Hurricane Harvey

Wow...massive hurricane hitting Corpus Christi right now. The Texas Gulf Coast is promised days of drenching from the rain with large scale flooding.... Louisiana also getting its share of rain.

Baby Turtles & Piping Plovers

A quick trip to Corpus Christi to see the last public release of turtle hatchlings at the Padre Island National Seashore this year - 30 July-2017.




















Also at the beach some banded Piping Plovers. Always fun to find and report them!

Northern Waterthrush

Migrating through the Texas gulf coast; chillin' and eating before continuing north to its breeding grounds in Canada.

Spotted Sandpiper

A spotted sandpiper among 50+ least sandpiper.

Dove and chick

Late spring chicks are the treat of my week. On Tuesday, it was a treat to spot 3 killdeer chicks running around nearby a nest I'd been observing for weeks. Today, I went back to check on a white-winged dove nest I spotted Saturday. To my surprise, there was a dove and a chick sitting calmly next to each other!

Festival of Christmas Lights

We drove through glitzy River Oaks tonight to see the lights. Beautiful decorations with Santa and reindeer and snowflakes and toy soldiers and colors were all over. In the middle of it all a blue shark on a gate, huh? All in all, several houses could easily make the "Extreme Holiday Lights" list!

It was a fun Sunday evening stroll/drive.

Visiting the capital

We had a fun-packed weekend in Austin. Ate brunch at a great new restaurant La Condesa, went for a swim at Barton Springs Pool, took a "choo-choo" train ride around Zilker Park, visited the Texas State Capitol, took a day trip to Fredericksburg, bought a Tickle Monster book with mitts, had the most delicious peaches on a stand by the side of the road, tasted some good Texas wine at Becker Vineyards.

Half way home, we drove through a very severe front - a pretty loud thunderstorm and lots, lots of water coming down from the sky!

At the beach

Hurricane Alex managed to agitate the Gulf of Mexico waters pretty well in early July. The beaches in Padre Island were covered in sargassum, an earth-brown seaweed. It was interesting to observe a whole micro-environment and habitat it creates. The sargassum provides a protective living space for shrimps, crabs and fish. All these small animals are camouflaged to blend in with the seaweed and they do it indeed.

The kids had a blast collecting some of these tiny animals. Their beach buckets became mini-aquariums. Kaila and I found a palm-size sargassumfish and as soon as we placed it in the bucket the shrimp went crazy. They all literally jumped out of the water, running for dear life, back to the beach, away from the fish. I guess sargassumfish think of shrimp as a delicious meal...and the shrimp know it.

We were happy to release the fish back in the ocean after identifying it (with the help of a Padre Island National Seashore park ranger). The shrimp took care of themselves.

The Blues...

Blueberries any one? We picked close to 20lbs of blueberries this morning! The kids had a blast - and my bucket was always the least full. Kaila and Daniel picked berries from the bushes and from my bucket... They had a big laugh seeing Daddy eat straight off the high branches like a giraffe.

It reminded us of our trip to Alaska a couple of years ago. The best part of our hikes, scenery aside, was picking wild blueberries and salmonberries along the way. One big difference, 60's and 70's F in the AK summer versus 80's and 90's F here in TX.

Oh, and Kaila did not "allow" me to take too many pictures. It degraded productivity. "Mommy, you're not picking your blueberries! You're just taking pictures!!!"

I'll have to try making some blueberry jam, blueberry cobbler, blueberry pancake...courtesy of http://www.moorheadsblueberryfarm.com/. I'm glad they supplied us with some yummy sounding recipes.

Giggles

Just as Kaila was going to bed on Sunday she told me:
"Mommy, my favorite part of the day today was spending time with Eden. I like her and she likes me, too. I made her laugh :))
Just like Connor. He likes me a lot and I like him, too."

Both Eden and Connor are 1-year olds. Kaila just loves playing and spending time with the little ones. She loves to make them giggle!

Tiger Swallowtail

A beautiful yellow tiger swallowtail greeted me this morning as I did a short warm up run before a yoga class today. This is only the second time I see one of these butterflies in my runs. I spotted on for the first time about 2 weeks ago - I was delighted to see the large yellow and black butterfly fluttering around. It was definitely a male since it did not have the blue on top of the wings, just a small patch on the underside.

The black swallowtails are quite common by the reservoir and sometimes I'll run by one that will follow along with me for a while. It always makes my day a bit brighter!

The black swallowtails are apparently very common in Ohio also.

Great Egret

We were back at High Island this past weekend. We saw many nests still with beautiful blue-green eggs. Parents were busy preparing for the arrival of their little ones. A couple of nests had chicks and the egrets were carefully feeding their chicks. Last year by this time most nests had chicks already and the egrets were busy feeding their young.

The roseate spoonbills seemed either to be a bit behind in breeding or they took great care in hiding their eggs in the nests. It looked like they were just hanging around with some happily playing courting games.

A great number of warblers were reported in the woods. Sam Wood's blog has great pictures of the birds migrating through the High Island Sanctuaries. Yesterday he posted gorgeous pictures of a Kentucky Warbler and an Indigo Bunting.

I'm yet to see an indigo bunting or a painted bunting that migrate through. The kids will need to be a bit older for that kind of birding. Daniel is good at spotting alligators, frogs and the big birds. As expected, not very patient or quiet to wait for the smaller birds. He hears them though and is quite excited about it. A couple of more years...

Who are you??

The things you see on the road... minivan license plate: "IAMGOD".

I wish I had my camera ready for a snapshot...for real, as my 5-year old says. Who thinks of doing something like that!?

On the big screen

This was Kaila's first baseball game. She actually made it to the big screen on the stadium. Cheering and dancing on her seat!


More finds in my desk clean up.

Damon Mound

The Houston Geological Society hosted a field trip to Damon Mound this Sunday - a salt dome with a Miocene reef draped over it.

Lots of dragonflies were flying around the pond that sits over the dome.

Natural instincts

at the end of my run today I was surprised by a bird at the bottom of the trail. At first it looked injured, but as I approached it quickly moved farther away and re-started the "injury" dance. After a few steps I noticed a small nest with 3 eggs on the ground camouflaged amongst the rocks. I believe the bird felt the nest threatened and started to act injured to distract my attention from the eggs. Very interesting. I came back with my camera and he repeated the dance once again.

It's nice to be back running after a long 12-week break. Today it was more a run-walk-run in the noon heat.

Terra Cota Warriors

China's Terra Cota Warriors are coming to the Houston Museum of Natural Science in what promises to be an amazing exhibit. I can't wait - opens May 22, 2009!

One day I hope to make it to Xi'an to see site where the warriors were found and the collection of the Museum of the Terra-Cotta Warriors and Horses of Qin Shi Huang.

Thousands of terra cotta soldiers guarded China's First Emperor Qin Shihuangdi since the 3rd century B.C. Amazingly, they stood forgotten until 1974 when farmers digging outside the walls of the Emperor's tomb complex stumbled into them.

See more photos by Wang Da-Gang in the HMNS photo gallery:
http://www.hmns.org/exhibits/special_exhibits/terra_cotta/tc_photo_gallery.asp

Gray

This little one was sitting so still on the fence yesterday as I drove by I thought it was asleep. I approached him from the left, but after a while it turned its head and I was able to see both eyes.

High Island Rookery

High Island

Migration is not in full swing yet in High Island. There were lots of very pink spoonbills but not many egrets or ibises at Smith Oaks. Alligators were out in large numbers. A few turtles and a bullfrog also enjoyed a sunny day by the water.

These spoonbills had a much darker shade of pink than the ones I saw in the Fall '08 at Addicks. I noted that some birds had some orange feathers on their tails and wings - mating plumage, I learned.