A good day birding today. We had a target pond we’d never been to and a target bird we haven’t seen yet this year. We got them both! The pond is in the town of Holiday Beach, which isn’t even on the map. A little exploring, and we found it, surrounded by trees and rushes, with a few grassy openings. Lots of cover and food for birds, and a few clear spots to view from. This is the best pond we’ve ever seen here. Ducks, herons, more night herons than we’ve ever seen in one place, egrets, ibis, more moorhens than we’ve ever seen in one place, coots, grebes, siskin. Alive with birds. Our target bird was the fulvous whistling duck. There are plenty of black bellied whistling ducks in South Texas, but the fulvous is rarely seen outside Florida. Ten minutes of watching and suddenly there they were, right in front of us. Fulvous whistling ducks. Good birding on the way there and back too. Osprey, kingfisher, shrike, doves, spoonbills, black bellied whistlers, gadwall, Judy spotted a couple american oystercatchers from the highway so we went back and got them for the first time this year. Got a gull-billed tern for the first time ever. It was a good birding day.
Port a
Wow, is this park packed! Gulf Waters RV Resort. Sometimes it empties out to about half full, but then fills right back up. I’m glad we bought a site here, but now I wish we’d bought two. The price for a new one is twice what we paid for ours a year ago. When we stayed here last August, ours was one of the few sites finished in the new section. We were the only people staying on this pond. This time we have neighbors. It’s nice to have neighbors. There is always someone to say hello to and visit with.
Port a
Waiting at the ferry crossing for our drive from Port Aransas to Aransas Pass, we hear the siren approaching. A medical emergency vehicle coming up behind us shuts off his siren when he gets close, skirts the ferry line, drives right through to an empty boat, the gate goes down and off they go, all by themselves, “speeding” across the channel. I never thought of that: what happens when an emergency vehicle has to cross the channel. They run up to five boats, out of four landings on each side. The ferries have a rule, that there must be an empty boat, or one arriving, at all times, to accommodate emergencies. That should do it.
Port a
Did a little more birding. Found some birds we were hoping to find. Didn’t find some we expected to find. Found some we hadn’t even thought about finding. That’s pretty much the story of any birding effort we’ve ever been on. We haven’t added any birds to our life-list lately. In the meantime, we decided to keep track of how many birds we see while we’re here the month of January. We figured we should be able to get to 100 no problem. We were right. We’re at 116 so far.
Port a
We eat out of the back of cars. Food brought fresh to us. Once a week the shrimp man comes through the park: fresh jumbo shrimp, ten to the pound. The tamale lady comes twice a week: fresh tamales for dinner. For barbeque, we have to drive to town. Judy is outside pulling the heads off shrimp.