Time flies over us, but leaves its shadow behind. –Nathaniel Hawthorne
Another year of enjoying birds in the field has come and gone! Please check out some of the highlights. Here’s to the next field year!
©2016 Christopher R. Cunningham and Elisa D. Lewis. All rights reserved. No text or images may be duplicated or distributed without permission.
The two most joyous times of the year are Christmas morning and the end of school. –Alice Cooper
The Two Shutterbirds wish all our friends and readers a merry, merry Christmas!
A note to our readers: Corporate America strikes again. Upon returning to Houston on Christmas Eve after a birding road trip to West Texas and New Mexico, we discovered to our horror that a number of new problems with twoshutterbirds had magically appeared. Turns out that our “friends” at Google had altered the agreement involving a purchased plug-in called WP Maps ex post facto. Changes to this program prevented many maps already loaded into the WordPress program from loading onto the site. After many hours of attempting to remedy the problem by visiting on-line forums, going through lines of code, etc., I’ve given up trying to fix a problem caused by the unethical, venal, and incompetent behavior of Google. So, for a few days you may notice some glitches in our site that I’m currently working to edit around. Cheers, Chris
There is one kind of robber whom the law does not strike at, and who steals what is most precious to men: time. –Napoleon Bonaparte
©Christopher R. Cunningham and Elisa D. Lewis. All rights reserved. No text or images may be duplicated or distributed without permission.
It was tremendously satisfying to watch this color parade. –Erno Rubik
On the Texas Gulf Coast, birders can see Black-bellied Plovers in all plumage types, except down. Nonbreeding colors are easiest to see here, and in other coastal wintering areas from the Canadian border to South America on both East and West coasts. Although a few birds summer along the Texas Gulf Coast, Black-bellied Plovers breed exclusively in the High Arctic, so seeing nestlings in down would be a major undertaking.
Birds in transitional plumage can be seen during spring migration. Beginning in late March, birds in these intermediate colors can be seen fairly easily at such places as Frenchtown Road, Rollover Fish Pass, and across Galveston Island. By May, birds in dramatic breeding plumage can be seen in these same places. From mid-August to October, Black-bellied Plovers appear again in Texas for fall migration, and to begin their winter residence.
When we first started birding, different seasonal plumages seemed to be a nightmarish complication to an already challenging hobby. But we have grown an appreciation for these changes: Rather than seeing them as an identification problem, we consider them an opportunity. Even common birds like Black-bellied Plovers can provide the challenge of seeing and photographing birds in every plumage type.
©2016 Christopher R. Cunningham and Elisa D. Lewis. All rights reserved. No text or images may be duplicated or distributed without permission.
. . . the great floodgates of the wonder-world swung open . . . ― Herman Melville, Moby-Dick
Birding the Coastal Bend in Late Fall: Part 2
One of our favorite spots to bird when in the Corpus Christi area is Sunset Lake Park. The park is located on a peninsula, Sunset Lake to the west, Corpus Christi Bay to the east. This park contains a lovely stretch of shelly beach with sandbars close to shore. Sandbars along the Texas Gulf Coast are magical places, and are often covered in flocks of pelicans, terns, gulls, waders, skimmers, and shorebirds.
On this latest visit, Royal Terns, Marbled Godwits, and Long-billed Curlews predominated. As usual now on coastal trips, we brought our tall rubber boots and were able to wade out to the sandbars, a technique we often employ at East Beach, Galveston. The simple addition of boots to your field gear will dramatically transform any birding trip to the shore. It took us a few years to figure this out—just how many college and graduate degrees do we have? Maybe not enough.
One of Chris’ favorite spots on the Coastal Bend is the Hans and Pat Suter Wildlife Refuge City Park on the south side of Corpus Christi. A shelter overlooks a stretch of beach that is often packed with ducks and waders during the colder months. This spot is great for gory hunting scenes and beauty shots of ducks, especially Northern Shovelers, Gadwall, Redheads, and American Wigeons.
The “freshwater channel” that cuts across the northern edge of the park is another gem of a birding spot, especially for ducks. Here, the birds typically allow a close approach. Ignore the sign that says “do not pass beyond this sign.” Kidding.
Finally, we are sometimes apprehensive about having our car broken into or being mugged at Suter given the sketchy characters loitering around the parking area. It’s almost comical the way they look away when you glance in their direction. So with the caveat that you may be taking your life in your hands, we highly recommend this park!
©2016 Christopher R. Cunningham and Elisa D. Lewis. All rights reserved. No text or images may be duplicated or distributed without permission.
Problem solving is hunting. It is savage pleasure and we are born to it. –Thomas Harris
Birding the Coastal Bend in Late Fall: Part 1
This Thanksgiving holiday we took the opportunity to photo-bird a few of our favorite spots along the Coastal Bend. Our first stop was Paradise Pond in Port Aransas on Mustang Island, Texas. Sitting on a perched water table, Paradise Pond is the only open source of fresh water in the area—thus making it a mecca for birds and birders. To our delight, a single Least Grebe was patrolling the pond.
Least Grebes typically feed on aquatic insects and insect larvae and also consume small fish, tadpoles, and crawfish. This grebe, though, was occasionally doing battle with large Anax junius dragonflies. Strangely, the bird would emerge from underwater out toward the middle of the pond with struggling dragonflies in its beak. At first, brain-storming in the field, we wondered if the bird was: 1) finding moribund dragonflies on the bottom and bringing them up, 2) capturing insects as they emerged from metamorphosis underwater, 3) capturing the insects as they laid eggs at the surface somewhere and then swimming underwater, 4) grabbing insects in flight and then dragging them under to drown them, or 5) grabbing dragonflies from emergent vegetation and then submarining away. During most of the time we observed, the grebe was in a high state of vigilance, and appeared to be tracking dragonflies as they zipped around.
As a sidebar, Chris encountered a bit of a photographic challenge during our study of the Least Grebe. The recent removal of the Brazilian Pepper trees to the west of the pond meant that the water in the pond had three distinct regions. Along the eastern edge of the pond, the water was shaded by vegetation and appeared dark green (images immediately above and below). The middle of the pond appeared a brilliant blue (top image), and the western part of the pond had strong glare and appeared striped gold and blue (bottom image). Images from the latter tended to look washed out. As the grebe patrolled looking for dragonflies, it crossed into the three types of water, thus requiring constant chimping to keep exposure correct.
After several hours of observation, Elisa finally saw the bird picking dragonflies and damselflies from emergent vegetation after approaching from underwater—one question answered! Soon after that, Chris and Elisa both saw a spectacular hunting display: a pair of autumn meadowhawk dragonflies was flying in tandem across the surface of the pond when the Grebe erupted from under the water, lunged toward the insects, and took a snap at them! So we did learn that Least Grebes will attempt to snatch dragonflies from mid-air.
After our return home, we spent Sunday morning binocular birding at Brazos Bend State Park (BBSP). There, we spoke with naturalist and friend R.D. who told us that he had seen a Least Grebe grab a dragonfly from the air at BBSP (Pilant Slough). The insect later escaped, but now we know: Least Grebes employ a variety of tactics to capture dragonflies.
©2016 Christopher R. Cunningham and Elisa D. Lewis. All rights reserved. No text or images may be duplicated or distributed without permission.