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Goose Island

Time to leave. No way! It’s way too nice to leave. Let me drive home on a rainy day. We’re staying. It was a busy morning too. It started with the osprey. Osprey out the front window and coffee. He circled, circled, circled, forty feet high, then dove for the kill. He didn’t crash headlong into the water like the tern. He crashed talons first into the water. A respectable splash, he’s a big bird. A brief struggle to get airborne, and the fish dropped off just above the surface. It was a big fish. A big fish with an osprey story to tell now, supported by the badge of courage on his flanks. We got twenty minutes of osprey fishing. Meanwhile, those goldeneyes drifted by again. Fishing. But wait! One of them doesn’t look right. Out come the binocs again. He’s not a cormorant, Not a loon. The loon is drifting way out at the edge of our binocular range, but you can just see the flashes of white from his throat. Yesterday, while on the kayak, he called to me. Or at me. When I spotted him from the boat, he wasn’t very far away. I paddled his direction. I waited for him to dive, then paddled right over to where he had gone under and coasted, waiting to see where he came back up. He rose about fifty feet away, called once and dove again. He came up a lot farther away the next time. So back to our duck that wasn’t exactly a duck. He was not a cormorant, not a loon, not a grebe. It was a merganser. We’re used to seeing mergansers once in a while. They have a distinctive head, different from a duck, but this one didn’t look quite like the common mergansers we normally see. This was a red breasted merganser. Not a new bird for us, but an unusual one. Common mergansers don’t like to winter in salt water. Red breasted do. To identify birds, we usually start with what he looks like. More and more now, though, we find we hear a bird, then go look for him. The sound he makes at least tells us which direction to look. Sometimes the sound tells you what type of bird you’re looking for, so you have a better idea where to look. Sometimes you know exactly which bird you’re looking for because you recognize the sound exactly. Yesterday, I passed the marsh habitat where the clapper rails are. We’ve seen several there. It took me a long time to spot the rail that was calling. I didn’t have any binoculars with me because I wasn’t birding, I was running. The sound was check, check, check, check, check, check, check, check, check. Without interruption. Finally I spotted the bird. It looked just like a clapper rail. But it wasn’t. It was a King Rail. The first we have seen this trip. They look just the same, the only way you can tell them apart is by the call. Anyway, we’re watching the osprey, the goldeneyes, the merganser, and the dolphin. What is a dolphin doing in this water? We paddled all over the bay yesterday, and kept bumping into the bottom. Our kayaks draw three inches of water. Once we even had to get out and walk the boats back off the oyster bed and into water deep enough to float them again. There must be channels two or three feet deep out there, and he was better at finding them than we were. We’d see the baitfish start flying all over the place, and look through our field glasses for the disturbance in the water where the dolphin was. He’d get into a pack of them and thrash about, causing quite a commotion, and probably getting lots to eat. I love the baitfish. They’re shaped kind of like trout, but a little rounder at the head. Every kayak trip is escorted by leaping baitfish ten or twelve inches long, splashing all over the place. Fish we’d love to catch from the river at home. So there is no way we could have left today, anyway, what with all the birds and dolphins, and excitement out the window. We found a roadside fruit market that is keeping us stocked with goodies. Today we wanted some fresh meat, so we located the meat market. That provided an opportunity for some Texas humor. We got to discussing different cuts of meat, with the butcher, and he recommended the porterhouse steaks. They looked like big T-bones to me, and I wondered how they were different, so I asked, and he answered with a long explanation of loins and shanks and brisket and which came ahead of the other. I stared blankly. He stared back. I told him I was wondering which part of the cow they came from, if you could imagine a cow standing right there. Was it an arm or a leg, or what? He volunteered: “Boy. You need a lesson in Cow 101.” That was the funny part, but you have to read it in a South Texas drawl. Lucky for me, he had the lesson right there on his wall. He directed me to a picture of a cow hangingl, showing where all the different cuts of meat came from. It helped. I’ve now been exposed to Cow 101. We had an electrical mystery today. I decided to try again to look my best, and got the hair dryer out. If I don’t use the hair dryer, my hair looks like I’ve been on the beach. So I fired up the hair dryer. Judy had the coffee maker on. Everything stopped. It’s not really much of a problem. We have ground fault interruption outlets, one on either side of the motorhome. They control all the 120 volt outlets. Half each. You press the reset button, and everything works again. I checked the one for the left side. It reset. I checked the one for the right side. It wouldn’t reset. We flipped all the breaker switches in the bedroom. Nothing helped. I must have fried the outlet, and now nothing on that side of the motorhome would work until I replaced it. Is there very much connected through that side of the motorhome? Let’s see: the satellite dish, the television, the coffee maker, the washing machine, the microwave, the bedroom fan, and the hair dryer. We decided it was worth fixing. A call to an RV repair guy, a trip to the hardware store, a purchase of multiple outlets to make sure we got the right one, and the trip back to the motorhome. As I was messing with the new outlet in the store, I realized the new outlet was acting just like the old one that was supposed to be burned out. It wouldn’t work properly until it had power supplied to it. When we got back I explored the motorhome for more switches. I found one in the left rear outside corner of the coach that looked promising. I threw the switch, but it didn’t help. In fact, by this time, I had thrown so many switches, nothing would help. Everything was screwed up. So I disconnected the shore power entirely, let everything reset, and started over. Everything worked! Nothing needed replacing! That last switch did it. Hey, this electricity stuff isn’t that hard at all.
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Goose Island

This is it. Last day out. Time to start the trip home tomorrow. Woke up to a beautiful blue-sky morning. Wow! Could it get any better than this? Sat in our picture window sipping coffee, watching the terns fishing in front of us. Bright white terns, flying twenty thirty forty feet high, focused on the water below. They spot a meal, and crash unmercifully into the surface after it. It looks like a devastating crash, but they gulp, and pop right back up into the air to do it again. Kamikaze feeders. Did my morning ramble. The cardinals and mockingbirds are in full voice. The sea is glass. We put the boats in the water. We paddled for hours. Headed around the other campground peninsula, back in the slough, tucked into a canal neighborhood, cruised the canals and visited with a few of the residents, turned down more than one offer of a can of beer to go, ducked under the bridge to the boat launch area, past the pelicans, around the oyster beds, under the fishing pier, and back around our campground peninsula, to our start. We circled the entire goose of Goose Island. Came home and put some sunscreen on. I need somebody to invent after-the-fact-sunscreen. I like all the fishing piers here. Some fishing piers are built on purpose. Great long wooden piers stretching way out into the bay. Some fishing piers were already there, under a different use. We’re into at least the second generation of bridges. That means the old bridge outlives its useful life, so they build a new, higher bridge next to it, rearrange the road to hit the new bridge, cut a piece out of the middle of the old bridge for boats to go through, and call the old bridge a fishing pier. Two fishing piers, in fact. There are many fishing piers all along the coast, and new ones popping up every year. Experienced a sunset to match the morning.
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Goose Island

From: Steve Taylor [mailto:spt@thetaylorcompany.net]
Sent: Saturday, January 31, 2004 10:11 AM
To: Bill Taylor (E-mail); David Taylor (E-mail); Tom Taylor (E-mail)
Subject: 25b
Another innovative RV setup.

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Goose Island

Admiring the view. Smooth gray water, the Rockport/Fulton Peninsula a couple miles away across the bay. Aransas Bay. It is perfectly calm. Sixty degrees. Six posts in the water fifty feet out, occupied by five pelicans and one cormorant. One cormorant, pretending he’s a pelican. But then one of the pelicans is poised, wings out, drying them, pretending he’s a cormorant. Low clouds. The Copano Bay Bridge off in the mist to the right. Three Savannah Sparrows working the grass for seeds, between us and the water. One laughing gull, wearing his transitional plumage between winter and summer, black head almost complete, on a post next to the water in front of us. The tide is in. A Willet wanders by in the oyster-bed shallows. Three Goldeneyes drift into view, one fishing, two snoozing. Somehow they stay together. A flock of peeps zooms past from right to left. Complaining. The pelicans shuffle. A few more fly in and land. A few fly off. Now there are three Pelicans, one Cormorant and two Royal Terns. I can barely hear the water lapping against the seawall. I can smell the sea grass. The rain starts again. Lightly. This is the big storm day. They’ve been watching this one come for a week now. I set the alarm for seven. I still had a chance to take a birding walk, if the weather was good, and see the sparrow and wren. Can’t pass that up. I was saved by the rain. Just as I stood up, the wind and rain hit. Finally. I went back to bed. Later, I got up to admire the view. The storm only lasted two hours. It moved on. Went back inside. I checked the propane. It’s half full. Judy did some chores. Vacuumed the armadillo. Watched the Australian Open. Judy found a house for sale in the paper for $35,000. It’s only one bedroom and one bath, but a house for $35,000? That’s pretty reasonable. Checked the propane. It’s still half full. Decided to try to something new with the motorhome. Instead of driving it out to dump it every few days when we stay at state parks, you carry some gray water away from it periodically. We bought a portable gray water tank with wheels. You leave the motorhome where it is, drop some gray water into the portable tank, drag the portable tank over to the dump station with the car, and dump it. It worked. It was a little heavy, lifting the tank with twenty gallons of water in it. Let’s see, twenty gallons, eight pounds per gallon. Yeah. It’s heavy. You only have to lift one end, so it’s not so bad. It tilts to dump. I think after we do it a few more times, we’ll get the rhythm of it. Talked with our neighbor on the left. He paddles his kayak all over, fishing the bays. It’s a pretty good setup. He has a couple rod holders on it, a clip to hold his paddle while he’s managing a fish, an combination tackle box, ice chest on the back to hold the gear and the catch, and electronics on board to tell him water temperature, depth, and when he’s over fish. He doesn’t need the depth finder or fish finder here. You can just look down into the water and see how deep you are and whether there are fish or not.

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Wharf cat

Put on your long sleeves and long pants. We’re going out on the boat. The Wharf Cat. The Whooping Crane tour. It leaves from the Rockport Harbor. We can stay inside where it’s warm and look out the glass if we want, but we never want. We end up out on the deck in the wind, watching the birds, and enjoying the ride. We enjoyed the ride. The boat cruises north up the intra-coastal waterway, which passes right through the Aransas National Wildlife Refuge, the winter home of the whooping crane. The summer home of the whooping crane wasn’t even known until the 1950s. It’s way up in the Arctic Circle, in a Canadian National Park, which had already been set aside for the preservation of the Wood Buffalo. Wood Buffalo National Park. In their winter home, they split up into family groups, two adults and one chick. The chick is big, it has already migrated thousands of miles to get from the arctic breeding grounds to its winter home, but it still wears the brownish juvenile coat. Family groups always consist of either two adults, or two adults and a chick. They lay two eggs, but only raise one chick. They start incubation as soon as the first egg is laid, so the first chick gets a big head start on the second one. The second egg is just a back-up. They never raise more than one chick. Except this year. This year there is a set of twins. Only the third time ever, that twins have been recorded. We didn’t see them from the boat, but Dovie’s daughter is a wildlife photographer. Dovie gave us one of her daughter’s pictures of them. The entire whooping crane population was down to a count of twelve, they say. They were within just a year or two of total extinction. Now there are several hundred. I thought there was a critical mass for species, below which there was not enough variety in the gene pool to support a healthy population, or a comeback from the brink of extinction. I have heard that discussed in regard to the endangered Florida Panther that inhabits the disappearing swampland there. I guess that rule doesn’t apply to whooping cranes. A healthy population of hundreds inhabits the planet now. Reestablishing a breeding population was only part of the battle. They are still vulnerable. One hurricane could wipe out the entire flock. That’s what happened to the Louisiana flock. But once a bird is conditioned to migrate to one location that’s it. You can’t just tell them to go somewhere else. Researchers have been making good use of that extra egg. The backup. After several well-intentioned, failed efforts, there are now three flocks of these cranes in the world. Winter homes in Texas, Louisiana, and Florida. We saw several family groups. We got a twenty-minute look at a family not fifty yards away. They’re not spooked by the boat at all. As long as we all stay on the boat, it can pull right up on the bank next to them. Enough about cranes. Enough about birds. We’ve done it. We’re completely birded out. No more birds. Chatted with a guy on the boat. He has a hobby, in addition to birding. He commented that this vacation was unusual for him. He usually drives a lot more. What is his usual vacation? Visiting every county in the United States! I mean to visit every state. I never thought to aspire to visiting every county. He says he’s about 40% of the way there. It’s getting more difficult though, because he has to drive over 800 miles just to pick up a new one. When he found out where we were from in Colorado, he said: “Aah. Boulder county. Nice place.” Talked to another guy. He just moved here. He used to live on the Florida Panhandle, Fort Walton Beach, but he made a mistake. His job moved to Virginia four years ago. He went with it. When he tried to move back, he couldn’t buy his house. Now it costs twice as much as when he left. He moved to the Texas Coast instead. It’s more affordable here. Still had to go look at the ducks. We’re through birding, but we couldn’t let Fulvous Ducks pass. Drove back to the pond where we saw them yesterday. They weren’t there. Looked all over. No whistling ducks anywhere. We gave up and drove back to the park. Stopped at the gas station to look at something, and there were whistling ducks, in the air, swirling all around us. We watched them land in the bay. We drove around and found a vantage. Two hundred black bellied whistling ducks. We looked at all of them. No Fulvous Whistling Ducks. This was a different flock. Just before dark I went back out to look at the ducks again. The flock of two hundred whistlers was still there. Still no Fulvous. Drove the back roads looking at ponds. Found the flock from the day before. Examined every duck there. Mostly whistlers, but there was a Mallard. There was a Mrs. Mallard. And there. A duck that looked different from the back. His back was black. Fulvous ducks have a black back. It was the longest time before he would turn around for me to see his bill. A bright orange bill and it’s a black-bellied whistling duck. A gray bill, and it’s a Fulvous whistling duck. That’s it! Gray! Another new bird. I never expected the see this one here. That’s enough. A break from the birds. Took a walk on the fishing pier here at the campground. It’s an old wooden pier, about a quarter of a mile long. It hooks way out into St Charles Bay. Night herons stand on the rails. Nine o’clock at night, only one other person there. Fishing. We watched him fish for a while, and watched the surface of the water start to boil. There were fish popping the surface all over. We’ve never seen that before. Not in salt water. It was speckled sea trout eating something. It looked like there was a hatch on, but there were no bugs. Guess there can be other kinds of hatches. It could have been minnows. It could have been shrimp. Who knows? But it looked like a hail storm out there. We watched him catch several fish, but none were quite the required fifteen inches, so they all got tossed back. Nice looking trout, though. The Big Tree. It is a thousand years old. Forty feet high and eighty feet wide.