When I was at the Birding Center Thursday, the Roseate Spoonbills took most of my attention.  A little sideshow, however, was the Dowitchers.  They had been congregating, intermixed with some Spoonbills, on the other side of the reeds and cattails from me. 

Suddenly, they rose up together like a swarm of Texas mosquitos:

How would you like to be the air-traffic controller for that mess?  Then they circled around the water on the far side of the cattails…

…before settling back in amongst the Roseate Spoonbills.  This cloud of birds was really quite a sight.  I’m heading over there again today, so who knows what I’ll see?  Every day is a new adventure.

–Sue

Port Aransas, TX, is a fun place to be this time of year.  There are all kinds of migratory birds passing through, and from day to day, you never know what you will see.

Last week, we went for a walk with friends through the newly developed “Charlie’s Pasture” area on the island.  From a viewing tower, we spotted what looked like a Great Blue Heron wading/fishing a distance away.  The only thing was, the nead and neck were kind of pinky colored.   I zoomed all the way out on my camera, hoping for the best and took a couple of pictures.  When I got it up on the computer monitor, I knew it wasn’t a blue heron — but what was it???

Okay, I know it’s a pretty bad picture, but it was enough to identify this critter.  It’s a Reddish Egret.  It’s so much fun to see something new, and I hope I get to see one again close up.

Today at the birding center, I saw some of the American Avocets in the water.  I usually see them on shore, so it was fun to see them swimming.

A single Roseate Spoonbill was hanging out on the same point where the alligator was a week ago or so.  There were many avocets, ducks of all kinds, dowitchers, black-necked stilts, and turtles on this little point also.

Today I stopped over at Paradise Pond and THAT’s where all the Great Blue Herons were hanging out.  

They weren’t wading in the water, but rather they were mostly in trees, with one deciding to fly over the pond, which was pretty exciting.  It’s hard to beat blue herons for for picture-taking.  The bird that circled overhead is the one that is picture up in the bare tree branches.  That was a rare treat; I’ve never seen one of them sit up there before.  Then he decided to get down lower into the brushy part of the tree, and kind of crashed and thrashed his way down through the branches.  For such a graceful looking bird, he moved through the tree like a gawky teenager! 

Wonder what I’ll see tomorrow?

–Sue

Or did you play duck, duck, goose as a child?  We see a lot of ducks down here in coastal Texas, and the day these pix were taken, they were hunkered down against the sharp breeze, enjoying a nap.

What really caught my attention, though, was this picture:

Yes, it’s true, ducks close their eyelids.  If you look closely, you can see the bottom eyelid comes up to the top.  Another interesting fact is that ducks have a third eyelid (like many other animals and birds) that closes over the eye from the side.  It’s called a nictitating membrane.  They can see through that third eyelid, which is a good thing when they are flying or diving into the water.

Here you can see it’s a female Northern Shoveler.  Isn’t it interesting how the spots on her beak kind of match the spots on her feathers?  She looks very coordinated and “put together”, so I guess animal prints are still “in”.

Here is the male Northern Shoveler she was hanging out with.  These ducks look a little manic to me — I think it’s the golden eye.

–Sue

DH and I went back to the birding center today.  He missed seeing the ‘gator yesterday, and we thought we might be lucky and catch a glimpse of him (or her) again.  (By the way, I read on line that at least a couple of years ago, there were two alligators:  “Boots” and “Bags” — get it?  Alligator boots & bags?)  No such sighting today, but this was almost better!

We could see where he had traveled!

These channels are probably a couple of feet across, and quite deep!

In all the dozens and dozens of times I’ve been there, I’ve never seen ruts like this in the water.  Don’t care to ever meet this guy when he’s hungry!

–Sue

I know I’ve said it before, but you never know what you’ll see at the Leonabell Turnbull Birding Center in town.  Some days the birds are few and far between; some days they are almost performing for you.  Some days you see things to make you realize it isn’t always a walk on the beach to be a bird.

The first things I saw were four Black Vultures circling high overhead.  Makes a person stand up a little straighter, trying to look healthy and fit.

After I took this photo, I looked down at my camera, looked back up — and they were GONE!  It was a little Alfred Hitchcock-ish.

I spent some time photographing some ducks that were in close (tomorrow’s pix) before I got to the observation tower and saw the alligator!  We saw him once about four years ago and hadn’t seen him since.

He was making himself quite at home, probably having a little nap, out on a point that is frequented by all kinds of birds.  There are a few ducks hanging back along the water’s edge.  What I noticed after I got this picture up on the computer is the cluster of roseate spoonbills in the tall grass towards the left of the alligator.  I was just hoping the ‘gator didn’t have any pink feathers stuck between his teeth.  I zoomed in on the alligator, but his head was hidden:

Someone there said they heard the ‘gator is 15 feet long, but they were estimating he’s more like 20 feet.  I don’t think it really matters.  He was BIG.

There’s more than one kind of “bird lover” that likes to hang around the birding center!

–Sue

QUILTING:   Judy L is having a Quiltathon this weekend. 

 We are staying in a condo in Texas where there are a lot of other Winter Texans seeking refuge from the winter weather of the north.  Every year we get a few valentines from friends, and I tell myself, I’m going to remember that next year and be ready to reciprocate.  Hah!  I forgot til today.

So I went to the little quilt shop we have in town (little is a lot better than none), found this cute fabric of children playing at the seashore.  I spent the rest of today (Saturday) making little “post card” valentines, but I called them “Candy-Grams” because I stapled a couple of pieces of salt-water taffy to each card.   They are very simply done, no fancy trims, not much quilting, no embellishments; I know I could have done something better.  Maybe next year?  Yeah, right.

Today, Sunday, I’ll get back to my overly ambitious applique project, but the valentines were a fun diversion.

BIRDS:  The birding center and Paradise Pond continue to offer surprises.  Last week the shrubs at the birding center were teeming with Yellow-Rumped Warblers:

Today at the birding center there was this tiny, quick bird who just wouldn’t sit still for a picture.  Didn’t he/she know that I do much better if the subject will actually sit still for two seconds — and five seconds would be really good?  I think this is a Ruby-crowned Kinglet:

Which brings me to my mystery bird from last week.  Could it be a young and/or female Ruby-crowned Kinglet?  This little bird had the same jumping-around behavior, was very tiny, plus I think they look similar.  The Ruby-crowned Kinglets do frequent this area, but I haven’t seen them before.

The coloring looks different, but these two pictures by the pond are of the same bird.  What do you think it is, any ideas?

–Sue

This seems like a good week to go back to last month’s pictures taken at the Texas Gulf coast, as our Minnesota temperatures are expected to drop into the teens by week’s end.  Brrr!  This is one of my favorite birds, a Tri-Colored Heron.  One thing I’ve noticed about all the birds is that they are continually looking for something to eat.  Do you think any little fish or frog around this heron has half a chance?

During a beach walk to the south jetty (about 2 miles each way), we saw a Snowy Egret.  They are quite a bit smaller than the egrets we see here in MN, and are quite delicate looking.

This was a perfectly beautiful October day, and the fishermen and -women were fishing all along the jetty.  And a photography note:  The jetty is very long and the people were quite a distance away.  I used my zoom in taking this picture.  Notice how the zoom seems to compress the distance shown in this picture.  The people on the jetty weren’t as close to each other as it appears in this photo.

Stop here if the sight of fish blood would bother you. 

 This is the first time we saw someone with a shark as his “catch of the day”.The fisherman had cut off the tail of this blacktip  shark to bleed it out.  He said this is about the best tasting fish there is.  I would estimate this shark was between 2.5 feet and 3 feet long.  It was a little unnerving to know that someone pulled a shark out of these waters!  (I don’t know where I thought sharks would live, but I guess I assumed they were swimming off someone else’s beach.)

And I’ll leave you with a more pleasant picture of some bicyclists enjoying an afternoon bike ride on the beach:

–Sue

I took many, many photos while at the Texas Gulf coast a couple of weeks back.  The birds there never disappoint me!  These photos were taken at the birding center, quite late in the day.  It’s my favorite time to take photographs, as the low sunlight imparts a golden glow to most everything.  (I’m sure mornings are equally beautiful, but they come so early!) 

Here is a white ibis on the boardwalk railing.  A face only a mother could love, and knock-kneed to boot!  His face, beak and legs really are pink.

The teals were pretty bountiful this fall.  Here is one soaking up a little late-day sunshine:

This pelican was stretching his wings.  Because he was in the shadow of kind of an island in the middle, it almost looks like a black-and-white photo.

–Sue

how much I love PELICANS???

–Sue

Wednesday we took a bus trip (through the senior group at church) to the German-settled community of New Ulm (about 2 hours southwest of Minneapolis).  What a perfect time of year for a visit!  They had already celebrated Oktoberfest the previous two weeks, so we had a perfectly lovely (and not too crowded) day for a visit.

 Starting at the top left is a photo of the Cathedral of the Holy Trinity off in the distance.  The cornerstone was laid in 1866.  A close-up photo of the cathedral is right below, lower left.  Following along the bottom is a tree in all its fall glory.  Sorry, I’m not good with tree names, but by its color, could it be a maple (Doug, are you reading me)?  And the photo to the right of the tree is of a path down the hill along the Way of the Cross.  Each of these small buildings is a station of the cross.  It is a lovely walk, and at this point we were on a hill overlooking the town.  Really beautiful.  The path is lined with pavers now, but was originally a dirt path.  And we “topped off” our tour of New Ulm with a stop at Schell’s Brewery!  (Did I mention this is a German town???)  The most fascinating (to me, anyway) part of the brewery tour was the peacocks and hens that roamed the property.  And isn’t this guy inspiration for a quilt!  Just look at those greens and blues.

While I was browsing around the web this morning, I happened on Mary’s site.  She is using this fun collage feature of Picasa 3.  It was easy to install and get started.  What a neat way to display pictures!  You’ll have to check out Mary’s site as well (she’s a quilter in neighboring Minneapolis), and she has some lovely fall pictures of the Minneapolis close-to-downtown area.  Thank you for the inspiration, Mary!

And don’t you think this collage format would be wonderful for a Christmas card picture, or how about for a postcard?  Oh, the possibilities…

Sue