Back to Port Aransas, after a bit of healing

A week and a half ago, Renita came down with a sore throat and a cough. She also had a runny nose and Renita never gets sick. After a few days she started to feel better and then I got a sore throat and a cough. We figured it might be omicron but what do you do? We have both been triple vaccinated and so we started to take our temperatures and oxygen levels and they all stayed good. We never felt tired and slowly we both healed. Staying in isolation we registered for a covid test last Friday and we both tested negative! What a relief!

Deciding we needed to celebrate we loaded up our camera equipment and drove over to Port Aransas for a day of birding. We had heard that the whooper pair had returned and as soon as we neared the Leorna Turnbull Birding center we spotted them. They were in a field over by Charley’s Pasture. It was a nice day, but heat waves shimmered, still Renita got a good shot!. Hoping they would stay put we walked the boardwalk at the birding center, looking for a bird we have not yet seen, a clapper rail. The water filled with birds including the usual northern shovelers, blue and green teal, and black necked stilts.

There were also some American White Pelican’s and a White-faced Ibis One of the ibis and a white pelican were both preening themselves and having a bath. We watched them for a while, before returning to the car and driving over to see the whoopers.

The whooping crane pair had moved into a thicket and so we had to wait awhile before they reached a clearing. We were only able to see them for a few minutes but at one point they both raised their heads. It was the same pair, we think, as was there last year but last year they had a colt with them. The Juvenile was nowhere to be seen, as it had left its parents to join up with others.

We took a nice walk, saw a few other birds, including an eastern meadowlark, and a few gulls. Eating lunch, we decided to then drive back to Rockport and stop at a birding place near Paradise Cove. We had heard that there was a beautiful reddish egret, and as soon as we stepped on the boardwalk saw a tricolored heron, and the reddish egret.

The egret hardly looked up and seemed to be tired of all the intrusions. It did not fly and merely gave us a nasty look. it had been sleeping but it decided it was hungry and landed in the water, starting to fish.

It slowly waded near the shadow of the boardwalk and then rushed underneath.

Returning into the sunlight we could see it had a tasty bit of sushi in its beak.

It continued on doing this for a while before jumping on a perch and going back to sleep. Next a little blue egret landed and also begin to fish. We never did see it catch anything, but it was far away. It did not matter as we had our first outing of the year! Now if we can continue to get stronger by taking more outings and longer walks, we can get back to normal! Clear skies.