Beginning with Galveston Island State Park,
we’ve been in an area of Texas known as The Great Coastal Birding Trail. Each of the state parks we’ve stayed in have designated bird habitats
and bird-walk trails as well as multiple nearby wildlife refuge areas that also
offer excellent bird habitat. John and I have always fed birds at home and
enjoyed watching the antics of those coming to our feeders; although we’ve
learned to recognize the common visitors, we have never been very serious about
our study of birds.
While walking the bird trails of Galveston Island State Park we saw several birds
that were not only new to us but really beautiful and intriguing, which whetted
our appetite to learn more about them.
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| White Ibis |
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| Great Blue Heron |
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| Tri-colored Heron |
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| Roseate Spoonbill |
When we reached Goose Island State Park
near Fullton/Rockport, TX, we became even more intrigued by birds because this
park has not only Park Hosts, but also Bird Hosts – volunteers who live at the
park for a month or more at a time to teach classes on elementary birding
techniques as well as offering a variety of bird walks. We attended both Birding 101 and Birding 202,
learning just enough to heighten our bird-awareness further, then attended a bird
walk searching for shore-birds one morning, and woodland birds another
morning. We are now officially hooked on
this new joint hobby, looking and listening for birds wherever we walk.
We have
one good pair of binoculars between us, and purchased the recommended National
Geographic Field Guide to North American Birds both in paper copy and
electronic iPhone version, so have begun following the Bird Hosts’ suggestion
to “learn 2-5 new birds each day”. It’s
fun discovering and developing a new interest that we both share. Among the interesting bird facts we’ve learned:
a)
Texas cardinals are noticeably lighter in color
and smaller than our Michigan cardinals.
b)
Many birds “speak” regional dialects; that is,
the bird calls of the same species residing in different geographical areas can
and often do sound very different from each other, complicating
identification.
c)
Some birds mate with other similar species,
creating hybrid offspring that display identifying characteristics of each
parent, complicating accurate identification even further.
Photos I've included here in this post are all ones we have taken these past couple of weeks. Unfortunately not all the birds we've seen have been this willing to pose for close-ups, so to see any of the ones I've listed in the paragraph below, you have to look them up to see how they look.
Some of the fascinating and beautiful Texas birds we've seen but have been unable to photograph: Stone Turner, Willet, Peregrine Falcon, Snowy Egret, Wilson's Plover, Long-tailed Grackle, White-tail Hawk, Buff-bellied Hummingbird.
Below are a couple more that were happy to pose for me:
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| American White Pelican |
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| Having a bad-hair day! |
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| Cormorant |
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| Cormorant |
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| Brown Pelican |
2 comments:
Are the Roseate Spoonbills pink due to their diet, example shrimp? Do you have Mockingbirds in Texas where you are at? We have them here in Florida and they are busy all day singing up a storm of different types of calls. Glad to hear that you have been bitten by the "Birding" bug.
Yes, the diet is responsible for their color, just as for flamingos. When we first saw them out in the marsh we did a double take - Michiganders are not used to seeing large pink birds! :) They do have mockingbirds here in Texas, but we've only seen one; apparently their favorite food source has been severely affected by the several-year drought in Texas, so not only mockingbirds but other species are much less noticeable here than in the past.
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