Magnus to the Coast, Day 4

Thurday December 7, Second day at Brazos Bend.

The plan for the day was to take a long, long walk with Molly and in the evening, go to eat at Pappadeaux in southeast Houston. And we did.

 


In the morning, a short and mostly unsatisfactory walk with Ed and Molly. We went down to see the Brazos river, then tried to go to the nature center. It was closed--no volunteers to staff it. Then we went to the office, but they didn't have anything worth shopping for. And then to 40-acre lake, which was so low that there seemed to be less than an acre of water. There was a single, but very large, gator on the opposite bank. a Few gallinule (or is that moorhen?) and a coot or two. Some white ibis in the distance.

After that we returned for lunch and then Molly and I took a very long jog. The plan was to jog around Elm Lake, and we did that and then some. We ended up going half way around one of the oxbow lakes, then came back and took the Pliant Slough trail which circled around back to the nature center. The total jog time (counting a few pee stops but not birding stops--I paused the stopwatch for those) was one hour ten minutes. Not  bad.

Lots of alligators on Elm Lake and a huge flock of Ibis. About half were asleep but the others were actively feeding.

On the way back, in the short grass at the Nature Center there was a pipit. One. I watched it for a long time and concluded that I would have no trouble identifying it when I got back to my bird book. (Since I was jogging, I only had the binoculars--no backpack, bird book or camera)

And, of course, I couldn't. It looked like a Sprague's pipit but wagged its tail like an American pipit. It was alone, which is common for the Sprague's and unlikely for the American. So which was it?

I'll never know.  Stupid pipits.

Vultures:
 

When I gave up watching the pipit and headed back, I passed a guy and lady holding a kid. The guy asked me what the big black birds circling around were, And I got to show off my meager knowledge--turkey and black vultures. I agreed with him that I'd never seen so many in the air before.  Which was a slight exaggeration--I saw as many at that lake in Missouri that time, but there were mostly on the ground there. And I've seen as many in Cedar Ridge park in Texas. But there were still a whole heck of a lot of them.