Mammoth Goes to Matagorda Day 8

Monday 17 January 2020

Which incidentally happens to be a holiday, MLK Day. After pancakes (with blueberries!) for breakfast, Ed and I drove down to the lake. There were two dry boat ramps there, but I'm sure there are still some functional boat ramps somewhere. For one, I saw two boats out in the water; and for two, this evening I saw two trucks hauling boats away from the lake and toward the park exit.

The damn and Mexico in the distance

Very odd tree with pods

A graveyard in Salineno

At the lake we saw an Osprey, cormorants, gulls and pelicans. But then we drove over to Salineno (enya missing on keyboard) Wildlife Preserve. I'm not sure how big it is, but what we found was a dirt road with a parking area and a hand-lettered sign that said "birdwatching area". First we drove down the short road to the Rio Grande.

Osprey on the Mexico side

It was a lot grander down there than it was up at Big Bend Ranch, but it looked much the same. Very brown and murky. but there were birds all over the place! I think I caught a vireo or two, definitely a green Jay on the road, and a whole bunch of birds on the other side that I never could really get a good view of. It was late in the day by then--around noon--and so we'd missed the morning activity. Oh, well.

Trying to photograph in this mess:

Back at the birding area, we spent an inordinate amount of time trying to photograph Chachalacas in the trees. Then we went on to the trailer where a man, woman and a very decrepit old dog kept a birdwatching site. it was cool!  I saw a long-billed thrasher, green jays, and even an Altamira Oriole!  He identified that one for me--I would have had to go to the book. But it didn't linger so I didn't get a picture.

Long-billed Thrasher

Chachalaca

Green Jay drinking from hose fixture

After that it was lunchtime, so we headed home and had a lazy afternoon. I eventually took Molly for a walk on the trail up to the entrance station, then along the road to the butterfly garden and back to camp.

Steak and salmon for dinner, then we started winding it down for tomorrow's long drive. Five hours, and most of that on Texas highways, not interstates.

Mammoth Goes to Matagorda Day 7

Sunday, 16 January 2022

The trip to Falcon State Park was short and sweet-ish. A lot of traffic for a Sunday, but nothing to complain about. We got started at 10:40 or so, later than we expected, but we did need to stand around and hob-nob with Bob & T for a few minutes. We only see them three times a year (on average), so we wanted to get in a last goodbye before they left. Their drive was longer than ours--close to five hours.

But now we at Falcon Lake. It's a great place, very clean, very empty. The trees are no taller than a big bush would be in Kentucky, but there are a lot of them. It's like a "busy desert". A few Cholla and yucca, a lot of mesquite. The campsites are pull-through but not full hookup in this loop. I suspect that when I made the reservation, the full hookup sites were all reserved. Or possibly I imagined this one would be nicer--don't remember. But it's fine, and I wouldn't want to be in the full hookup sites anyway because that area is almost all full while this one is almost all empty.

I wonder what this area would be like during spring migration?

Our campsite

 I found this sign amusing

Molly and I went for a long walk "to the lake". At the point where I turned around, I could see the lake off in the distance. But even at its highest level I don't think our campsite would ever be a lake view site.  On our walk we encountered tons of dog poo, most of which Molly ate, but nothing else interesting. We took an itty-bitty walk just before sunset and saw a blue-ish bird, probably a scrub jay, a mourning dove, and we heard a Bewick's wren. And one bunny. Molly liked the bunny.

Thoughts at the time:
I suspect the place is hopping with deer, foxes, and bobcats in the night. But right now, I just want to go home. The birding experience at South Padre was so fantastic that no amount of Chihuahuan desert bird life is going to interest me right now. if I could do yesterday's walk again today, I'd be thrilled. But I can't and all I can think about is the birds in my own front yard.

So I got online and changed my Bastrop State Park reservation from Wednesday to Tuesday, and we'll be leaving here a day early. Day after tomorrow. Kind of stupid to do that, but I'm ready. The trip was marvelous--don't get me wrong--but it's time to be home.

Mammoth Goes to Matagorda, Day 6

Sat 1/15/22 Day 6

It was nice this morning, warm and calm, with broken bits of clouds. Until about 8:30 am, when the clouds darkened and the wind picked up--and I mean, really picked up. By 9:00 the gusts were 35 mph and there were a lot of gusts. We retired indoors for breakfast.

This park

Indoors!

But after it was clear that it wasn't going to rain, Bob and T went off to see SpaceX while Molly and I went for a jog. We made the mistake of starting off southwards, away from the wind, where we were pushed off our feet a little but not that uncomfortable. When we turned north, it was brutal.

not cold at all, though. Say...sixty to sixty-five degrees, but with the wind whipping around, I kept my hoodie on. I didn't want the jacket, just the hood.

Our walk:

View of the ocean from the park

We jogged north for a long ways, finally getting ot the populated part of the island where there were buildings that made wind breaks. We tried to jog all the way to the Holiday Inn Express that we stayed at years ago, with the kids, but it was too far. When I looked it was six minutes by car, maybe two or three miles. Doable, but with that headwind, we went on for what seemed like forever with no holiday in in sight...then I checked the map again. Without my glasses on, the map looked like we hadn't moved. So we turned back.

On the way back I did take the hoodie off, and wanted to take off my long-sleeved teeshirt, too. Back at the RV park, it seems windier than it was up the island.

Note there are a couple of RV parks south of the KOA we're staying at. I wonder why we didn't check those out?

In the afternoon we went to the birding center. Awesome! And I try to use the word only when required. For sure I saw these birds (and the other guys, Ed and T, saw them too):

Virginia Rail (but I didn't get a good look at it--there was a nature photographer there who ID'ed it)
Great Blue Heron, Great Egret, Coot, Red-head,

Snowy Egret

Common Gallinule

 

 

Blue-winged Teal

Tricolored Heron

 Black-bellied Whistling Ducks

Pintail Duck

Mottled Duck

 

 

Neotropic Cormorant

American Oystercatcher

Roseate Spoonbill

And these things too

Mammoth Goes to Matagorda Day 5

Friday, January 14 2022

Matagorda Bay to South Padre KOA Holiday
Planned Time: 5:09
Actual: 5:34
 

Bye, Colorado River!

 

 

 

 

 

Bye Matagorda Bay Nature Park

 

 

Bye, Penguin

Headed to South Padre. It was very foggy this morning. I got up early--seven-ten or so--and the heavy dew overnight had everything dripping. One would almost think it had rained, but you could tell by the pattern of the wetness that it had not. The water was clustered underneath the shelters and the overhangs of edges.

The fog burned off quickly, but we hit another patch when we set out and crossed Matagorda Bay at Port Lavaca. Getting over to 77 south I relied on google and it steered me wrong, as usual, taking one of its six-mile "shortcuts" on a county road. I used to avoid FMs, but some of the FMs down here aren't so bad. But NO NO NO county roads! Stupid google maps.

Note there seem to be a couple of really nice private RV parks on that big bay (the south side of Matagorda Bay). They may be geared to long stays, but if not we can check them out.

Lot of hawks on the drive, and even a pair of Caracara and then later, a pair of osprey. They seemed to be far from water, too, but that might just mean that I couldn't see the water they were watching over. Besides, we're so close to the coast that anywhere we went was near the water.

Hello, South Padre

This KOA is very nice but so very crowded. Almost everyone has an out-of-state license plate. I saw only one Texas (not counting Bob). Ohio, Indiana, Illinois...I suspect that if you took a brisk walk around, you could count off every state in the northeast U.S., right here in this parking lot.

Which is what a KOA is--a parking lot. It only reinforces our thoughts that these are nice places to stay if you're going to be taking all-day day trips every day at a destination, or if you're only stopping for the night on the way to somewhere else. All that said, there's a boat ramp into the gulf right here, at the end of the driveway. Bob could launch his Kayak with no trouble at all.

Since Bob was still feeling poorly from aftereffects of the meal the night before, we just ate our leftover  barbequed chicken and salmon at the Mammoth RV. Then went over and talked for just a while, had a little chocolate and an argument about the what's 'er name verdict, dog walk and bed.

Over in the mud puddle just north of the RV park, there was a big, chunky bird with an absurdly long, down curved beak. Long-billed curlew, or whimbrel? When I went back later to take a picture, he had his head tucked under his wing. Annoying bird.

Mammoth Goes to Matagorda, Day 4

Thursday, January 13

I'm writing this the day after, so details will be scanty and the sense of immediacy lacking entirely. We went out to eat with Steve and Lanette, Bob and T, at The Waterfront Restaurant. As far as we could tell, it's the best place to eat in Matagorda...because it's the only place to eat in Matagorda. It wasn't all that bad, but it wasn't very good. Just as people had remarked, the salads were laughable. The fried oysters were okay. But if I'd gotten the crab cake like some of the others did, I'd have been sorely disappointed.

It was a slow, easygoing kind of day otherwise. I took Molly on a long walk while they played Euchre, and then another one in the evening. Actually, I think the morning walk was with Theresa. We went all the way out the pier, across the sand at the end and back. This was the same sand I'd wanted to cross the evening before, but the water was over the road.

Then I watched an Osprey take a long bath at the edge of the river with Lanette. It was also the day when Ed went fishing. Me too, but I didn't get any bites on my shrimp and gave up pretty fast. He eventually caught a huge, gorgeous redfish--28-3/4 inches! It wasn't hurt that we could tell, and he didn't want to clean it, so he put it back.

Lots and lots of avocets. It took a while to see the sweeping the bill gesture I'd heard about. I had imagined them as birds who stood in the mud in tide pools and swept side to side, but no. They get right out in the waves and stand in water up to their backs, and there they do the sweepy thing. Cool. Also their necks are pure white this time of year, so they don't have the reddish thing I was expected from the breeding pictures.

This is a Black-necked Stilt

And a couple of juvenile White Ibises. Typical butt shot.

Mammoth Goes to Matagorda Day 3

Wednesday, Jan 12 2022

 In the morning we all walked down to the beach and puttered around there. I saw birds in the mudflats that I thought were buffleheads, but later got a picture and realized not--they were hooded mergansers.

I took an afternoon walk with Molly, going out to take more  pictures of the birds. I went almost to the end of the pier and saw that there was no point in continuing--I couldn't get back to the beach without walking on slippery granite boulders and wading through water of an unknown depth.

More hooded mergansers

Reddish egret and Snowy egret with lots of ring-billed gulls

Sanderlings

American Avocet

Move avocets

I'm not completely sure what this thing is, but I think Willet

Bunch of Cormorants stretching

So Molly and I walked halfway back and exited onto the sand dunes, at a point where someone or something had broken out one side of the wooden boardwalk. Just a few steps on the sand dunes (forbidden; I know) and I was on a dirt/sand road.  There we looked for sparrows, but as usual, the first time I see a sparrow is when it is disappearing. Or heading away at supersonic speed to duck into a far-off bush. Stupid sparrows.

All that work getting a picture, and I'm still not sure what it is. I think it's just a Song Sparrow.

Ate Bob's fish. Good!