Houston and Galveston, Texas
For those who’ve read my past buckets about birds, you have discovered that I use buckets as a place to identify birds that I’ve seen and don’t know. The opening bird in this series was identified by a park ranger and immediately forgotten. Sigh, I did look him up and know what he is. It looks like it should be an Egret or Heron. She is a swimming bird, not a wading bird. The white speckles on his wings were just beautiful. Bonus points for an identification.
Little Green Herons are my favorite Herons/Egrets. They are small and nervous, and yet have a movement and style that I like. They fly less momentously than the bigger Egrets, and their call is less of a croak.
One of Houston’s shortcomings is that it has fewer acres of parks than any other major urban area in the US. In an effort to accommodate the natural flood cycle that occurs when it rains here, the city has increasingly added in drainage areas to help control the process. And what else is a drainage area than a bird, frog, and small mammal habitat?
Archbishop Joseph A. Fiorenza Park is a huge complex on Highway Six, an outer loop road. The complex has three lakes that are all interconnected and is 360 acres in size. It’s an hour and a half walk around the lakes with no stops. Much of the area is mown grass, but there are some great nesting areas along the lake. To make the lakes, a low lying swampy area was dredged, yes, I hate that they did that, but they left flood lands all around the lakes and a number of tree breaks to control the wind. And they used the dredgings to build two hills, one on either side of the lake. So yes, Houston does have hills. I know there are Houstonians here and I highly recommend this park for watching Egrets and Herons. And if you make the trip, I will tell you where the bird lady lives. She has set up feeding and nesting areas in her yard where I see song-birds I see nowhere else in the city.
One of my goals for this project was to capture shots of Herons and Egrets in flight. To build a skill set. Giant Blues seem like an easy target, they’re huge. Nope, they are the most skittish of the Heron/Egrets. I rarely get close to one.
One of the hardest Herons for me to find in Houston is the Black-Capped. In fact, this was the first shot that I’ve ever gotten of one. Indeed, I saw him behind a tree and thought he was a Yellow Crowned Night Heron and snapped a quick shot as he flew off. As you can tell, he was laughing at me.
I picked this guy up just this week. He was sitting out in the open and I thought he was a Yellow-Crowned Night Heron. It was only after looking closely that I realized his spots were different so I went looking.
My wife took me on a birding expedition in Galveston for my birthday last year. The guide was very good and knew where to go. This shot was taken in August, which seems late in the year to be this young? Galveston is a bird watchers paradise. They have a yearly raptor migration, all the wading birds you could ever wish for, and a haunted hotel on the waterfront where you can sleep at night.
Now the negative. Skip this paragraph if you just want the birds. Folks with more money than common sense are eating up both the coastland and the inner swamp areas in Galveston to build second homes. And since part of the function of the Daily Bucket is to consider these things, such construction should not be allowed in 2020. If you account for the loss of habitat, and the fact that we taxpayers get the bill after hurricanes, it is an all-around bad idea. The positive, weak as it is, as coastal waters rise, building in Galveston will ease. It just can’t be maintained. Indeed, much of the island may revert to swamp over time.
Yellow-Crowned Night Herons are my second favorite Herons. While nervous, they can still be approached if you are careful. They tend to be individual, unlike the White Egrets and Ibis, and I often find them on smaller streams and drainage areas.
If memory serves, Little White Egrets almost went extinct. At breeding season they grow a fluffy tail plumage, nice for hats. It is easy to mix juvenile Great Whites with the Little Whites — at least for me. The Little Whites have the black shin-guards and the yellow feet. That said, there are variants with black feet, or so I’m told. And I have some pictures that suggest this is true.
I never got close enough to see whether the goodie was a snake or some form of amphibian. Possibly a King snake?
This fellow decided that a little turtle love was in order. The turtle disagreed.
This is not the best Tri-Colored shot that I have, but his pose was to die for, and you got the free Ibis too. The Tri-Colors are the boldest of the Herons. I’ve been trying to get one on the flight, but they literally won’t fly if I approach them. They kind of saunter away.
Although this guy was on the water, typically, you see them snatching up bugs in the grass.
This is my freebie for this bucket. Not a Heron or Egret, but there was a flock of them that wintered in the city’s reservoir where I walk, and they are fairly brave.
What I’m missing is a Pink or Reddish Heron and the Bitterns. I’ve not been looking for them, and it is thought that there are only a few pairs of Pink Herons in Texas.
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