowitchers, Lesser Yellowlegs, Black-legged Stilts, and our only Wilson's Snipe for the trip. Best of all were a couple of King Rails, which were lifers, and several Least Bitterns, which appeared to be migrating in off of the gulf.

Next, we drove down to the sea-side to see if we could find Nelson's and Seaside Sparrows. The Seaside Sparrows turned out to be easy, but the Nelson's Sparrows eluded us for the day. It was great, though, to get up close and personal with some Eastern Willets. Eastern Willets breed along the gulf and mid-Atlantic coasts, and seem likely to be a different species from the larger, grayer birds that winter on the American coast and migrate into the interior to breed given their disjunct breeding populations.

Since all we see here in California are the interior birds, we rarely see Willets of any sort in breeding plumage. At some locations on this trip to Texas, we saw the two together in the same pond.

As we were stopping to use the facilities on the way out, a couple of birders from Georgia invited us to see a King Rail family in their scope. The babies never cooperated with us, but we did get to see a Sora and some other shorebirds as well as get some better looks at King Rails. Then it was off to Houston!

We took more pictures of birds on this day than we did any other day, and there are thirteen photos in the set from the morning. It's great to be able to take pictures of birds from the car, and the Willet above is a sign of that. We also have a good picture of an up-close Eastern Kingbird.

Easter in Texas

On Easter morning this year we worshiped at a small church in Austin called St. Francis' Anglican Church. It was good. The congregation uses the 1928 Book of Common Prayer, so we had to read through some of the prayers, and we unknowingly attended the earlier said mass. Well, we knew it was the earlier mass, but we didn't see that it was a said mass. It doesn't really matter, though, because we were able to celebrate the resurrection with fellow Christians, and that's what's important. Afterward everyone was very kind and welcoming to us.

The church was near downtown Austin, so we swung by the Capitol afterward. It's a very beautiful building made of nice red stone. In the picture below, you can see a beautiful woman in front of it, too.

Libby at the Texas Capitol

There were some interesting memorials on the grounds as well, including one to the Texas Rangers, one to firemen, one to cowboys, and one to the great Confederate States of America that came off as particularly un-neighborly. The verdant grounds seemed decent for migrant songbirds, but we didn't see any. Still, we enjoyed the White-winged Doves and Blue Jays that were common all around.

Then it was time for a long drive to Winnie, Texas -- east of Houston. It took about four hours to get there, but there wasn't any traffic and we got to listen to Jane Eyre on the way.

After checking in at our hotel that afternoon and changing, we headed down to High Island for our first visit to this birding mecca. High Island is among the most famous birding locations in the country. It is heavily visited by as many as 10,000 American and foreign birders interested in observing the spectacle of spring migration close-up and personal.

The location's powerful attraction is due to its unique bio-geography. The upper Texas coast between Galveston and the Louisiana border is very flat. It consists of coastal prairie, agricultural fields (lots of rice), and brackish marsh-lands. For many miles, this flat expanse stretches inland uninterrupted by any relief. There are no hills, few groups of trees, and few enough houses away from the immediate coast.

That is good habitat for many birds, and the area teems with wading birds, rails and shorebirds. But it is not very welcoming to tired migrant song birds in need of rest, shelter and fuel after their marathon nocturnal flight over the Gulf of Mexico. After their four to six-hundred mile over-water flight, they have to make a decision. If the flight was good, they'll be able to continue on into the insect-rich interior of east Texas, where pine woods and bayous promise good food and good cover. If, however, conditions conspire against them, such as an unforeseen mid-morning cold front sweeping into the gulf from the midwest (the trans-gulf flight taking more than 12 hours even in the best conditions), they will seek shelter in the first spot of trees that they find. For many miles along the upper Texas coast, that is High Island.

High Island is not an island. It is a salt dome where a protruding salt column has pushed the soil several feet higher than the surrounding wetlands. The resulting higher ground provides ample space for many hardwood trees to grow, especially oaks, and these trees are like a lighthouse to weary neotropical migrants. It's a very small town, mostly residences with one motel and no traffic signal, but its avian population can swell exponentially given the right weather!

When we arrived on Sunday, there was a southeasterly wind. It was blowing strongly, probably about 15-20 mph, and the birding was slow in High Island. Most birds were able to happily continue on their way to the interior, so there were only a few flocks of Orchard Orioles, female buntings, some Baltimore Orioles, Rose-breasted Grosbeak and a rare Western Tanager around. Later searching turned up a male Scarlet Tanager in the late evening. While our hopes for oodles of warblers went unfulfilled, we did enjoy the rookery at Smith Oaks. There we watched Roseate Spoonbills sweeping the shallows for water while the hum and smell of the nesting birds provided an interesting spectacle.

The best part of the evening, however, was a brief experience with a Magnolia Warbler, which was a lifer for us. We saw two, and the first one was seen well by Libby but poorly by me. The second one we found I was able to see quite well, also, and so we added our only lifer for the day!

Louis Agassiz Fuertes' Magnolia Warbler via Wikipedia

Pictures of the day can be found on Flickr.

The Hill Country

Different regions have different birds, and part of the treat of looking for unique bird species is seeing those unique regions they inhabit. On our recent trip to Texas, this pursuit took us to the hill country of central Texas for two endangered species that breed there: Black-capped Vireo and Golden-cheeked Warbler.

We landed around midnight in Austin, Texas. Following the helpful directions of the friendly lady at the rental car counter -- God bless friendly Texans -- we soon were ensconced in our hotel just to the north-east of that city. A very few hours later to beat the dawn, we were on our way into the Hill Country and Balcones Canyonlands National Wildlife Refuge. The flat terrain began to wrinkle, and hills dotted with shrubby junipers rose up on either side of the road. It was the unique ecology of this scrub habitat that provided a home for the special birds we were there to see.

Golden-cheeked Warblers are the only endemic breeding species in the enormous state of Texas. They migrate south to Mexico every year, but they return every March to feverishly provide for the increase of their species. They do this in the scrubby mixed juniper-oak forests found in the hill country, making nests almost exclusively out of Ashe Juniper bark.

Black-capped Vireos have broader habitat preferences, and also breed sparingly in Oklahoma and Mexico, but while their nesting ecology may be less picky as to species, they still require rare successional habitat such as is provided by suppressed wildfires, and is regularly cleared for grazing cattle.

We pulled into the parking lot at Warbler Vista in the refuge early enough to hear a chuck-will's-widow wrapping up its dawn performance, but when we headed off onto the trail we found a steady 20 mph wind flowing up the south-facing slopes of the limestone escarpment we were contouring along. It was quickly obvious that, despite hopeful little trail signs painted with Golden-cheeked Warblers at regular intervals, detecting singing birds was going to be hopeless.

We were both breathing silent prayers, and as we topped out on top of the hill to loop back to the car, a beautiful male dropped onto a branch over the trail. It continued there, giving good looks, as another warbler sang from the trees somewhere nearby. The wind died down, or we were sheltered from it, and we were soon hearing many Golden-cheeked Warblers singing. We only saw a couple more, but we had been able to really enjoy the one we had seen!

Afterward, we worked our way through the refuge toward the Black-capped Vireo spot advertised on-line. Along the way we enjoyed the beautiful geology and more fun birds like Scissor-tailed Flycatchers, Lark Sparrows, and Eastern Bluebirds.

Cow Creek carves steps into a limestone hill.

Soon we were standing on the Shin Oak observation deck, and listening to Black-capped Vireos singing in the unobtainable distance. That activity would end up being our entertainment for most of the rest of the day, interrupted only briefly by a bathroom break to Doeskin Ranch. Sometimes the vireos would come in close to the deck, but they always sang from deep within the scrubby oaks. We would have undoubtedly had a better chance if the wind had been less strong, but even then it was probably not a safe bet.

While we sat and listened and strained our eyes in vain for four and a half hours, we made our acquaintance with a Houston-area couple making a weekend trip to the hill country for the warblers and the vireo among other natural pursuits. When they left, we exchanged e-mail addresses and talked about meeting up with him later in the week. There's nothing like local knowledge, so it was a very fortuitous meeting!

We called it a day after seeing one of the vireos fly from one bush to another. It was nothing we'll count, but it seemed the culmination of a long and tiring effort. Running on three hours of sleep, we wanted nothing more than a nap! So, we went back to the hotel and grabbed one before dinner.

A few pictures are up on Flickr.