Green Anole Day

Friday, April 24

Deb Hirt, a birder and photographer friend, and I left Stillwater at 7 am Friday, April 24, and headed to Tulsa to pick up some freshly ground honey-roasted peanut butter at the Whole Foods on 41st St. Thus armed with our favorite celery-dipping snack, we headed south on Hwy 75. We ran through intermittent rain most of the drive, but marveled at how green everything was. The southeast portion of Oklahoma would fool those who think of OK as brown and flat; it is green, hilly, thickly treed, sparsely populated, the roadsides beautiful with spring wildflowers: Indian Paintbrush, Evening Primrose, Coreopsis, Tickseed, Texas Winecup, Sand Verbena, Queen Anne's Lace, and so forth. Missing from these roadside beauties was the Texas Bluebonnet. We saw only a small patch of these flowers that are usually abundant along Texas roadsides. I believe that we were a little late for them.

We crossed the Red River and drove through Paris, TX, a place I had bicycled to before the start of Oklahoma Freewheel sometime in the early 90s. Our first stop was Gladewater Lake, Gladewater, TX. Here we hiked a short trail and spotted a perched Ruby-throated Hummingbird female, but the big excitement on her branch was a Green Anole that traveled the branch and kept extending its red dewlaps. Deb got what I thought was a pretty good pic of it but she deemed it unsuitable so dumped it. The photo here is from the Internet. We had to beat it off the trail and back to the car as it began to rain again and Deb's camera was not protected.

We spent our first night in Kilgore, TX at America’s Best Value Inn after a long day of driving. It was a good value, too, because it was brand new, immaculate, and inexpensive.

Egret & Heron Day

Blue Grosbeak, c Deb Hirt

Saturday, April 25

We left America's best Value Inn on Saturday after breakfast, intent on stopping at Big Thicket National Preserve north of High Island. We walked the Sundew Trail scouting for Red-cockaded Woodpeckers and Brown-headed Nuthatches in the pines and marshes—to no avail—but we did pick up Blue Grosbeak, Red-headed Woodpecker, and a White-eyed Vireo. 

After the Sundew Trail we traveled down the road several miles and stopped briefly at the Big Thicket visitor’s center, but did not walk any trails. We were eager to get to High Island and vowed to explore Big Thicket on the way home. We arrived at High Island about 3:30, stashed our gear in our room, and immediately headed for Houston Audubon's Boy Scout Woods. Not much to see there other than Grey Catbirds, Painted Buntings, and more Blue Grosbeaks, so we hopped over to Smith Oaks so that I could show Deb Heron Island.

Heron Island is always a treat. Nesting on it are Great, Snowy and Cattle Egrets, Roseate Spoonbills, Neotropic Cormorants, and one Tricolored Heron couple. There are viewing platforms at pond’s edge only 20 or 30 feet away from the island, which makes for fantastic viewing and photo opportunities. Even I with my little point-and-shoot can get passable shots--see below for a Neotropic Cormorant I took in 2011.

Neotropic Cormorant gathering nesting material 

Some Great Egrets were still sitting on eggs, but many had chicks at different stages of development from fluffy little ones to larger ones with pinfeathers. All of the snowies that we saw were still sitting on their pale blue eggs. Most of the cormorants and spoonbills were still incubating eggs, and one very inept couple of tricolored herons was trying to build a nest on some very slender willow branches. More about that later.

Great Egret in its breeding finery c Deb Hirt

Great Egret chicks wearing  pinfeathers c Deb Hirt

There were Purple and Common Gallinules in the duckweed-covered water between us and the island. There were also at least two alligators. They would climb out covered with duckweed and lie like moss-covered logs beneath the nests. Fortunately we did not suffer the trauma of their catching a bird.

Purple Gallinule; c Birder's Digest

We are in the rundown Gulfway Motel (the only motel in High Island). I have stayed here twice before on trips to High Island. Each time I am here I take pix of the swallows nesting under the entryway. This year Deb reported 5 nests. Below is a photo I took of the swallows in 2011.

Barn Swallow feeding young

Tropical Birding tours

Sunday we went on three different free guided tours with Tropical Birding. In this area, these people work for Houston Audubon. This year the guides were from England, South Africa, Ecuador, Australia, and Vermont. I liked Charlie—an English guy living in South Africa—best. Today's tours were the last of the group's tours on High Island. Tomorrow they are following the warblers north to Ohio's Magee Marsh, where, from what they told us, there were so many birders that one could not get onto the boardwalk, and birders had to tweet their sightings to other birders. Did not sound  like fun to me. Their quitting the area and moving north also told us that we were perhaps a week too late for High Island's high-season fallout. Also, it was hot and the skeeters were fierce!

Male Indigo Bunting in bottlebrush c Deb Hirt

Our 8:30 tour was in Boy Scout Woods, where we spent most of the time out of the woods finding birds (including a leucistic bunting) at the bottlebrush bushes across the road. The bunting was white except for the back of its head and back which were light, reddish brown. There were not too many species in attendance: Baltimore and Orchard Oriole males and females, the ubiquitous Grey Catbird, Ruby-throated Hummingbirds, Indigo Buntings, and a Red-eyed Vireo. 

My group walked back trails and found a Barn Owl box near a meadow. Charlie told me that the Barn Owl flew down 5th Street past the entrance of BSW and the house where Tropical Birding staff are housed every evening at dusk. Deb and I planned to keep watch one evening, but never got to it.

Our second Tropical Birding tour was of Rollover Pass State Park and a flooded field west of it where we endured a brief shower but saw many good shorebirds including Common, Foresters, Black, Royal, Least, and Sandwich Terns; American Oystercatchers; Marbled Godwits; Whimbrels; Dowitchers; Yellowlegs, Willits, Sanderlings; Snowy, Black-bellied, and American Golden Plovers; Bairds, Semipalmated, and Least Sandpipers; and many Brown Pelicans and Laughing Gulls among others. 

Our four o’clock Tropical Birding tour was of Smith Oaks Bird Sanctuary. Here the passerine birding was still slim to nothing, so we left the group and again visited Heron Island. Heron Island is an excellent place for photography, and Deb clicked off several hundred shots.

Each bird family had a story. 1) Four nearly grown chicks of one pair would gang the feeding parent, scissor the parent's bill, and pull the adult every which way.  I have included a internet photo here of Tricolored Herons feeding their young in this manner. 2) One of the few Snowies that had found a quiet place to nest, worked meticulously on her nest. The male would bring a twig and the two would work diligently at placing the stick and building up the sides of the nest. In between nest building, the female carefully turned her greenish blue eggs. 3) One nest high on a bare snag belonged to a pair of neotropic cormorants. The male returned often with food. and the two were very attentive of their three

Neotropic Cormorants (Internet)

chicks. 4) Few spoonbills had nests. Those that did were still brooding their eggs. The spoonbills and the snowies were in near constant battle for territory. 5) There was only one pair of Tricolored Herons on the side of the island that we could observe. These two received our pity. They worked for days trying to build a nest in some flimsy willow branches. Each time the male arrived with a stick, the two would try to work it into a platform, but it usually fell to the ground. Five days later--on Friday, our last full day of birding--the pair had made little headway. I had the urge to help them!

Tri-colored Heron c Jason Temple

Our observations and reading tell us that all birds participate in a "stick hunt." The Tricolored Herons hover over the pond retrieving sticks from the water. Great Egrets search the trails, and all species steal sticks from their neighbor's nests. Deb could get no pix of this couple so the beautiful photo of a Tri-colored Heron in breeding plumage left is from the Internet.

This evening we decided that we wanted a hot meal, so went across the courtyard to the motel’s grill and accidentally “crashed” a going away party for the kitchen help—and so got our meal free of charge. We were included as part of the gang and were introduced all around . . . even had our photos taken. The staff had made black bean soup, chili rellenos pie and casserole, chips, guacamole and salsa, and even dessert.

I think I was asleep by 8, but I woke at 11 in a puddle. The AC had shut down. There was a storm and all the power was off at the motel. The room was a sweatbox. I opened the window and sweated it out, playing games on the cell phone and tossing and turning until 1:38 AM when the electricity was restored and the AC came back on. Whew!

Whistling Duck Day

Monday, April 27

Monday stormed off and on. In the am we ate a leisurely breakfast and then went to Boy Scout Woods, where we saw our first Black-and-White Warbler in the trees in the swamp above. Then we hiked back trails to the marsh platform where Deb photographed a pair of Cattle Egrets that were intently hunting alongside the marsh grasses. One of them caught and ate a lizard. She also photographed another Green Anole, this one along the boardwalk. There was still nothing much going on in BSW, so we drove down the peninsula to Rollover Pass State Park again, and then to Tuna Road, where we saw Black-bellied Plovers, Dunlins, Dowitchers, more Laughing Gulls and Oystercatchers, and picked up a Belted Kingfisher and several groups of American Avocets. 

Deb photographing a Green Anole on Boy Scout Woods boardwalk

We were searching for Bolivar Flats Shorebird Sanctuary but got ourselves turned around, so drove Loop 108, the south side of which was supposed to be Horseshoe Marsh. We didn't find the marsh but did come across a church on stilts. Only angels and others who can fly may attend services. Actually now that I see the pic, it is probably not a church but someone’s elaborate house. All are on stilts along the peninsula. What do you think? See below.

Leaving the park we finally found the Houston Bolivar Flats Shorebird Sanctuary down Rettilion Road—the sign for it a distance off and not visible from Hwy 87, the main peninsula road. At the Sanctuary we saw more of the “usual suspects,” including more Black-necked Stilts, and a White-phase Reddish Egret.

White phase of reddish Egret, c Denise Ippolito

We drove 108 Loop and continued west to the end of the peninsula and Fort Travis County Park. Here we found both Black-bellied Whistling Ducks and Fulvous-bellied Whistling Ducks, as well as Long-billed and Short-billed Dowitchers, Willets, Blue-winged Teal, Black-bellied Plovers, Ruddy Turnstones, and others on the flooded mowed lawns of the park.

Fulvous-bellied Whistling Duck  and Black-bellied Whistling Duck (Internet)

We stopped at a grocery for supplies and found—to our surprise—a fresh, honey-roasted peanut butter machine. Remember Day 1 when we stopped at Whole Foods for same?

After this we drove down Bob’s Road and found a very friendly Clapper Rail who came nearly alongside the car at the end of the road. Also at the end of the road was an enormous, double-hulled barge triplet being pushed along by a four-story tugboat on the Gulf Intracoastal Waterway, a 1050-mile inland waterway running from Carrabelle, Florida to Brownsville, Texas. (I looked it up on the Internet and found that it was built in 1949.) There were several of the enormous barge/tugboat teams, making for interesting backgrounds to our “wildlife” photos.

Gulf Intracoastal Waterway (Internet)

Four-story tugboat pushing barges on Gulf Intracoastal Waterway (Internet)

Nighthawk Day

Tuesday, April 28

We decided this darkly cloudy and windy Tuesday to go to Anahuac National Wildlife Refuge. It is about 17 miles from our Gulfway Motel. On the way there, Deb photographed an Osprey, and at the refuge we saw and Deb photographed and osprey with a rat in its talons. We also saw a Northern Harrier at the refuge. 

Before we got to Anahuac proper we stopped at the Skillern Tract. Lou Skillern and her husband volunteered at Anahuac for years and the tract is named after them. Lou now lives in Ponca City, 40 miles north of Stillwater. Several years ago Lou was on the Payne County Audubon board during my first PCAS presidency. Deb and I walked the trails at the Skillern Tract seeing and photographing a Dickcissel, Eastern Kingbirds, Green Herons, a Yellow Warbler, Orchard Orioles, Cliff Swallows, Lesser Yellowlegs, Black-billed Cuckoo and many other of the “usual suspects.” Then it was on to Anahuac’s main entrance.

Male Yellow Warbler at Skillern Tract c Deb Hirt

Black-billed Cuckoo c Deb Hirt

Surprisingly, we saw many warblers at Anahuac’s Jackson Woodlot, a small island of deciduous trees amid the floodplains and coastal marshes of this refuge. Deb managed to get good shots of a Chestnut-sided Warbler, Magnolia Warbler, Black-throated Green Warbler (m & f) and an American Redstart. I saw a Philadelphia Vireo at the Woodlot. Yesterday we id’d a Clapper Rail and today we saw both King Rail, which Deb managed to photograph, and a Sora. The sora was in the middle of the dirt road. The marsh water levels have risen high enough to flush the rails to the road.

Magnolia Warbler c Deb Hirt

Male Bay-breasted Warbler c Deb Hirt

Anahuac’s double feature this day was nighthawks. Deb photographed a Lesser Nighthawk snoozing on a chainlink fence across from HQ; we were repeatedly buzzed by a Common Nighthawk in Jackson Woodlot, and then we watched the insect-catching antics of three Common Nighthawks at road’s end. After we turned around to head back to HQ, we found one of the aerial acrobats lying on the warm road. I got the photo of it below. Another of the trio was settling down atop a fencepost, and Deb got a photo of it.

There were several alligators in the canals at Anahuac, most of them quite small but we both photographed the mother gator below.

Susan's alligator pic

Scarlet Tanager Day

Wednesday, April 29

Scarlet Tanager c Deb Hirt

This morning we decided to bird Texas Ornithological Society’s Hook’s Woods off 1st Street, only a few blocks from our motel on 6th Street. I had seen a Great Horned Owl and its owlets here in 2011, but there was no sign of it in 2015. We discovered that Hook's Woods was now off bounds unless one was a member of the TOS and paid a fee, so we birded outside it and along 1st Street with much success.On 1st Street, we spotted some new species: Yellow-billed Cuckoo, Northern Parula, Ovenbird, Warbling Vireo, and both the Great-crested and Brown-crested Flycatcher.

The Scarlet Tanagers arrived today after their flight across the Gulf. The first big fallout since we've been here. The stormy weather caused their arrival. They popped up everywhere, first at 1st Street, then at Boy Scout Woods, and later at Smith Oaks.

Yellow-billed Cuckoo, Susan's 2011 photo

After spending the morning at 1st Street, we scurried back to the motel and had lunch. Then we struck out again for a couple of other new birding locales: Eubanks Woods Bird Sanctuary near Smith Woods, and the Texas Ornithological Society’s Mary Edna Crawford Sanctuary. Neither of these locales was well kept up or had any birds or birders. So . . . we decided to go back to Rollover Pass State Park so that Deb could photograph an oystercatcher . . . but alas, there were no oystercatchers at the Pass. Tons of brown pelicans, dunlins, willets, stilts, dowitchers, and avocets, though. 

The avocets were behaving like I’d never seen them behave before. Groups of 20 to 25 were walking/floating in the shallow water and turning tails up like dabbling ducks. (I took photos of this behavior but inadvertently erased them from my camera, so the photo below from the Internet is similar to the groups of American Avocets I saw in the low-water tidal flats at Rollover Pass SP.)

American Avocets bottoms up feeding; Internet photo

Clapper Rail c Deb Hirt

After Rollover we drove Yacht Basin road and again encountered a Clapper Rail beside the road. It crossed the road and disappeared into the tall grass near some marsh water. The tidal marshes are so high that the rails are being driven out onto the roads. 

There was nothing much else seaside, so we decided to head back to Smith Oaks for the passerines, which very well may be winging it farther north in tomorrow's predicted fine weather. Very little of note at Smith Oaks. Nothing at Hook’s Woods, nothing at the veggie stand—that wasn’t sold in $7.99 baskets. We were drooling for tomatoes for tomato-and-mayo sandwiches but could not use so many. So there’s nothing for it but to write up this entry and veg out.

Thrush Day

Thursday, April 30

This day we jumped to all the birding hotspots but enjoyed few sightings of new species. At Boy Scout Woods we picked up a beautiful Wood Thrush and then on 1st Street, Deb also photographed both a Swainson’s Thrush and a Veery. After lunch at the motel we decided to head back to Anahuac’s Woodlot to see if Deb could pick up a few more warblers. There was nothing there, but at the south end of the tract we found a bird box that honeybees had taken over. Too bad we do not have beeaters in the U.S.

Wood Thrush, c Deb Hirt

Leaving Anauhac Nat’l Wildlife Preserve, we headed for Houston Audubon’s Anahuac Visitor’s Center, north near Interstate 10. The hand-drawn map we were following, given to us by the owner of the Gulfway Motel was impossible, even for the people we asked, including two sheriff’s deputies. The sheriffs after puzzling a bit finally set us straight, and we found not the Houston Audubon’s Anahuac Visitor’s Center but the Texas Chenier Plains Refuge Complex, which was new and beautiful with a trail and boardwalk that must have set back the Texas government a gadzillion $$. It was closed, but the boardwalk was open so we walked it into a bayou that was almost frightening in its eerie silence and high water. Though still in the trees, the boardwalk extended into huge Lake Anahuac, and I felt for a moment as though I was in Waterworld.

Part of the Turtle Bayou

We saw virtually no birds in the swamp, but did see some enormous Red-eared Sliders and two Water Moccasins, a large one curled on a log and a smaller one that paid it a visit. Most of the water was covered with a layer of duckweed thick enough for some small, pawed animal to walk upon and leave tracks.

The swamp, so thick with duckweed that a small animal left tracks on it; cell phone pic

Very large Red-Eared Sliders, c Deb Hirt

Water moccasins; not very good photos as I'd left my camera in the car, so took them with my cell phone and the shadow was wrong on the bigger one

By this time it was nearly 5 pm, so we asked directions of a cleaning woman who appeared, and then set off for the Corps of Engineers Egret Rookery near the Trinity River. Again the map had it wrong and we never found it. So we gave up and returned to High Island, stopping briefly at the Skillern Tract on the way. There was nothing of interest at the ST either. Pretty much a bird-empty day.