Now that the Spring school semester has finally concluded, I have a lot more time to spend at my favorite place: the Baytown Nature Center! It was a beautiful clear evening, humid but with a strong breeze in most places. The first animal to greet us on this visit was, quite surprisingly, a raccoon! She had been standing at the water's edge, and quickly approached the nearby trash can.
We had pulled over in front of the trash can after she had gone inside, and she wouldn't come out while we were there, just staring at us like this. After a few minutes, we went on our way so we wouldn't disturb her too much. This is one of the few times I've seen a raccoon out in broad daylight around here.
Just down the road, we saw a fight breaking out in a flock of Black Vultures standing around the road. The two or three that had been fighting flew away, but the rest of the flock (15 in total) stayed at the roadside, barely moving aside as our car pulled up.
Note the Red-Winged Black Bird on the other side of the roof!
My brother Travis discovered that several of them were eating something in the nearby ditch. He went out to find that it was - interestingly enough - another raccoon! This one not doing so well as the one in the trash can.
Red-Winged Blackbirds were, as usual, out in abundance, the males advertising themselves with prominent perches and mechanical songs.
A slightly more rare sighting was a White Pelican, sitting pretty on the shore overlooking Burnet Bay.
They're very big birds, a startling sight when I don't normally see them sitting here like this. They're somewhat common here in the Winter, but as Summer marches forth most of them migrate further north.
Yellow-Crowned Night Heron
This tropical plant, with it's absurdly bright pink flowers, always entertains me somehow. I just found out now it's called a Powder Puff Tree, one of the Calliandra species. Examining one of the flowers, I noticed something really interesting: there were several small blue-gray inch worms on it.
Closer examination led me to see that they were on several other flowers as well, clearly enjoying this plant. I have to wonder what butterfly or moth they turn out to be! I'll have to try and find out sometime.
Travis picked one up to get a closer look.
Herons were, as usual for the summer, very numerous. We saw eight different species today, all the usual residents: tri-colors, black and yellow crowns, great egrets and blues, snowys and cattles. You can spot this Little Blue Heron out on the rocks, overlooking turbulent Scott Bay.
There were a lot of Great Egrets out today.
Another species that was extremely numerous was the White Ibis: I saw over a hundred individuals during our hour-long visit. There's some sort of roosting area or rookery nearby, resulting in many, many ibis visiting the nature center and flying out to Scott Bay. They'll often fly right over your head, which is fantastic.
One of the many White Ibis flocks heading over to Scott Bay.
A few White Ibis foraging in the marshes.
Travis insisted that I take a picture of this giant block of foam. Sadly, there's always plenty of trash washed up on almost every shoreline here. All sorts of detritus, big and small. Kooky inventors like my brother love to trawl the wreckage for odd treasures.
On the drive in, I had seen this Forster's Tern hovering above one of the bay inlets. On the drive back out, he was still there, so I stopped for pictures.
Terns hunt by diving headfirst into the water, and this one seemed to have found a great spot with wind that allowed him to essentially hover in place. After only a minute, he dived and caught a small fish right in front of us! There were many terns here today, as we're getting into tern season: they hang out here in the summer. I saw Forster's mostly, but also a small flock of Gull-Billed Terns (four or five species are seen here with some frequency).
Sunset over Crystal Bay
To my surprise, the White Pelican from an hour ago was still there when we were driving out.
He was watching the sunset, I guess.
And just on the other side of the road: one of the many Yellow-Crowned Night Herons, with a full and beautiful breeding season crest.
Being plagued by various illnesses and learning to navigate the maze of higher education has left me woefully behind on a lot of things, and blog posts are no exception! Now that months have passed by, I can review my notes and try to get back in the swing of things!
These are some Happenings at Bay Area Park (part 2 in a series!), from November 9th 2015!
The domestic swan goose still lurks on the premises. You can see him here, proudly surveying his terrain, while his four mallard friends have a little conference in the shadows.
These mallards frequently cluster together and quack to one another in soft voices. This happens suddenly and seemingly randomly. It's the same group of mallards that were present here two weeks ago. One is "wild" colored (with a greenish head), one is brown, and two are white - and one of those has a poofy hat! These four stay together in a flock, and the mallards and the goose seem to hang out together quite a lot, with the goose following the mallards around, or the mallards following the goose. It's interesting to think that, without any other members of his own species around, this goose has perhaps found an adopted flock to be a part of.
We're mostly visiting this park because it's a lovely place to eat lunch, and my little brother is very keen on interacting with birds. Of course one of the chief ways to get birds to interact with you is to start feeding them scraps of your lunch.
These are Franklin's Gulls (and one Great-tailed Grackle there in the back), in their winter plumage. This is not a typical year-round resident species for Texas, but a migratory one, passing through in the Spring and the Fall. Fifteen of them joined us for our lunch this afternoon.
These gulls were all pretty amicable...with one exception. You can spot the gull I'm talking about right here near the center, mouth open wide. This particular gull was ferocious. Rushing aggressively for the food, attacking any other gull that got in the way (even grabbing one by the neck for a few moments), and screaming more and more loudly and for longer periods of time as the feeding frenzy went on. The rest of the gulls were silent aside from some soft squealing calls, and didn't seem at all aggressive, not fighting with each other the way this gull was picking fights. In the video I'll be posting soon, you can see perfect examples of the fighting and screaming, and how the other gulls are just so much calmer. In addition to these behavioral differences, I couldn't see any white spots on this particular gull's wing tips, which lead me to believe that it might be a lone Laughing Gull in this flock of Franklin's Gulls. This theory is supported even further by reading the passages for these two species in The Behavior of Texas Birds by Kent Rylander (great book!), where the Franklin's Gull is noted to be gentle and non-aggressive, whereas "noisy, aggressive, and persistent" are all words used to describe the typical Laughing Gull. This brings our gull count to fifteen Franklin's, and one Laughing.
It seems that one lone grackle always managed to sneak his way into
these pictures. They couldn't quite compete with the gulls, so they
mostly stood on the sidelines, snatching food opportunistically. Or they
ignored the frenzy entirely: the majority of the grackles were just
foraging in the grass nearby.
I just like this one seagull backed by the sunlit fountain. Plus the duck face peeking in.
This Muscovy duck has such lovely yellow feet! These ducks were only slightly interested in the chicken scraps we had to offer, so they mostly just hung around the vicinity, nibbling at the occasional bits and pieces. I saw eight Muscovy ducks at the pond, and four in another part of the park, leaving us with a total of twelve seen.
A fantastic passerby to our feeding frenzy was this Great Egret, first spotted standing on the opposite side of the pond! It was not interested in the food we had to offer, sticking to the shoreline and ignoring us.
The following video shows one piece of the action for the day, including the egret walking by, and the one boisterous Laughing Gull in this flock of calmer Franklin's. In the background you can hear the grackles chattering.
Speaking of grackles, I counted thirty of them here at the pond, foraging in a loose flock. Most were wandering through the grass, looking around, occasionally picking at leaves or sticks. Whatever they were eating (small bugs, I assume?), I could never see it.
Great-tailed Grackles are gregarious birds with a highly varied diet. As most Houstonians know, they can make quite a living in a fast-food parking lot. Though most of them weren't all that interested in our fast food, foraging on their own instead, which gave me an impression of self-sufficiency. A grackle won't beg you for food, I guess, but a sea gull will.
Don't miss the grackle at the edge of the picture with a stick in his beak! Also note the way you can see all the way through a sea gull's nose.
These grackles are also one of my favorite examples of sexual dimorphism in birds,
with males and females being vastly different sizes in addition to
having different coloration. The big males with their long tails are obvious - seriously, they're show-offs! Rather than ever come to blows, they just engage in posturing contests with one another. I have witnessed these posturing showdowns personally in Ihop parking lots, and I've seen super poofy courtship dancing in Whataburger drive-throughs. I feel like I owe these grackles for making parking lots exciting.
*squawk*
An hour later, after the feeding frenzy was long over, we found the goose and the mallards taking an afternoon nap!
So asleep.
We were able to get very close to the goose without waking him up. He only opened his eye once to look at us. We didn't want to risk disturbing him too much, of course.
Another interesting visitor to the pond was this Black Vulture! It took a few sips of the water before flying away. A second vulture dropped by shortly afterwards!
As if really trying to showcase the variety of birdlife here at this little duck pond, twenty minutes after those vultures showed up, this cormorant appeared, drying their wings in the sun!
I also saw a small bird flycatching in a tree nearby, but I couldn't discern whether it was a wood peewee or a phoebe before I lost track of it for good. I also saw a Great Blue Heron on the Armand Bayou shore, a ladybug in some reeds, a Green Anole, four turtles in the bayou (two of those had red ears), and heard what sounded like chickadees.
There was one last strange thing waiting for us before we went home for the day: a red-eared slider in the parking lot!
My brother said he saw someone placing this turtle in the lot before they got in their car and drove away. These people had been kayaking. I'm not sure what the story behind this turtle is (why was he put here, if he was even put here at all?), but we were a little concerned about leaving a turtle in the street.
We picked up the little fellow and moved him closer to the bayou, so he could swim in if he wanted. A few minutes left alone, and into the bayou she had gone.
This concludes my park stories for November 9th (2015!). Check back soon for the third entry of this series, and a closer look at some of those Black Vultures!
A canoe trip through Sheldon Lake got us some close-up views of nesting water birds, such as this Little Blue Heron:
And these White Ibis:
There are hundreds of birds raising their young on little islands in this lake, and quite a variety of species: Cattle Egrets, Little Blue Herons, Yellow-crowned Night Herons, Black-crowned Night Herons, Tricolored Herons, White Ibis, White-faced Ibis, Roseate Spoonbills, Anhinga - these are all the species I was able to spot nesting in the trees. And they're all clustered together, little groups of White Ibis among little groups of Little Blues, the occasional night heron or White-faced Ibis here and there. Little Blues, White Ibis, and Cattle Egrets were most common. The herons had young at all stages of growth, from tiny fluffy nestlings to adult-sized juveniles, but the ibis children were all still small enough to stay hidden beneath their parents, and many of the ibis were still in the process of building their nests.
My photographer for this trip was my brother Travis. I was steering the boat and identifying the birds, so it was a team effort. Two sets of eyes are often better than one when it comes to spotting all the cool birds!
Not sure if this is a baby Cattle Egret or baby Little Blue, but it's adorable regardless.
The Little Blue and egret youngsters were loud and boisterous, many of the older ones walking around the branches and flapping their growing wings. Sometimes they'd get overexcited when a parent came in to feed them, squawking, pecking their siblings, even chasing down and almost tackling the parent. Some of the parents would keep their distance when they arrived back at the nest, as their multiple almost-grown youths run up to them. I saw parents trying to run away from their own children when they begged too aggressively for food.
Young herons are quite the handful, especially as they get older.
You can see here that there are three young Little Blues begging for food from a parent that - for the moment - is just sitting and waiting in the next tree over. The kids almost looked they were dancing as they bobbed their heads and flapped their wings, stretching up tall for their parent's attention.
The Yellow-crowned Night Herons I saw all had mostly grown up children. All the black-crowns I saw were still sitting tight on the nest, with no visible kids.
This was the first time I'd ever seen young Tricolored Herons! Unlike a lot of these heron kids,they've already got colors and patterns very similar to the adults.
Adult Cattle Egret.
Another very exciting thing to see was a family of Moorhens! I describe these birds as "duck chickens", or water chickens - they swim like ducks, look a bit like ducks, but their feet and beak looks more like a chicken's. This family - two adults and four tiny, fluffy chicks - were foraging among the reedy plants at the water line, in front of the trees the herons were nesting in.
They were all out in the open for a little while, but then they started to hide - luckily we got this picture before they hid completely! Look at their bald heads!
There were plenty of flowers, lily pads, dragonflies and butterflies around as well.
And, of course, there are alligators. A vital part of what's keeping this place safe for all those nesting birds. The gators might eat a few unlucky heron babies, but they'll keep all the egg-and-nestling munching predators away.
There were plenty of other birds around too, that may or may not have been nesting nearby, like blackbirds, seagulls, cormorants, and Great-tailed Grackles like this one:
They get all poofy when they make their crackly grackle noises.
It was great to see so many youngsters so close, and to observe such a variety of wildlife. I'll leave you with one last picture, of a lovely backyard snail:
