Day 4 Texas

Super Duper Whooper

From our hotel it was a short drive to Rockport for a search for Captain Tommy's Whooping Crane Boat tour. After a short look around Rockport it was a short drive down to Fulton where the actual boat was. Exactly as i had not remembered it...

exactly as i remembered it....

Check in was uneventful and soon we were on the boat looking at winter phase Common Loons that we had failed to see previously.

view from the flight deck

A quick bit of speeding across the bay to Aransas Reserve saw the boat slowing down and the avalanche of birds begin.

Where to begin? Laughing gulls probably as they had been seen everywhere since hitting the Texas Coast.

The Egrets - Snowy, Reddish, Cattle and Great. Herons? Great Blue, Little Blue and Tricoloured. Terns? Least, Caspian, Royal, Sandwich, Gull-billed, Forsters and Steve [the show off] found Common. Ring-billed and Herring Gulls accompanied the Laughing Gulls but in much smaller numbers.

The star of the show and Bird of the Day appeared deep in the distance - The Whooping Crane - the species today being represented by a solitary straggler [seen above]. The rest of his kin apparently had flown north for the summer to their single breeding locale; Wood Buffalo National Park in far north Alberta in Canada.

A variety of waders, a few raptors, cormorants times two, a few ducks and very few passerines altogether combined for a list of species about 55.

Aransas Bay--Rockport/Fulton to Aransas NWR by boat, Aransas, Texas, US
9-Apr-2017 7:30 AM - 11:30 AM
Protocol: Traveling
6.0 kilometer(s)
Comments:    Boat trip with Captain Tommy, not sure of distance
57 species

Black-bellied Whistling-Duck  6
Mottled Duck  2
Northern Shoveler  4
Redhead  1
Red-breasted Merganser  2
Common Loon  3
Neotropic Cormorant  25
Double-crested Cormorant  20
Brown Pelican  25
Great Blue Heron  75
Great Egret  100
Snowy Egret  60
Little Blue Heron  4
Tricolored Heron  5
Reddish Egret  6
Cattle Egret  1
Black-crowned Night-Heron  1
White-faced Ibis  10
Roseate Spoonbill  20
Turkey Vulture  15
Osprey  2
Northern Harrier  1
American Coot  2
Whooping Crane  1
Black-necked Stilt  15
American Avocet  2
American Oystercatcher  15
Black-bellied Plover  4
Wilson's Plover  2
Semipalmated Plover  6
Killdeer  1
Whimbrel  3
Long-billed Curlew  2
Ruddy Turnstone  6
Sanderling  20
Short-billed Dowitcher  15
Spotted Sandpiper  1
Greater Yellowlegs  2
Willet  10
Lesser Yellowlegs  1
Laughing Gull  150
Herring Gull  1
Least Tern  6
Gull-billed Tern  2
Caspian Tern  2
Forster's Tern  25
Royal Tern  25
Sandwich Tern  6
Black Skimmer  4
Rock Pigeon (Feral Pigeon)  2
Eurasian Collared-Dove  2
White-winged Dove  1
Mourning Dove  2
Crested Caracara  2
Barn Swallow  2
Red-winged Blackbird  6
Great-tailed Grackle  10

This is not the Common Grackle it is the Great tailed Grackle. It is not common but abundant.

White winged dove feeling the sea breeze

From the boat; White ibis foreground and Greater Yellowlegs in the back.

Common Loon in winter plumage

Laughing Gulls foreground and Royal Terns in the background

Laughing gull portrait

Great Blue Herons

Reddish Egret in the foreground and the impossibly plumaged Roseate Spoonbill in the back

American Oystercatcher

Mammal of the Day - Atlantic Bottle nosed Dolphins

Brown Pelican

Tricoloured Heron

After lunch it was more or less full speed towards the town of Rio Grand City in the west of the Rio Grande Valley. We did manage a few stops though enroute.

Great tailed Grackle  - male 

Great tailed Grackle  - female 

Brewers Blackbird