Hi Tweets:
Just got back from a great trip to the South Texas Coast and Rio Grande
area. Still recovering so will give you a report later. I used Phil
Kelley's (SCRBJAY's) reports as my basic info (THANKS, PHIL!), and picked
up the ABA Birder's Guides, Guide to the Texas Coast, and Guide to the Rio
Grande Valley. These really helped. I came to one major conclusion:
Texas is REALLY big. A highlight of our trip was observing an Aplomado
Falcon.
Got into Seattle Friday evening and the temps were 30 degrees less than in
Texas. Back to reality. Saturday I headed over to Purdy, which is about
halfway between Tacoma and Bremerton. I went out to the spit to take
pictures of friends windsurfing. There was no wind, but there were two
gray whales rolling and showing their fins in the shallow bay there. They
were there all afternoon. Quite a show. On the other (north) side of the
spit in Burley Lagoon, two ospreys were up on their enormous stick nest on
top of the power transmission pole. I watched them for quite some time
thru my scope. Some kids called out, "Hey, lady, the whales are on the
other side." Guess they couldn't figure out why a birder would ignore the
whales, and look at some birds. The weather was pretty nice, the whales
were cool, and I forgot all about Texas.
Texas report will follow later. My holy grail is no longer Virginia Rails
and Sora's. They were very visible in a little area near our motel on
South Padre Island. In fact, a Sora came right up under our feet one time
on a dock. It was no more than 6 ft. away from us.
More later.....
Carol Schulz
DesMoines, WA
linusq at worldnet.att.net