The Boy Scout Woods, Smiths Pond, and the Rookeries at High Island Texas, Part 1

It was time to leave Rockport and head back home. However, the snow is still too deep and our park is closed, so we make the trip in stages. The first stage is to a place called High Island. It’s a salt dome that trapped a lot of oil and with the water filled lagoons surrounding it, makes for outstanding bird rookeries. The Houston Audubon Society owns and operates the areas bird sanctuaries’.

The first night we drove to Winnie, Texas, and the next morning we headed south to the small town of High Island. Our first stop was at the Boy Scout Woods, where we paid the daily fee and talked with the volunteers about the days bird sightings.

We than moved to the drips and didn’t really see much of anything,hmm. Next, we walked to a small pond and again nothing. Heading to a large open area we finally spotted several cardinals, which are nice but not what we had hoped for. We were looking for warblers. The Houston Society has built board walkways and while we usually see quite a few birds, we only spotted Northern Mockingbirds and more cardinals.

We talked it over and decided to head for Smiths Oak Forest and the Rookery. Showing our days passes to the club’s volunteers it was a short walk to the elevated platforms. On the first one another volunteer pointed out nesting double crested cormorants and pointed out one that was feeding its voracious chicks.

They were quite large and besides fighting over the feeding order, stuck their heads completely into their parents mouth. Nothing like regurgitated fish! Meanwhile more cormorants, herons and egrets were flying into the rookeries, carrying branches as the nest building was a never-ending task.

As we watched a pair of great egrets traded places and we could see their pair of light blue eggs.

A large alligator swam around the rookery hoping to catch and chicks or unwary birds, but the alligators are also good guards for the birds. They eat raccoons and coyotes that try to raid the nests at night!

A pair of anhinga’s, were nesting along with rosette spoonbills. snowy egrets and great egrets.

The noise there is a constant din of calling birds.

It must have been very similar to the large dinosaur rookeries discovered din eastern Montana, and one must not forget that the birds we see today have evolved from the dinosaurs!

The Houston volunteer suggested we should take the trail to the grackle ponds. He said there was quite a bit of activity there and so we climbed down the stairs and headed to the pond. It was an easy walk and as we hiked along the perimeter’s leaf covered trail, we kept an eye out for snakes.

Reaching the Grackle Pond we saw two Black Bellied Whistling ducks taking a nap, quite a few red eared turtles. grackles, and nesting tri-colored herons.

Besides displaying their breeding plumage, they also stopped near the nest to be identified by their mate. Renita also spotted and photographed a yellow-crowned night heron.

Its so nice to have two sets of eyes and two cameras! We walked back to the car for lunch and discussed what we had seen with other birders. We also traded information about our other birding spots. Rehydrating we headed out for more birding activities. (End of Part 1). Clear skies