We retraced our route and headed back to Corpus Christi and then further east to Goose Island, a state park which is situated directly across a bay from Port Aransas, the small town where we began our Gulf Coast adventures in January.
Goose Island is the winter home to Whooping Cranes, who summer near the Arctic Circle, and the cranes are one of the reasons that people come to this area. The park provided 3 docent-led bird walks, which we attended. Fog was a pretty constant part of the day there, but we did manage to see all kinds of birds.
Goose Island is home to The Big Tree, a 1,000+ year old oak tree that has somehow survived natural and man-made disasters and is still in pretty good shape.
On our last bird walk we were privileged to witness what must have been a feeding frenzy of some kind. A small body of water had one of the highest concentrations of bird species in one area that we have seen. We watched in awe as we tried to pick out all the birds, and then just as quickly as the birds gathered they all flew or swam away. Whooping Cranes even joined in the group. In the first picture a crane is in the back right corner and it gives you some perspective of the size of these birds. Later we saw a family of cranes flying over us. A group of three cranes includes last year’s baby which has not been sent off on its own yet.
We signed up for a Whooping Crane boat expedition which took us to the edge of the Aransas National Wildlife Refuge, a crane wintering area. The day started out with the usual heavy fog, really heavy fog.
We drove around for about 3 hours and finally the fog lifted enough to for us to find Whoopers, and one pair gave us a rare treat. The cranes mate in April after they have migrated north, but one couple decided to start practicing the mating dance a bit early and put on a nice show for us. The 3 hours of foggy wandering was worth it!
Of course, there were other interesting birds to look at that day, like the Long-billed Curlew:
Back at Goose Island, the pelicans lined up for handouts at the fish cleaning station:
Oysters are a big business on Goose Island, and the empty shells are saved all year in huge piles around town. In the spring, the shells are bagged and placed in the water to create a good environment for new oysters to mature.
Turkey buzzards soaring overhead are quite a common sight, and although it is not nice to pass judgement, the turkey buzzard has to be one of the non-prettiest birds around! This one was wet from the fog, which did not improve its looks.
And then it was time to keep moving on, to Galveston. Before we started traveling around Texas, we did not realize that Galveston was an island, and quite a popular island as it turned out. We arrived before spring break, when the traffic was not too heavy and we could easily get around town. We left a couple days after spring break started and it was quite a different place.
Our first stop on the island was the Elissa, a restored iron barque (3 mast) ship built in 1878 in Aberdeen, Scotland and used as a merchant marine vessel for almost 100 years. The ship stopped in Galveston twice during that time, and once brought bananas from South America into port. We watched the people doing maintenance on the ship’s masts with a bit of awe.
Next stop was a duck boat tour of Galveston where we were able to see some nice homes in town and on the water.
We also visited the Rain Forest pavilion, where birds and monkeys roamed free while the bats and other critters were more contained.
Galveston was our last chance to visit the beaches of the Texas Gulf Coast. We stayed on the west end of the island, in an RV park which was across the street from the beach and where the colorful houses were built on stilts to stay above flood waters. The nice beaches were less crowded and there were always birds to enjoy.
On March 11, after more than 2 months on or near the Gulf Coast, we made a hard left turn and headed for Houston.