Lamar's Whooping Cranes, March 2018

The wind here has been steady and fast. It usually starts at about eleven miles and hour and quickly increases to twenty plus. At these speeds kayaking is out, for us anyway, and even those with boats have been staying put. So, when Renita’s sister Pam, mentioned that she wanted to go to Lamar and look at the whooping cranes, we all agreed!

Its only a few miles across the Copano Bridge and taking the first turn into Lamar takes you past the State Park entrance before connecting you with St Charles Bay. A little further, just past the heavily damaged Duck Hunting club, and you reach a field in which you can often see the whoopers. We were lucky as four whoopers were feeding!

We watched for awhile before heading over to Big Tree, the biggest and oldest live oak in Texas. It survived Hurricane Harvey even though many of the other oaks were uprooted and destroyed. You can see the massive root structure. The tree is thirty-five feet in circumference!

As walked around the tree, spring flowers were in bloom. One of the many joys here in Texas is the amazing plethora of wild spring flowers. To us the only thing to compare it to is the mountain meadow bloom that takes place high in The Rockies.

Returning to the truck we drove to the opposite side of the meadow. The landowners were digging out Canadian thistles, a hated invasive species that also plagues us in Wyoming, and nearing the pond caused the whooping cranes and rosette spoonbills to take flight.

The rosys quickly landed at another spot on the pond, while the whoopers went to another close by meadow,

(if you look closely you can see that the two adult whoopers are carrying accessories, i.e. radio transmitters on the legs).

The whoopers should be heading north to their breeding grounds in Canada. We did see a large flock of black bellied whistling ducks but did not see any sand hill cranes. The sand hills might have already left. We do have a large sand hill population near us in Star Valley, Wyoming. Perhaps some of the ones we see here travel the same path, only in the air.

Our own migration starts Sunday when we plan on attending Easter service before heading out to Matagorda. We wish you all safe travels and of course clear skies.