Courtship consists in a number of quiet attentions, not so pointed as to alarm, nor so vague as not to be understood.—Laurence Sterne
Lafitte’s cove is often thought of as a mecca for migrant songbirds, but it’s usually a good idea to check the margins of the lakes for shorebird and wader activity. On one recent visit (4/16), we were lucky to see the courtship ritual of the Black-necked Stilt. Although similar to that of the closely related American Avocet (which we have documented previously), the Black-necked Stilt ritual encompasses a number of different, albeit equally charming, behaviors.
The male first approaches a female that has signaled her readiness by adopting a horizontal posture. The male nods.
Black-necked Stilts 1: The Nod, Lafitte’s Cove, Galveston Island, Texas. The ritual proceeds with a nod to the presenting female. Canon EOS 7DII/600mm f/4L IS (+1.4x TC). High-speed synchronized fill-flash.
He then stirs the water with his beak . . . .
Black-necked Stilts 2: Look what I can do! Lafitte’s Cove, Galveston Island, Texas. Canon EOS 7DII/600mm f/4L IS (+1.4x TC). Natural light.
The male strolls to the female’s other side . . . .
Black-necked Stilts 3: The Stroll, Lafitte’s Cove, Galveston Island, Texas. Canon EOS 7DII/600mm f/4L IS (+1.4x TC). Natural light.
Here, he again stirs up the water with his beak . . . .
Black-necked Stilts 4: Look what I can do (again)! Lafitte’s Cove, Galveston Island, Texas. Canon EOS 7DII/600mm f/4L IS (+1.4x TC). High-speed-synchronized fill-flash.
The male then mounts the female and consummates the relationship . . . .
Black-necked Stilts 5: The Act, Lafitte’s Cove, Galveston Island, Texas. Canon EOS 7DII/600mm f/4L IS (+1.4x TC). High-speed synchronized fill-flash.
After copulation, the male descends. He then places his wing over her body and crosses his bill over hers . . . .
Black-necked Stilts 6: Crossed Beaks, Lafitte’s Cove, Galveston Island, Texas. Canon EOS 7DII/600mm f/4L IS (+1.4x TC). High-speed synchronized fill-flash.
The pair then promenades together for a few paces. They are now together . . . for at least this breeding season.
Black-necked Stilts 7: Begin Promenade, Lafitte’s Cove, Galveston Island, Texas. Canon EOS 7DII/600mm f/4L IS (+1.4xTC). High-speed synchronized fill-flash.
Swimming Diamondback Water Snake, Fiorenza Park, Houston, Texas. No birds means looking for other subjects. This snake was living dangerously: The water at Fiorenza is filled with fishing cormorants. Canon EOS 7DII/600mm f/4L IS (+1.4x TC). High-speed synchronized fill-flash.
Last week we didn’t see many Neotropical migrant songbirds. The weather was incredible . . . but maybe that was the problem. With crystal clear skies and a consistent wind out of the south, i.e. a tailwind, the trans-Gulf migrants may have simply blown past the Coast and the usual migrant traps. What’s good for birds, is bad for birders.
What’s more, dry weather means that there haven’t been many arthropods around other than caterpillars and a few flies, mosquitos, dragonflies, and spiders. So there really hasn’t been much of a reason for birds to stop if exhaustion or thirst wasn’t a problem. At Lafitte’s Cove on 4/8 I saw a few Ruby-throated Hummingbirds and one vireo or warbler (I saw only a creamy yellow underside through the canopy)—a terrible showing for April at a Gulf Coast migrant trap.
Some stormy weather moved into the Gulf Coast throughout this week. On Tuesday (4/11), for example, a major front swept down mid-day and looked the perfect set-up for a fallout. Sadly, I watched the atmospherics on radar from work, trapped and unable to get into the field. But yesterday (4/14) was also bad at Lafitte’s Cove. I only saw a few hummers, a Black and White Warbler, a Hooded Warbler, a Bronze-headed Cowbird, and a White-eyed Vireo. In addition to these, Elisa saw two Tennessee Warblers. Not great.
In any case, hope springs eternal, and we’ll give the Coast the old college try again this weekend! One of these days . . . .
Dabbling Mottled Drakes, Lafitte’s Cove, Galveston Island, Texas. Canon EOS 7DII/600mm f/4L IS (+1.4x TC). No migrant songbirds around? Just photograph some resident ducks! High-speed synchronized fill-flash.
Birds’ love and birds’ song
Flying here and there . . . . Spring, Alfred Lord Tennyson
Female Common Yellowthroat on Dead Vegetation, Pilant Lake, Brazos Bend State Park, Texas. Common Yellowthroats are among the most common warblers in North America. They winter primarily in Mexico and Central America and breed across the United States. They can be found year-round along the Texas Gulf Coast. The south side of Pilant Lake is a great place to see them picking bugs from emergent vegetation (alive or dead). Canon EOS 7DII/600mm f/4L IS (+1.4x TC). Natural light.
As of this writing, we are still waiting to see a significant number of migrant songbirds and shorebirds. We are, however, watching spring unfold in other ways. New growth is sprouting up across the landscape, and will soon overwhelm the dead plant life of the previous growing season.
Resident: Young Reddish Egret (White Morph), East Beach, Galveston Island, Texas. This bird was taking killifish from small tidal channels. Canon EOS 7DII/600mm f/4L IS (+1.4x TC). Natural light.
Flashes of wildflower-color can be seen scattered around. Insect life is starting to awaken—although, mercifully, the mosquitos have been strangely modest in number.
Everywhere caterpillars can be seen crawling around, and everywhere birds are gobbling them up! If the birds had their way, there would be no moths or butterflies!
Loggerhead Shrike with Caterpillar, Lafitte’s Cove, Galveston Island, Texas. Canon EOS 7DII/600mm f/4L IS (+1.4x TC). Natural light.
On our last visit to Lafitte’s Cove—despite being in April–we saw no wood warblers (or any other migrant songbirds for that matter) at all. A lone Brown Thrasher called from the thicket. Disappointed, we headed over to East Beach . . . .
Here, we saw a few migratory shorebirds. Dunlins and Western Sandpipers were around and beginning to transition into breeding colors. Snowy and Wilson’s Plovers (and Killdeer) were scooting around along tidal channels and on the supratidal flats. One of these days, one of these days . . . the mottes and beaches are going to throng with avian life. Here’s to being there when it happens!
Female Wilson’s Plover, East Beach, Galveston Island, Texas. Breeding Wilson’s Plovers begin arriving along the Texas coast in mid-February and depart by September. They nest on simple scrapes on beaches, among other places, from April to June. Note the new growth sprouting up from among dead old-growth. Canon EOS 7DII/600mm f/4L IS (+1.4x TC). Natural light.
What we achieve inwardly will change outer reality. –Plutarch
Common Loon in Pin Feathers, Offatt’s Bayou, Galveston island, Texas. The tips of the pin feathers on the neck and head are pigmented black. Canon EOS 7DII/600mm f/4L IS (+1.4x TC). Natural light.Common Loon in Pin Feathers 2, Offatt’s Bayou, Galveston Island, Texas. This is the same bird as above. Note the shagginess of the pin feathers on head and neck. Canon EOS 7DII/600mm f/4L IS (+1.4x TC). Natural light.
This week on Galveston, Common Loons could be seen in many stages of transitional plumage. Every bird looked slightly different. All the birds I saw had some degree of spotting on the wings, and so lacked the brown, scalloped pattern of nonbreeding wing plumage. I saw one bird with a shaggy mane of pin feathers (Thanks to S.M. for pointing out this bird!) and one bird in almost complete breeding colors—only a stray feather here or there needed to be pigmented.
Common Loon in Transitional Plumage, Offatt’s Bayou, Galveston Island, Texas. This bird appears to be in nonbreeding plumage from the neck forward. Spots on the wings show the transition to breeding colors has begun, though. Canon EOS 7DII/600mm f/4L IS (+1.4x TC). Natural light.Another Common Loon in Transitional Plumage, Offatt’s Bayou, Galveston Island, Texas. This bird is a little further along than the one immediately above. Canon EOS 7DII/600mm f/4L IS (+1.4x TC). Natural light.
Many birds were engaged in hunting behavior much of the time. I saw fish, crabs, and a single mantis shrimp (Squilla empusa) being taken. This is clearly the time of year to be gorging and fattening up. It’s a long way back to Canada and environs for the breeding season! A good deal of preening was also going on, likely related to molting and keeping feathers in shape for the big trip ahead. Two birds had already pair-bonded and spent a significant amount of time together–another reminder that breeding in birds is often a process that unfolds in many stages over much of the year.
Common Loon in Breeding Colors (Nearly), Offatt’s Bayou, Galveston Island, Texas. This bird was more shy than many others and had apparently already pair-bonded. Another bird in less well-developed transitional plumage kept appearing in close proximity. Could shyness toward humans and pair-bonding behaviors be related? Canon EOS 7DII/600mm f/4L IS (+1.4x TC). Natural light.
Life is one long process of getting tired.–Samuel Butler
California Pelican, Offatt’s Bayou, Galveston Island, Texas. We always keep an eye out for the red throat pouch—a sign of the Pacific race of the Brown Pelican. The blackish- or brownish-green-throated Atlantic Brown Pelicans greatly outnumber the Pacifics along the Texas Gulf Coast. Canon EOS 7DII/600mm f/4 L IS (+1.4x TC). Natural light.
The house is in shambles, and the yard looks like a post-apocolyptic wasteland (Thanks, sod webworm moth larvae!) so we’re takin’ a break! Not to worry, we’ll be back on the ball soon!
Feet, what do I need you for when I have wings to fly?—Frida Kahlo
Portrait: Eared Grebe, Offatt’s Bayou, Galveston Island, Texas. Canon EOS 7DII/600mm f/4L IS (+1.4x TC). Natural light.
Among extant birds, grebes have a unique method of foot propulsion. There are other foot-propelled divers, loons, for example, but these birds have significant webbing between the toes. The birds with webbed toes push themselves forward against the drag force of water. Grebes, on the other hand, have separate toes with stiff, collapsible asymmetrical lobes on each side. The lobes on the inside are larger than those on the outside. Grebes are also unusual in that their relatively short femora (thigh bones) are oriented perpendicular to the long axis of the body, and the toes beat along a complex dorso-lateral to ventro-medial path, rather than parallel to the direction of the body’s forward motion.
Diving Eared Grebe, Offatt’s Bayou, Galveston Island, Texas. Although grebes have a unique method of foot-propulsion, they look like many other submarine hunters (e.g., loons, mergansers, cormorants) from above the water as they dive after prey. Canon EOS 7DII/600mm f/4L IS (+1.4x TC). Natural light.
The traditional interpretation of how grebes paddled through the water, and the one I was taught, is that the lobes of the toes would unfold during then power stroke to provide maximum drag to push against, and fold up to reduce drag on the the recovery stroke. A more recent interpretation is that the grebe foot acts like a (slotted) hydrofoil and provides a lift force that propels the bird forward from behind (Johansson and Norberg, 2001)–physically similar to the way in which a wing allows a bird or airplane to fly. The lift hypothesis has an immediate visceral appeal to me given the asymmetrical lobes of the toes—like the vanes of a flight feather. Lift is usually explained by elementary physics textbooks as the result of the Bernoulli principle, essentially the conservation of energy for a moving fluid. This explanation is not correct quantitatively. The true explanation likely involves the most terrifying of all physics concepts . . . turbulence . . . .
Diving Eared Grebe 2, Offatt’s Bayou, Galveston Island, Texas. Canon EOS 7DII/600mm f/4L IS (+1.4x TC). Natural light.
As a photographer on the surface, I haven’t been able to document the strange way in which grebes move through the water. Once and a while, when conditions were right, I have been treated to a glimpse of the legs in motion as in the image below. Swimming with grebes is one more activity to add to an already lengthy bucket list.
I mentioned at the opening that grebes were unique among extant birds. Hesperornithiformes, a group of toothed Cretaceous foot-propelled diving birds, are thought to have had a method of propulsion similar to grebes and to have possessed asymmetrically lobed individual toes. On a recent visit to the New Mexico Museum of Natural History in Albuquerque, I had the opportunity to study the feet of a life-sized model of Hesperornis regalis, the largest of these Cretaceous divers from the Kansas Chalk Sea. Reading the label . . . sure enough, reconstruction supervised by Dr. L. D. Martin, my late (paleo)ornithology professor, a gifted teacher with so many fascinating stories to tell about the lives of birds. . . .
Diving Eared Grebe 3, Offatt’s Bayou, Galveston Island, Texas. Offatt’s Bayou is a great place to see Eared Grebes hunting in winter. Texas City Dike is another. Canon EOS 7DII/600mm f/4L IS (+1.4x TC). Natural light.
While grebe-watching, I am always interested in seeing these birds return to the surface with prey. In my experience along the Gulf Coast, Eared Grebes rarely return to the surface with prey. After dozens of dives, I have seen only one small fish clamped in a beak. This means that grebes are either remarkably unsuccessful hunters (unlikely), or that they can swallow small prey underwater (likely). Pied-billed and Least Grebes can be seen with large prey on the surface like fish, crawfish, frogs, and dragonflies. Perhaps small prey may be easily swallowed in the submarine realm, whereas large prey items may need to be manipulated into an ideal orientation in the air. In any case, grebes are certainly among the most interesting subjects for study and observation. Elisa doesn’t have to ask me twice to go grebe-watching!
Juvenile Pied-billed Grebe with Crawfish, Elm Lake, Brazos Bend State Park, Texas. In the past, Brazos Bend SP was great place to see Pied-billed Grebes hunting year-round. Recent flooding has decimated the ecology of the park, and water birds are no longer abundant. Canon EOS 7D/500mm f/4L IS (+1.4x TC). Natural light.
Reference
Johansson, L.C., and Norberg, U. M. L. Norberg. 2001. Lift-based Paddling in Diving Grebe. The Journal of Experimental Biology204: 1687-1696.
There is nothing either good or bad but thinking makes it so. –William Shakespeare
Double-crested Cormorant with “Plecostomus,” Fiorenza Park, Houston, Texas. We Texans may be horrified by the proliferation of these South American armored catfish in our waters, but to cormorants that range far to the south, it still feels like home when they’re around. Canon EOS 7DII/600mm f/4L IS (+1.4x TC). Natural light.
l know there is a great diversity of opinion on this subject, but my favorite kind of Texas photo-birding day is the day after a strong blue norther. The howling winds have died down, and the 40º sky is clear, but for a thin haze of cirrus clouds. This kind of day has been in very short supply for several years now.
Eye to Eye: Neotropic Cormorant with “Plecostomus,” Fiorenza Park, Houston, Texas. In this shot, the sun was in the wrong position (or rather I was), leading to too much glare from the water and a backlit bird. Canon EOS 7DII/600mm f/4L IS (+1.4x TC). Natural light.
Lately the weather has been wildly variable, with clear, cold days rare. This has meant having to make the most of a wide variety of lighting situations. The two cormorant shots above were taken under what I consider to be “bad” conditions. The sky was mostly cloudy with sunbreaks every few minutes leading to having to constantly chimp settings. When the sun emerged, it produced a blinding, muddy-yellow glare off the water’s surface. Because the fishing behavior documented was happening all around me, the sun was sometimes behind and sometimes ahead—making for an exciting morning of work!
Ad Noctem: An Eared Grebe Paddles off into the Fog, Offatt’s Bayou, Galveston Island, Texas. I like the way the wake ends at a veil of fog. Canon EOS 7DII/600mm f/4L IS (+1.4x TC). Natural light.Eared Grebe, Offatt’s Bayou, Galveston Island, Texas. Perfect light, but not perfect perspective. Canon EOS 7DII/600mm f/4L IS (+1.4x TC). Natural light.
Two recent visits to Offatt’s Bayou occurred during very different optical conditions. The upper grebe and loon immediately below were shot on a gloomy, gray, foggy morning. And the lower grebe and loon were shot on the same glorious, clear, bright morning about a week later at the same place.
This shooting locale (where 61st crosses Offfatt’s Bayou) has only recently become accessible again. Where rickety old docks used to stand, there is now a large raised cement viewing/fishing platform. The problem with the new platform is that it is too high, leading to an extreme shooting angle. The old situation was actually better, assuming you were willing to risk falling into the drink to get the shot. Alas, there’s really nothing to be done about the angle now—except to try and capture some interesting wave forms, colors, reflections, or textures from the surface of the water. Sometimes you have to take what you can get! Progress!
Made in the Shade: Common Loon, Offatt’s Bayou, Galveston Island, Texas. It looks like this bird is swimming in mercury. Canon EOS 7DII/600mm f/4L IS (+1.4x TC). Natural light.Transitional Common Loon, Offatt’s Bayou, Galveston Island, Texas. Images from this locale tend to look better from a bit of a distance, given the raised nature of the observation platform. Canon EOS 7DII/600mm f/4L IS (+1.4x TC). Natural light.
Birds are the most popular group in the animal kingdom. We feed them and tame them and think we know them. And yet they inhabit a world which is really rather mysterious. –David Attenborough
Line of American White Pelicans, East Beach, Galveston Island, Texas. Canon EOS 7D/600mm f/4L IS (+1.4x TC). Natural light.
Frankly we haven’t gotten out much lately. This is a function of terrible weather and just plain exhaustion. The prospect of fighting traffic on a gloomly, humid 85° day in February hasn’t held much charm. Spending time indoors has led to combing through the photo archives and pining for past years in which we had a proper winter.
One of the things we would have been watching for this week, had we been outdoors, is the cooperative feeding behavior of American White Pelicans. Whenever I see these birds I stand in awe, just waiting for them to so something neat. Is there anything more majestic in American birding than a string of White Pelicans paddling in formation along the shallows searching for schools of fish?
American White Pelican Feeding Frenzy, East Beach, Galveston Island, Texas. Canon EOS 7D/600mm f/4L IS (+1.4x TC). Natural light.
American White Pelicans are known to cooperatively herd fish into the shallows by beating their wings. On Galveston, a fairly common sight is a line of White Pelicans suddenly forming a circle, beaks pointed inward, and gobbling up a school of fish (presumably).
Pelican Phalanx, East Beach, Galveston Island, Texas. Canon EOS 7D/600mm f/4L IS (+1.4x TC). Natural light.
Once the feeding frenzy is over, the birds turn around within their circular formation and reassemble into their line and continue paddling along peacefully . . . until the next school of fish.
Back in Line, East Beach, Galveston Island, Texas. Canon EOS 7D/600mm f/4L IS (+1.4x TC). Natural light.
Banded Male White-tailed Ptarmigan in Breeding Plumage, Trail at Medicine Bow Curve, Rocky Mountain National Park, Colorado. Canon EOS 7D/500mm f/4L IS. Natural light.
Do the leg bands on my subjects ruin the shots for you? Me, I’m on the fence. Generally, Chris and I like to capture an idealized view of nature. We travel to state and national parks, wildlife refuges and nature preserves. We try to avoid shots that include fences, telephone poles, signs and roads. We like our birds au natural.
Nature provides a necessary respite from the human hustle—an escape from the man-made. Perhaps its true for you, too. Alas, the escape is an illusion. Even if we agree that humans are not the center of life on earth, we can’t deny that our influence is all but ubiquitous. How I crave those vistas without a trace of mankind—hard to find when you live in a metropolis. But, peering at the world through a camera lens takes me there. I suspend disbelief with a world view framed by the viewfinder and the silent still images that result.
So, when your subject sports a leg band, it kinda bursts the bubble.
Banded Brown-capped Rosy-Finch, Sandia Crest, New Mexico. Canon EOS 7D/500mm f/4L IS (+1.4x TC). Natural light.
Many agencies and organizations use bird leg bands for tracking purposes. For example, U.S. federal agency bands are for birds covered by the Migratory Bird Treaty Act, and state and provincial bands are for game birds (Galliformes). These banding programs are the reason we know what we know about the timing and scale of migration. Some agency programs, such as the North American MAPS (Monitoring Avian Productivity and Survivorship) Program, also produce data on the abundance, survivorship, and ecology of our continental land birds so the conservation community can better address conservation needs.
Banded Female Mountain Bluebird, “The Tree,” Upper Beaver Meadows, Rocky Mountain National Park, Colorado. Canon EOS 7D/600mm f/4L IS (+1.4x TC). Natural light.
Chris and I sometimes romanticize the idea of time-traveling to the Pleistocene Epoch and experiencing the world at the dawn of man—before we altered the environment so discriminately in our favor. But here we are, in the Anthropocene, deeply intertwined with so many of our fellow species. And, unlike our fellow species, we know what we do. Conservation science through bird banding places our best foot forward to mitigate some of the damage, or at least learn how to considerately coexist.
So, putting aside all fantasies of a better past, I am compelled to celebrate these unwitting research subjects. They carry a burden for their well being—and so must we.
Banded Female Wilson’s Plover, East Beach, Galveston Island, Texas. Canon EOS 7DII/600mm f/4L IS (+1.4x TC). Natural light.
Life moves pretty fast. If you don’t stop and look around once in a while, you could miss it . . . . —Ferris Bueller’s Day Off (1986).
Portrait: Reddish Egret, East Beach, Galveston Island, Texas. Canon EOS 7DII/600mm f/4L IS (+1.4x TC). Natural light.
This is the time of year for sporadic frustrations. The unpredictable weather, sometimes nice, sometimes oppressive and freakishly warm, can easily become an excuse for doing nothing. Witnessing the saddening, nit-witted babbling of the media during the current silly season of politics doesn’t inspire great energy, either.
The birds and other organisms, however, are still out there and waiting to be observed and photographed! Biologically, there is quite a bit going on along the Texas Gulf Coast these days: Lately we haven’t been disappointed by East Beach or Fiorenza Park.
Asian Exotic: Nutmeg Mannikin, aka Scaly-breasted Munia (Lonchura punctulata), with Seeds, Fiorenza Park, Houston, Texas. Currently there are lots of interesting things to see at Fiorenza Park, including an active cormorant rookery and ravenous hordes of invasives scouring the thickets for seeds! These avian happenings will provide tasty fodder for future posts. Canon EOS 7DII/600mm f/4L IS (+1.4x TC). Natural light.Orchard Spider (Leucauge venusta), Houston, Texas. The wind made this a tough shot: I waited as the spider was pulled in and out of the frame! The Genus Leucauge was erected by Charles Darwin himself. Canon EOS 7DII/100mm f/2.8L IS Macro. High-speed synchronized macro ring-flash.
Our field work is undoubtedly the healthiest thing we do. It is a tragedy when nature lovers sit out a day in the field because of the malaise or exhaustion brought on by our absurdist era or the fear (or revulsion) of traffic jams and hordes of yahoos. This realization is why we drag ourselves out of bed early, even on our days off. We almost never regret getting out there, even if we had to talk ourselves into it in the first place!
Hunkered Down: Dunlin Flock, East Beach, Galveston Island, Texas. These birds found shelter behind a small tuft of vegetation at the strand line. On that morning, wind gusts reached 35 mph—just shy of howling. It was glorious. Canon EOS 7DII/600mm f/4L IS (+1.4x TC). Natural light.
You go to Brooklyn, everybody’s got a beard and plaid shirt. They may be able to tell each other apart, but they all look alike to me.–Don Lemon
Snowy Plover (Nonbreeding), East Beach, Galveston Island, Texas. Snowy Plovers have pinkish gray legs and a more gracile, less stubby beak than the other two small Texas Plovers. We’ve seen Snowy Plovers on Bolivar Peninsula and at Cheyenne Bottoms in Kansas, but we’ve just recently started seeing a lot of them on Galveston. This bird shows a vestige of the incomplete black breast band of breeding plumage. Canon EOS 7DII/600mm f/4L IS (+1.4x). Natural light.
Last glorious (but-too-windy-for-flash) Sunday we took a trip down to East Beach, Galveston Island looking for shorebirds and found all three species of the smallest Texas plovers in winter plumage.
The Semipalmated Plover breeds in the Arctic and winters along the Pacific, Atlantic, and Gulf Coasts. The Piping Plover has a complicated breeding range, but winters along the southern Atlantic and Gulf Coasts. Some Snowy Plovers reside year-round on the Texas Coast. The upshot of plover biogeography: All three of these cuties can (luckily) be found on the Upper Texas Coast in winter. But telling them apart can be a bit tricky, especially if they’re doing what they’re usually doing–skedaddling along the strand line looking for detritus and tiny infaunal invertebrates. This is termed the “run, pause, and pluck” style of foraging/hunting.
Piping Plover (Nonbreeding), East Beach, Galveston Island, Texas. In breeding and nonbreeding, Piping Plovers look more gray overall than Semipalmated Plovers. Canon EOS 7DII/600mm f/4L IS (+1.4x TC). Natural light.
The legs are always the first place I look to identify a small plover. Snowy Plovers always have pinkish gray legs, in breeding and nonbreeding colors. Piping and Semipalmated Plovers have more colorful legs. In nonbreeding, Semipalmated Plovers have more yellowish legs, whereas Piping Plovers tend to have more orangish legs. The overall color palette is usually sufficient to separate Piping and Semipalmated Plovers: Semipalmated Plovers are mostly shades of brown and white and Piping Plovers are mostly shades of gray and white.
Semipalmated Plover (Nonbreeding), East Beach, Galveston Island, Texas. Canon EOS 7DII/600mm F/4L IS (+1.4x TC). Natural light.
Snowy Plovers and Piping Plovers are not common birds—neither, for that matter, are Semipalmated Plovers. The Waterbird Society places a population estimate of around 25,000 for Snowy Plovers. Wikipedia places the number of “near threatened” Piping Plovers at around 6500. Semipalmated Plovers are the “common” small plover on Texas Coast, with an estimated 150,000 individuals worldwide—about as many humans in a smallish city. I wonder what the state of alarm would be if the global human population stood at 6500, 25,000, or even 150,000?
When an early autumn walks the land and chills the breeze
And touches with her hand the summer trees . . . . “Early Autumn,” Lyrics by Johnny Mercer
White-eyed Vireo, Lafitte’s Cove, Galveston Island, Texas. White-eyed Vireos summer across the eastern U.S. south to the Atlantic slope of Mexico, but populations generally retreat south for the winter across their range. Canon EOD 7D/600mm f/4L IS (+1.4x TC). High-speed synchronized fill-flash.
This week the sun passed the equator at high noon yielding a day with nearly equal darkness and light. But the important part: the days keep getting shorter. Birds are riding a blue train to the tropics in the hundreds of millions. We stand at the brink of the best of times, the longest stretch of cool, beautiful weather on the Texas calendar.
Perched Male Vermilion Flycatcher, Anahuac National Wildlife Refuge, Texas. Vermilion Flycatchers that winter on the Texas Gulf Coast have generally migrated east from breeding grounds in Mexico and the Southwest. Canon EOS 7D/600mm f/4L IS (+1.4x TC). High-speed synchronized fill-flash.
At least for now, the summer wind will be blowin’ in from across the sea–bringing patches of stormy weather. These atmospheric obstacles to avian movements will eventually cease as glaciers of cool breeze eventually bulldoze the sticky Gulf Coast air out to sea. On these frosty days the Gulf Coast, especially Galveston and the Coastal Bend, are a kind of Shangri-La. Can’t wait!
Fee-bee! Calling Eastern Phoebe, Anahuac National Wildlife Refuge, Texas. These flycatchers are a common sight on the Texas Gulf Coast in winter. But the “bee” sounds a bit worried from time to time. Canon EOS 7D/600mm f/4L IS (+1.4x TC). Natural light.
