Sunday: Happy Bird Day, To Me

— In case you didn’t read my last post, this is part three in a series of posts about my recent Texas road trip. The first post can be seen here. —

I didn’t have an itinerary for Sunday, per se, just some places I wanted to see. The whole point of the road trip was to get outside and enjoy some warm weather.

Sunshine would have been nice, but that was not to be. Not that I’m complaining.

Overcast skies are actually better for pictures. When the sun is too bright, images get washed out, you have to contend with shadows, you constantly need to worry about the position of the sun, etc.

I set my alarm Saturday night so I could see the sunrise. At least I think I set it. When I woke up at 8:30, much later than expected, I didn’t remember having turned the alarm off. And, looking at my phone, wasn’t able to tell if it had actually been set or not. I was a tad disappointed until I looked outside. It was FOGGY. So, if I had gotten up, I wouldn’t have seen much anyway.

The extra sleep was actually kind of nice. I didn’t waste any more time, though. I grabbed some coffee from the breakfast buffet and then headed off to the the Leonabelle Turnbull Birding Center. It’s actually right in Port Aransas, so it only took me a few minutes to get there.

Before I go much further, I should warn y’all that, as my post title implies, this day was all about birds. I find being out in nature relaxing. And I’ve always enjoyed bird-watching. As it turns out, there were LOTS of birds to be seen. Not only was I in a coastal environment, I was also in a completely different part of the country. Port Aransas, Texas is at about the same longitude as Tampa, Florida. It’s not often that I get to the coast or that far south.

I did take pics of some other stuff, but it’s mostly birds. In all, I shot over 450 pictures. I won’t share them all here, but I did post about 90 on Flickr (link follows this post).

Oh, and one more thing. I’m not a bird photographer. I knew I wouldn’t be capturing stunning bird images. My goal was just to get reasonably clear images of the critters. Bird photography is challenging. You need skill and really good, i.e., expensive, equipment. You try capturing clear images of a bird in flight and see how well you do. With that said, I’m happy with the shots I got. They’re not National Geographic quality, but, for the most part, the birds are at least recognizable.

Of course, I had to spend some time identifying them after-the-fact since most were birds I’d never seen before.

 

I also visited nearby Port Aransas Nature Preserve at Charlie’s Pasture.

 

 

 

 

 

 

The parks were within minutes of each other. I actually went back to the birding center (hoping to see the resident alligators, to no avail) and moseyed around town a bit. I was hoping the fog would lift a bit so I could see the beach.

It didn’t.

So I grabbed some breakfast for lunch…

I’d intended to grab a sandwich. But when I saw that there was a breakfast buffet for $8.95, all I could think of was BACON. I was quite surprised when they offered to prepare eggs for me, any way I liked. Usually buffets have those nasty pans of scrambled eggs. I ordered two over-medium, but they brought me three, along with a nice order of fresh hash browns. I ate about a third of the meal before I remembered the picture. Despite the late hour (around 1:00 PM), everything off of the buffet was still warm and fresh.

Yes, I pigged out.

Then I headed back to the birding center. Slowly but surely the day appeared to be clearing.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The foggy finally started lifting in the late afternoon, so I did actually get to go to the beach. I even walked in the water for a while.

It was lovely.

I even shot a quick video so you could see what the beach was like.

To my surprise, there were even cool birds at the beach.

 

I actually spent a couple of hours on the beach. I did a bit of shopping before dinner. I wasn’t very hungry (surprised?), so I popped into Whataburger for a lite and fast meal.

Good thing it was fast. I hadn’t been paying attention to the time. Upon exiting the restaurant, I noticed the sun was setting.

I hustled back to the Port Aransas Nature Preserve, which is actually on the eastern side of the Corpus Christi shipping channel, and captured some sunset shots.

I actually thought I’d missed the main event.

It actually got better. I’ll share a couple more sunset captures later.

If you can’t wait and/or want to see more pics from Sunday, they’re on Flickr and can be seen here.

Thanks for touring along with me. Did the bid shots bore you stiff?