Birding at Port Aransas, After the Hurricane

The news reports said that over four hundred whooping cranes, (a record number with sixty-five young), arrived at Texas this year, and that they are expanding their territory. So, when we read that two were now feeding in the marshes at Port Aransas, on Mustang Island, we knew we needed to take a birding trip.

The hurricane had devastated the Port, but we were pleased to see how much had been restored. Crossing the ferry, we turned into the access to Charlies Pasture only to find that the road was closed. There wasn’t any parking so turning around, we headed to another of our favorites, the Leona Turnbill Birding area.

The boardwalk had been destroyed but a group, (flock), of other birders crowded the one small piece that still remained’ Two had set up their spotting scopes and invited us to look at a black necked stilt and an immature white ibis. Meanwhile a beautiful green heron stood nearby, and a nutria chewed on marsh grass.

Common yellowthroats were everywhere, and a yellow romped warbler posed in the brush, letting us take a brief image.

An osprey was perching on one of the remaining post and it took off hunting for a fresh meal.

It made several dives and finally catching a large mullet. It was a huge fish, and the osprey labored to fly back to its feeding spot.

An alligator’s nose peered out from the reeds looking to see if one of the birders were close enough for a meal, but we all remained safely on the walkway.

An adult bittern hunted for a lizard, and the usually reticent bird put on quite a show (you can see the birds eye swiveled forward in the first image and the second image shows a lizard impaled on its beak, blurry).

Northern shoveler’s, great blue herons, snowy egrets, and a common gallinule rounded out the birding.

We never did see the whoopers, even after two different people gave us directions. Still the bittern had made our day, it wasn’t a new bird, but it still had posed in such an open place!

Later we drove to one of our favorite restaurants, Virginia's, and as usual had excellent meal of fish and shrimp. From there it was a short drive to the south Jetty. There wasn’t much being caught but a huge flock of black skimmers rested in and next to a shallow pond.

While there is so much work to be done we were happy to see so many places open! The people of Port A, and all the surrounding areas still need help and one of the best way to help is to visit and spend  some money. The birding is certainly worth the trip!  Clear skies

ps That evening, next to the rv park, a flock of black bellied whistling ducks flew in to their nightly roost and I was able to catch them perching high up in an oak tree. Have you ever seen ducks in a tree?

Black Drum!

My pole doubled over, and I lifted my pole out of the holder and starting to fight the fish. As sometimes happens, my other pole went off as another black drum decided to join the party. Somehow, I managed to lose both fish, which is unusual as I was using circle hooks. It didn’t matter as I was soon fighting another fish.

We had returned from Florida to near freezing temperatures, rare for the Coastal Bend of South Texas. Combined with strong northern winds, it was just too nasty to go fishing. To make matters worse many of our friends were recovering from the flu

Thankfully, everyone recovered from the flu and so when the weather warmed up, John invited Dwayne and I to go fishing. His boat ran great as we headed to one of his favorite spots. Casting out dead shrimp, Dwayne caught and released several small rat reds, (under size red fish), before John and then I also caught one. John also caught an undersized black drum, so we decided to move to another one of his spots.

Our friend’s Dave and Terri, were also fishing near there and so we anchored some ways away, making sure we wouldn’t spook their fish. John cast out and before long hooked and landed a legal black drum! As the water warmed, the fish became more active and we were all catching black drum.

Now I think that black drum is one of the best eating salt water fish, but I say that about almost every fish that I catch, (except bluefish which are ok when cooked right). All of us were thinking of a fresh black drum fish fry, and as the day wore on we caught more fish!

We caught our limit of nice black drum, now all we had to do was fillet them. John rinsed his boat as Dwayne and I filleted the fish. The electricity is still out on our dock and, so we had to resort to using small Rapala fillet knives, (our truck was in the repair shop and my good Dexter Russell Fillet knife was under the back seat).

John returned to help us to finish filleting the fish, and we bagged the fillets into three bags, one for each of us. Later I fried the fish using a southern crispy fish recipe, and Renita and I enjoyed an all you can eat fish fry. A day doesn’t end much better!  Clear skies

A Quick Drive from Florida to Texas

It was time to say goodbyes and head back to Texas. So, we loaded up the truck and headed into the approaching cold front. We were able to make it through the cold front before an ice storm hit Lake City, Florida and so the drive was uneventful.

As we were not pulling our fifth wheel, we stayed in motels. We learned that using an online service to book a room resulted in higher priced rooms. The first night we paid one hundred and thirty dollars only to learn the cost of the room was only seventy, (plus a charge for the dog).

The cheapest way to book a room was to find the phone number of the motel and call it ourselves! That way we could be sure the motel was pet friendly. Not only did Renita find rooms for a fair price, the dog stayed free!

The weather was so cold that Mobile Bay was partially frozen, something we had never seen before. At least we never ran into any ice on bridges, or snow, and so the drive was bearable. Leaving after rush hour we were able to drive through Houston with a minimum of fuss/traffic, and reached Rockport during the afternoon of day three.

Our friends were at Happy Hour and we were greeted to the sight of Jane and a squirrel having a face off! Seems Jane had put up a bird feeder and the squirrel was emptying it every day. It had gotten so brazen that it ignored Jane and her broom!

Our plants had been taken care of by our friend Betty, and had thrived! Perhaps if we watered them and gave them fertilizer they would grow better for us. Now if it would hurry up and warm up we could get out the kayaks and go fishing!  Clear skies

Manatees, Tarpon, and Jack Crevalle

We have been extremely lucky this year, as we have been able to spend a lot of time with Jen and Eric. Eric has been busy working but Jen is currently applying for a job as a nurse practitioner. So, we never know which day she is available as the job interviews, and call backs can be very sudden.

It has been a few years since we had last gone to see the manatees, at the power plant on the east side of Tampa Bay. One of the local news stations had shown a vast number of manatees by the power plant, and so we decided to make a manatee trip!

Jen had the day free and, so she drove us in her new car around the bay and to the power plant. As we approached the first parking lot we saw that it was full and, so we drove past the second and third lots before finally finding a parking spot in the overflow area.

Shuttles were available, but we decided to walk the short distance and return by walking to the distant observation tower. As I am counting my daily steps on my Fit bit, I always appreciate a nice walk! The trail took us to the manatee viewing headquarters and what t a crowd of people!

A warm front had returned and so there were a lot more people than manatees! In fact, the manatees, were quite some ways away from the viewing platform. You probably know why they are there as they come in from the bay to keep warm in the water discharges.

In the above image you can barely make out their resting shapes as they are so far away! A sign was posted stating that he best place to see the manatees was out on the long viewing pier and, so we walked out there stopping almost immediately to see that the warm water had not attracted just the manatees but huge schools of tarpon and jack crevalle!

I started to take images as every now and then one of the tarpon would jump. If you look carefully you can see the huge silvery fish, and I so wished fishing were allowed, (I have tried fly casting for tarpon before but have never had a pickup)!

To give you an idea of size the large tarpon are over six feet in length. They can grow to over eight feet and can reach weights of over three hundred and fifty pounds.

Imagine hooking one while in your kayak! The tarpon was intermixed with schools of large Jack Creville.

That’s another fish I have yet to catch and I have heard that they are almost impossible to land on a flyrod!

We watched the fish for quite a while and I caught the end of one of the jumping tarpon. Not a great shot but it was clear across the bay. Schools of sheepshead fed on the posts, and Renita and Jenny spotted a black tip shark.

Occasionally, a deep brown shape would appear as a manatee swam by in the deep water, and I did catch one that had just broached the surface taking a breath. Less often an eagle ray would jump but I never got an image of one. So, the day was a success! On the way back, we walked to the Observation Tower and I got my daily steps!

An extremely harsh cold front is forecast for next week, (highs in the fifties), and so that should make for excellent manatee viewing. We however, will be driving back to Texas, where our parked fifth wheel awaits. Its been a relaxing time here, and we may have to rent a place on the beach again!  Clear 

A Day at Tampa’s Lowry Park Zoo

Our son-in-law, Eric, suggested we might be interested in spending a day at Tampa’s Lowry Park Zoo. Now we hadn’t been to a zoo in quite a while and so not knowing what to expect, we made the forty-five-minute drive to the zoo.

Parking was free, and plentiful, we got there early, and buying tickets we entered the zoo. The rhino exhibit was nearby, (white rhino?), and we were amazed at the size of the animals! It was covered with the thickest hide I have ever seen, and the horns were missing. The park had cut them off to stop scum from killing them for their valuable horns.

The white rhinos are currently holding their own and are one of the most magnificent animals I have ever seen! I quickly realized the cost of the ticket was well worth the price, (the zoo is a nonprofit).

We strolled a little further arriving at an enclosure with two large tapirs. These animals are endangered in the wild as they are hunted for their meat.

Exhibit after exhibit was filled with rare and threatened animals, the orangutan enclose was no exception! These are expected to go extinct in the wild, in the next three years, their habit will disappear dur to illegal harvest of coconut palm oil.

Stopping to enjoy the orangs, a large dominant male moved around the large enclosure, while a lesser orang hid behind a waterfall.

It was peeking out from a face covered by its hand, and was obviously having a very bad day, (I have felt like that myself at times). Another orang hung from a rope while its baby hung next to her!

There’s nothing like hanging out with mom!

Strange monkeys and other animals passed by and I made a major mistake.

I had our large lens on our best camera and I didn’t take images of each enclosures inhabitants, (so now I have a whole plethora of animals and the only name I have for them is africa1 and africa2 etc.…).

Strange armored reptiles with long skinny snouts, storks, and so many others that I never knew existed!

I did remember the red river hog, which is not from the Americas’. Another large ungulate cleaned itself with it sixteen-inch tongue.

It had short horns and looked like a cross between a zebra, eland, and who knows what else. Why didn’t I take images of their names?

Finally, we reached the end of the exhibits and looked at one of the newest babies. This was baby pygmy hippopotamus born December 1^st! It mother kept next to the newborn as they floated in a small pond with the mother keeping herself between the baby and the fence we peered over.

Leaving the zoo, we all agreed that the price of admission was money well spent the cost of keeping so many rare and exotic animals must be enormous!

Oh and of course there were African Elephants and Giraffes, Black and Sloth Bears besides other more well know creatures.

If you’re in the area I highly recommend a day at the Lowry Zoo!  Clear skies

It took us about three hours to walk the boardwalks, and we still missed some of the exhibits

Treasure Islands Christmas Boat Parade, 2017

One of our highlights of our time here, is to watch the annual Christmas boat parade. This year the Treasure Island Boat parade consisted of over forty boats! Our daughters friend Mike invited us over to his condo where we could view the parade from his fifth-floor condo balcony, and we got there in plenty of time to relax before the show.

It was a beautiful warm night with very light winds. A slight tide was flowing into John’s Pass. There are shallow islands in the pass and so the boats had to follow a narrow-defined channel to prevent them from running ashore.

The parade started at other end of the island and, so it took about an hour before the lead boat, rounded the bend. The lead boat is always a police boat and the flashing red lights cleared the way as boats full of watchers scurried to find a place to anchor.

The first few boats were somewhat small and, so it gave me some practice as I took some shots with our good camera. I thought I would try the thirty-five to seventy-five mm lens hoping that I would get better detail using the night setting.

Trying to take three images of each boat I managed to blur quite a few, but enough of the images worked out. The main problem I had was when boats used their spotlights as the bright white light made taking a stacked image almost impossible. The boats were moving as the camera took four images in a row before stacking them together.

Enough with the details, the boats arrived and passed below us. The people on board yelled Christmas greetings. Santa Clauses, reindeer, Christmas trees, menorahs, and lots and lots of icicles went by.

Several of the boats were business’s that had the name of their establishment displayed on the boats side.

There were boats of all sizes and some of them were quite crowded with party goers. To give you an idea of their size some had four outboard engines mounted on the back, and each one of the engines was over four hundred horse power!

We yelled and waved back at the parade boats and everyone had an enjoyable time. None of the boats collided and the boats stacked up at the end of the parade inside John’s Pass. The last boat passed by and the boats started to disperse.

Mikes place is an ideal spot to watch the parade and we thanked him for his kind invitation! It seemed like it was the biggest and best boat parade we have ever watched. We would also like to take this opportunity to wish all of you a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year, and of course Clear skies.