WINFREY UPDATE: The latest info is that the powers that tried to be last couple weeks will not attempt to pave paradise at this time. No, they'll wait till all this citizen uproar dies out, then hit it again, when we least expect it. What else could we expect of our elected officials and their unwitting minions?

Juvenile Black-crowned Night-Heron Learning How to Rouse

I believe these are more images from the eastern seashore of Galveston Island, where the big ships parade past. BIG ships and little birds a plenty all in plain sight. And huge mansions or hotels or something like that. I didn't see huge security presences, but I did see surprising wild birds in apparently tame, sidewalk even here, places. This image will, no doubt, find its way to my page of birds rousing.

Juvenile Black-crowned Night-Heron Just Standing There

With its feathers somewhat straightened out and back into balance with the Universe for another little while.

Parental Black-crowned Night Heron

Such a dashing little creature with that bright white occipital plume flaring in the breeze.

Tri-colored Heron on the Rocks

Not as if we won't have our share of Tricolored Herons flying around this neighborhood.

Mourning Dove in the Brambles

In Dallas, I rarely even both to photograph doves.

Starling on a Sign

Or starlings, for that matter.

Pelicans on a Sign

Pelicans can get away with swimming in dangerous currents, because, unlike us, when danger threatens, they can just fly away.

Eastern Kingbird on a Bramble

Winfrey Prairie has lots of Eastern Kingbirds. I sometimes go there just for them.

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"Bump-nose Brown Bird"

Anna and another friend say this may be a female Bronzed Cowbird, but I wanted that beak to be on some bird more exotic. But then I often do.

Cattle Egret in the Grass

First times we went to the South Texas Coast we got more bright-colored exotic birds and more exotic bird action. Now we go all that way and we photograph the same birds we have right here at White Rock Lake. Maybe we need to go farther south. I want to, but I need to eliminate all that driving.

May 8

A Grackle in the Wild Weeds

A common-enough bird hereabouts, but again, all these birds were photographed along Texas' Gulf Coast. This particular image was shot out the Slider's window in northern — I think they called it east — Galveston Island. I'm sure it's a grackle, but I was never sure if they were Great-tailed or Boat-tailed, and I probably never will be.

Pelican Wing-splash with Annoying Laughing Gull

Anna spotted this odd, symbiotic relationship between a very annoying Laughing Gull (above) and an annoyed Brown Pelican (with splash, below). Seems like wherever the pelican went or what it did, the gull would be right there. Sitting on its head, getting in its face, stealing food from it.

Oh, No. Here It Comes Again

Pelicans are comparatively larger and stronger birds than gulls — although I find most gulls mostly annoying, I've never experienced a trauma bond like this one.

The Nuisance Gull

I did mention that the gull would sit on the pelican's head, didn't I. I bet you thought that was typical J R hyperbole, but nope. Here it is for real. Note the beleaguered pelican's eye just above ocean level as the gull sits on the back of its head. Some might call this relationship symbiotic. But it looked purely annoying to us.

Pals Forever

And I say that with one of my deeper senses of irony. Inseparable. Yet, the pelican did not attempt to kill the creepy gull. Must need it for something.

Two Gulls on the Beach

On the left, and a little to the back, is the adult, breeding Laughing Gull. And on the right and in front, is the adult, non-breeding Laughing Gull. A sort of a short and sweet version of a truncated family portrait.

Juvenile Brown Pelican sprawl

Just when we were getting used to the elegance of American White Pelicans, now we're beginning to accept that its oceanic cousins just aren't all that elegant. Gives them a nice distinction. There's much else for us to discover about the ocean-diver versions, but they sure are different.

Avocet In A Hurry

We kept seeing avocets, so they must be usual denizens there. But I keep remembering tracking a flock of them around White Rock Lake a few years ago, where they almost landed in Sunset Bay a couple times.

Two Female American Avocets and a Laughing Gull

Such handsome birds a little closer and standing, not keeping flying by.

Acrobatic Avocet and a Turned-0ver Tern

Left to Right: American Avocet, Turned-under Royal Tern and another avocet. I assume the first avo is resting its other leg. Lots of birds do it. It involves a little cantilevering and some practice, but it's hardly amazing. The tern is probably just leaning over and turning its head. No idea why, but if I were a tern, I'd probably have a deep understanding. Anna says it's scratching its head. That makes sense.
 

SAVE WHITE ROCK LAKE Park!

"Upper Sunset Meadow" is The Arboretum's Initial Target to Become A Parking Lot  — It's down the hill toward the lake from Barbec's and across from the baseball diamonds. On our map, it's just under the Y of  Sunset Bay. Just some of the bird species I have photographed in or over this area include: Redtailed Hawks, Red-shouldered Hawks, Great Blue Herons, Great Egrets, a lot of drunk Cedar Waxwings, various sparrows, mockingbirds, Killdeer, Red-winged Blackbirds, Grackles, Mallards and other species.

"The Arboretum" has been pestering The City of Dallas to let them build an amusement park along the coast of White Rock Lake for decades. Lately, they have been uprooting real trees (the "arbor" in arboretum is for trees.) to build big metal ones to support the aerial tramway featured in the new, nature-themed park.

Trouble is, with all that and the Chihuly and other art exhibits, they expect to attract many more people in many more cars, and they don't have the space to build parking lots, so they've been sneaking through plans to grab wild prairie land around the lake for their parking purposes.

Is the City of Dallas planning to mow down what I've always called the Sunset Meadow (the area up the hill toward Garland Road from Sunset Bay proper See below to put in an overflow parking lot for The Arboretum? I wouldn't put it past either the City or the Arboretum. And this plot of land is only the first on their list. Next come the newly refurbished baseball diamonds and other nearby spaces.

Save Winfrey Point. Sign the online petition. Stop the so-called Arboretum from turning White Rock Lake into one big parking lot.

Where the bird pictures begin below.

Eerily similar to the Joni Mitchell's song, "The Yellow Taxi" from 1970:

They paved paradise
And put up a parking lot
With a pink hotel, a boutique
And a swinging hot SPOT.
Don't it always seem to go
That you don't know what you've got
'Til it's gone
They paved paradise
And put up a parking lot

They took all the trees
And put them in a tree museum
Then they charged the people
A dollar and a half just to see 'em

CHORUS

Hey farmer, farmer
Put away that DDT now
Give me spots on my apples
But LEAVE me the birds and the bees
Please!

Don't it always seem to go
That you don't know what you've got
'Til its gone
They paved paradise
And put up a parking lot

More about the song.

May 7 2012

Gulf Coast Landscape

Sometimes it's really nice to get out of familiar circumstances and into more alien landscapes. We pretty much know what to expect looking offshore. This is the view the other direction from the beach where we were near Freeport, Texas on the South Texas Gulf Coast. Couldn't quite smell it exactly, but oil refineries as far as the eye could see.

If You Look Up and See a Bird, It's Probably a Laughing Gull

Almost in any direction, if you look up and see something flapping, it's either a Laughing Gull …

Dark Pelicans Over Surf

Or an American Brown Pelican. After getting used to seeing American White Pelicans six months of every year at White Rock Lake, looking up and seeing these similar but dark, gnarly-looking creatures was always a surprise. I suppose if we spent more than a week at a time down there, the surprise would wear rather thinner, but we didn't, and it did not, either.

First Year Juvenile Brown Pelican

Seeing them up closer and more personal stayed freakish all the time we were there. Compared to our elegant white flyers, these guys seemed barely glued together, dark and strange. But of course, they're just more pelicans. And not only can they fly beautifully, they can crash into the distant water horizon, keep going down, and catch fish like no American White Pelican can.

Adult Breeding Atlantic Brown Pelican

Although by the time they grow into adult breeders, they attain a strange, dark beauty.

Adult Male & Female Breeding Ruddy Turnstones on the Beach

Ruddy Turnstones are reddish shorebirds who use their bills "to flip over pebbles, shells and washed-up vegetation to expose hidden invertebrates. The short, stubby, slightly upturned bill is an ideal utensil for this unusual foraging style," says Keith A. Arnold and Gregory Kennedy in their Lone Pine Birds of Texas.

Ruddy Turnstones in the Seaweed

They'll eat just about anything they find by flipping and probing, "berries, seeds, spiders and carrion," "eggs of crabs or other birds and even leftover french fries."

Ruddy Turnstones in Flight

9.5 inches in length with wingspans about 21 inches.

This is a Juvenile Laughing Gull.

They were not at all rare. So plentiful, I suspected they were juvenile Laughing Gulls. Laughing Gulls were the dominant species everywhere we traveled.

Juvenile Laughing Gull Aloft

But the beaks on these birds don't seem to match the big, bulbous beaks on these birds.

Juvenile Laughing Gull Flying Away

So until someone who is more intelligent about recognizing and naming these guys comes along and helps, I'll just keep thinking of them as Big-nose Birds, although I have the creepy feeling — as I often do in these situations — that I really should know this one.

Black Skimmer Against Surf

No such problems with these very distinctive birds whose eyes seem to disappear into their black feathers atop their heads.

Black Skimmer with Wings Up

This almost seems too much a caricature of this bird to believe it really exists like this. But there it is.

Black-bellied Whistling Duck Landing

And we knew this one as soon as we saw it. I've photographed them here at White Rock often, and loved the chance to photograph them flying even for a short hop.

Breeding Black-crowned Night-Heron

Lots more to come, of course, although I really have no idea how many or for how long I can keep them coming. Anna's shots are, as usual, on Facebook. More of mine will be higher on this page in days to come, as I gradually catch back up with all my little projects back here in Dallas.