Goose Island State Park And More Whooping Cranes

It was a foggy morning.  We were really lucky the weather was so good on Sunday, as it was our only nice day while we were at Mustand Island State Park.  Today we are going to drive to Rockport to eat at Charlotte Plummer's and look around Goose Island State Park.

We loaded onto the ferry to cross over to the mainland.

We arrived at Charlotte Plummer's about 1:00 and had a wonderful lunch on the second floor overlooking the bay.

 After lunch, we drove over to the Big Tree to see if we could find a pair of whooping cranes we had been told were sometimes there. They were not there so we drove around and saw two tall white birds in a distance. As we got closer, we know we had found the pair. They were feeding at a deer feeder.  The deer feeder gives you a perspective of how  big they are.

We watched them for awhile and then drove over to Goose Island State Park. We didn't see anything over there, so we decided to go back one more time to see if the pair we had seen were still there.  They were, and a pair of sandhill cranes had joined them!

We watched them and I attempted to digiscope with my flip camera and scope.  It's not the best, but here is a one minute video of it.

We were watching and all of a sudden they took off.  Jim was talking to another man, but managed to get this picture of them flying off.  It was really neat to see such big birds take off and fly away!

Whooping Cranes!!!!

The sun did come out today! The winds died down and it was the beginning of a beautiful day! We arrived and loaded onto the boat for our 8 o'clock tour.

We are looking for Whooping Cranes on the shoreline of the Port Aransas Wildlife Refuge.

We began the trip and had to take another picture of the lighthouse with blue skies.

We were excited to see our first Whooping Crane! It was quite a distance, but we were able to get a good look with our scope and binoculars. The Aransas Refuge estimates there are approximately 245 whooping cranes there this year. (You can click on the picture to see the full size)

We continued on and saw this kestrel watching another whooping crane.

 And right next to it a little farther to the right was a Crested Caracara

We were able to see them closer and closer.  You can see the yellow band on the left whooping crane.  It is a radio signal device so its whereabouts can be monitored.

This isn't a great picture, but I was experimenting with digiscoping with my flip video and our scope. I did get a little bigger picture.

We even saw five at one time! The other bird in the background to the left is a sandhill crane.

We had a wonderful time and saw about 40 whooping cranes.


Later that afternoon, we went to the UT Marine Science Institue Wetlands Center and saw

a snowy egret on the left and a great egret on the right.

a blue heron

We watched for awhile when we saw this little duck catch a big fish.  He worked on getting it into his stomach

And he worked some more

But all along, while the duck was trying to eat the fish, this brown pelican was watching waiting for his chance to seize the fish....

The duck wasn't too happy, but went off looking for something else to eat.

It's so wonderful watching nature!!!

Rain, Photography, and Bird Trip

We woke up this morning and the rain was coming down in buckets. You can't be too upset since rain is needed so badly here, and thank goodness this morning's session was a photography class indoors!  It was a nature photography class and we did get a few tips.  After that, we met Gary and Lisa to eat lunch before we went on the van birding trip we had planned for the afternoon.

I had figured out where we would be going on this trip, but was I wrong.  We got in a large van with 3 other people, 2 guides, and the driver.  The man in charge of taking us to birding spots was hilarious.  He made everything so fun and enjoyable with his excitement.  We ended up going to a pond at an rv park and a pond at a golf course.  It is so much more fun to be with people who can identify the birds so you know what you are looking at.

Some of the birds we saw for the first time were

A Killdeer

Curlew

 Kiskadee

Pied-billed Grebe

Common Moorhen

We also saw a Least Grebe, Snipe,  and Loggerhead Shrike.

Tomorrow, we are going on the Whooping Crane tour and the weather is supposed to be great!