Texas Travel Diary NOTE: Images were prepared using screen settings of 1024x768, and are best viewed with those settings. As usual, the name of the bird can be seen by placing the cursor over the photo.
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April 2009April may indeed be the cruelest month, but it is a great time for a photo safari. I'm off to a place of scorching heat and fierce winds. A boisterous, untamed land whose natives, in the teeming millions, zoom about at terrifying speeds in Hummer H3s and Dodge Durangos. I refer of course to the state of Texas. To be precise, Corpus Christi along the Coastal Bend, where photography colleague Duncan Hill and I establish base camp at the local Red Roof Inn. Our first stop is Goose Island State Park. A mister spray has been put up that attracts an amazing spectacle of dozens of newly-arrived Indigo Buntings, with a scattering of Brown Thrashers and Painted Buntings. A sugar-water feeder nearby is attended by a life bird for me, Buff-bellied Hummingbird. |
 Down the road at Mustang Island State Park, the best birds are terns. The Royal Tern soars above it all just beyond the beach. A shutter speed of 1/1600" stops the bird's motion.
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Least Tern females (?, the sexes
look the same) await their male admirers who catch small fish just beyond the
surf.
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Meanwhile,
Willets, Sanderlings, Piping Plovers and Ruddy
Turnstones patrol the shore, investigating every bit of detritus that washes
up. I sit in wet sand nearby. When turnstones
approach to the point where I’m in their comfort zone, they suddenly go
a-scurryin’ by; then, pause to feed once they are safe again.
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