Got down to the beach at sunrise and clouds and really good wind. of course
the weatherman had said sunny and it did that after 11am. There was even a
shower just offshore from bolivar about 10:30.
The wind appeared to have blown a lot of birds out of the area as well as
the water. I was able to walk way out along the Galveston jetty. Very few
shorebirds out but the gulls were mainly herring and skimmers. The first
wet area where the jaeger often sat was several feet above the tide level
and empty of birds as were the lagoons going up the ship channel. It
appeared the peregrine people beat me to it this morning.
Went on across to bolivar and was able to walk all the way to the jetty in
a couple of spots. Birds were really spread out with snowy plover and
dunlin the commonest. You could walk back along the jetty to the area where
you see the birds way out there when you walk out on the bolivar jetty and
have to start rock hopping.
The area has a completely different mix of shorebirds than the flats. Lots
of black-bellied plovers and marbled godwits. You still need a scope and in
35-40 mile hour wind that is still not very useful.
Be a little careful as there is really deep soupy mud out there as a
fisherman discovered. Also out along the gulf there were areas that had a
1-2 inch hard crust that you could break to underlying soft mud through and
made walking hard. But lots of birds but no one unusual.
You can drive the beach basically from the bolivar flats bollards east to
rollover pass. Not much up that way but all of the cuts are sanded in. I
did lots of it but gave up with the lack of new birds. In some places there
were at least 2 and sometimes 3 sandbars out from the waters edge.
I found a first year greater black-backed gull up there by itself just
about at magnolia road. That is the first public road to the east of
Retillon and past the development of mcmansion beach houses that is gated.
The beach is public and can be good for sea ducks if they ever arrive. This
is probably the bird from earlier in the fall as it flew up that way on a
couple of occasions when I saw people that saw people that had seen fly
east.
Tide was way out at rollover for a change and they are still installing
dredge pipes. A merlin was along Yacht Basin Road.
It was sunny up at the dike but the wind had the normal shorebird and gull
sitting areas splashed. A few birds out there and the dike is perhaps the
best local spot for wintering sandwich terns. There was a single on east
beach way out there in addition to several on the dike.
There was a single red-breasted merganser and 3 common loons near mile
marker 1 on the calm west side of the dike. There were more fishermen out
there than I have seen before on a weekday but only a couple cleaning fish
which brown and white pelicans liked.
The wind did have some hawks migrating and 3 sharp-shinned hawks came down
beside me as I was waiting for the ferry. They appeared to cross over
toward Pelican Island.
--
Joseph C. Kennedy
on Buffalo Bayou in West Houston
Josephkennedy36@xxxxxxxxx
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