Thanks for the info, Randy and Barb, re. Texas https. Will do that tomorrow
a.m. j-bakeman at msn.com

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From: TWEETERS-owner at u.washington.edu on behalf of Randy Deardorff
Sent: Sunday, November 10, 1996 9:52 AM
To: tweeters at u.washington.edu
Subject: Re: Texas Birding????

Be sure to take a boat tour for the cranes. I can recommend Captain
Ted's Whooping Crane Tours, 800-338-4551 (No affiliation). There are
others, but we went with Ted (2/95) and were very happy. We saw 8
whoopers, plus 50 other species, including Clapper Rail and Seaside
Sparrow. Ted claims to run a very shallow draft boat, enabling him to
get into areas the other boats can't. The morning tour leaves about
7:30 and returns by noon, leaving the rest of the day to explore the
Rockport/Fulton area. Just driving the county roads was very
productive for us, but if time is short, the boat trip is probably
your best bet.

We pretty much followed the driving tour given in "A Birder's Guide to
the Texas Coast" by Harold Holt, from ABA. You can get a very nice
guide to the area for $2 from The Rockport-Fulton Area Chamber of
Commerce at http://www.rockport-fulton.org/index.htm or 800-826-6441.
Ours took about 8 weeks to arrive though, 2 weeks after we got home.

If you have Web access, check out the Texas Gulf Coast Birding and
Naturalist Web at http://www.io.com/~pdhulce.

Randy Deardorff / Barb Smith
curlew at eskimo.com
Seattle, Washington USA