Greetings from Texas.
I am in San Antonio for a conference. I flew down here a little early to go on a Whooping Crane tour and to pop over to King Ranch for a full day birding tour. I flew into Corpus Christi and stayed in Aransas Pass. There is a very birdy local park just outside of Portland called Indian Point Park. You can get great pictuers because the bird are fairly close. I spent a morning there with some very nice folks from the Audubon Outdoor Club. I then drove to Rockport to board the Wharf Cat for a 4 hour tour (10a-2p) of Aransas National Wildlife Refuge. There were only 9 people on the boat. No jostling for rail space. We ended up seeing 56 cranes and the Wharf Cat was able to get fairly close. It was awesome. Many of the cranes were in family groups like the one in the picture (the baby is brownish). But there were also some juveniles hanging around together in cliques. If you want to go, you gotta go soon though, they are already starting to leave. It was a mere $30. Best of all, I didn't get seasick.
And King Ranch! What an amazing experience. I picked up 10 life birds including the Ferrigunious Pygmy Owl. Sweet. If you are anywhere near Kingsville, you must arrange a tour. Definately worth it. The local birding is great as well. There are Harris Hawks and Crested Carcaras sitting on utility poles like we have Red-tails in the Northeast. I got some great pictures which I will post. If you are anxious, you can go to my Flickr page. http://www.flickr.com/photos/ucbradley/
More later. Gotta go to work.
1 comment:
About time we saw some of these pictures--seems the new camera is working just fine & that the long-awaited cranes were there for you! And a Pygmy Owl....
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