Texas is, uh, also for the birds…
We left the swamps of Florida behind, and headed into the swamps of Alabama, Mississippi, and Louisiana. We then left those behind as well, and quickly! Just kinda done with swamps! I took exactly one photo in all three of those states, and here it is, from Christmas day in Mississippi:
We followed the Gulf Coast down through Texas, mostly relaxing after the relatively exhausting interstate driving in Florida. We stayed on beaches when we could, which gave me the opportunity for some shorebird photography.
Great Blue Heron
Yellow-crowned Night Heron
This was one of the birds I really wanted to see, mostly to complete my heron collection. On New Year’s Eve we were driving by a wetland and saw several of them just hanging out by the road. Now that I’ve seen them up close: kind of a goofy looking bird!
Crested Caracara
We saw quite a few of these all over Texas, but this is the only one that was close enough for a photo (in Brazoria National Wildlife Refuge). You see them in pairs a lot, hunting and scavenging in fields.
Pelicans, both Brown and White
This first Brown Pelican is one of my favorite bird photos in a while. Just a really non-plussed look on its face.
Aransas National Wildlife Refuge
Whooping Crane
When we first started building our bus in summer of 2022, people would ask us where we were headed first. My stock answer was always, “If we finish too late for fall colors, we’ll head down to Texas and see the Whooping Cranes.” Well, here we are in January of 2024, and we finally saw the dang Whooping Cranes. If you’re not familiar, these are a very endangered population of birds (only about 800 left) who migrate between Canada and one small area of Texas. They’re the tallest birds in North America and have a really cool call. We only saw a few of them, but I felt lucky to see them at all.
