Silver Spirit Travels: My soul lifts, follows the bird…

“a Red-Tailed Hawk paints the sky

with its feathers,

my soul lifts, follows the bird” (Kindred Spirits ~(tanka haibun)~)

We are staying at Galveston Island State Park which is one of the locations on the Great Texas Coastal Birding Trails. Yesterday and today were absolutely remarkable days for us, as beginning birders, seeing not only the usual shore-birds that are native to this area (although unusual to us Michiganders), but also having the great fortune of seeing three unique and unusual birds that we have never seen before and are SO incredibly beautiful, as well as learning the most valuable lesson that what you THINK you see may not be what you REALLY see.

In preparation for our birding outings, we studied the descriptions and pictures of the native birds and their habitat, and thought we had it down pretty well. In addition to looking at the birds with our binoculars, I've started trying to take close-up photos of as many of the birds that we see as possible, and in reviewing those photos on our return, we're finding that often what we thought we saw and identified correctly, upon closer examination of the photos was incorrect. This taught us to look for minor differences between species, and demonstrated to us that sometimes we misidentify in the field that which we could identify much more clearly on closer examination of the photos. My friend Hilde says that learning something new means you can live another day; if that is true, John and I just added MANY days to our our lives! :) I hope even non-bird-folk will appreciate some of these photos from the last couple of days of bird sightings in the wild which gave us such enjoyment and delight.

The expected birds: