Managed to spend last weekend in Houston, TX, (on a business trip) and to
just read about the rest of the country in USA Today. "9 inches of snow
paralyzes western Washington". Had Saturday and the first half of Sunday to
myself, so went to High Island. Didn't expect too much this time of year,
but I've never been there and wanted to see exactly where the two Audubon
refuges are before going back some time during spring migration. Had both
refuges to myself and wondered about the spectacle the place must be when the
bleachers set up beside the ponds are full of birders (signs promise
expansion of the refuges soon).

No rarities, but Saturday morning was a little bit of summer. Yellow rumps,
orange crowns, eastern phoebe, solitary vireo, pine warbler, blue grey
gnatcatcher, hairy woodpeckers, all poking about in the bark of the leafless
deciduous trees. Two brown thrashers were my first. One marsh on the way in
had a flock of overwintering tree swallows hawking bugs. Also all the mid
size troops you see all over texas, grackles and doves and such, and lots of
the High Island football team mascots chasing each other through the brush.

Went from there to Anahuac Refuge, a good size bit of coastal marsh with dike
roads, reminds me of just about every other coastal federal wildlife refuge
with one way roads for the traffic of listers. Good day there, everything
from nutria to alligator to slider was out sun bathing. Black crown night
heron; white and white faced ibis; roseate spoonbill; tri colored and little
and great blue heron; greater and snowy and cattle egret; common gallinule
and pied billed grebes and coots (which were all pumped up by the sun and
making quite a display of their rear ends to each other) and of course ducks
geese and so forth.

Sunday morning I drove to Galveston via the ferry from Bolivar peninsula.
Nice shorebirds. BIG flocks of Am. avocet, marbled godwit, whimbrel,
longbilled curlew, sanderling, greater yellowlegs, a few least sandpiper,
lots of black bellied, Am. golden and a few snowy plover. All lorded over by
squadrons of white pelican (and a few of the brown versions) and mixing it up
with black skimmers. My first seaside and sharp tailed sparrows. One
merlin, practicing for the shorebird festivals, kept mixing things up.

Not to mention Kriders red tail on the road, red shoulder hawks, kestrels and
loggerhead shrikes everywhere, as where snow, Canada, and greater white
fronted geese. All in all about 90 species and thousands of individuals.

Generally just a good day and a half. Two best memories on the Saturday
evening: about a half hour before sundown pulled up at the end of a road at a
beach and was about to drive away when I noticed a bobcat about 50 feet from
the road catching moles. He didn't mind me watching at all. Then right at
sundown found a big (150 acres or so) cut over field (rice, I think) full of
snow geese beside the road. A favorite past time of mine is to pull over
beside these geese and just listen to them talk as the sun goes down. This
huge flock was just as much fun to watch as to listen to, for it was almost
half the blue form (or intergrades with all sorts of blotchy paint jobs).
-------------------------------------
Name: Jerry Broadus
jbroadus at seanet.com
901-16th. St S.W.
Puyallup, Wa. 98371
206-845-3156
Time: 20:18:56