So many birds, so tired

Today Pamela and I drove from Corpus Christi to port Aransas and back before returning home. For that reason I’m tired as heck so I’m hitting the highlights.

First we drove down Shoreline Blvd in Corpus, where I’d never been. Whoa. There were beautiful old and newer homes to see! Corpus is t as ugly as it appears from the highway. We then went to a small and kind of rundown bird sanctuary, the Hans and Pat Suter Wildlife Sanctuary. We saw many interesting birds, plants and hundreds of Great Southern White butterflies. Enchanting.

After than visit we drove all across Mustang Island, which was new to my native Texan friend. It’s my dream marshland. Eventually we got to the Leonabelle Turner Birding Center.

There weren’t zillions of birds like the time I came during migration, but there were some good ones.

The best, most wonderful, and the most amazing sight we saw did not come through in photos, but was very clear through my binoculars. At first I thought it was Mississippi Kites, but they weren’t marked quite right, and their tails were forked, but very long. So when I got home I looked to see if kites were likely birds in Port Aransas this time of year. They were not.

What was large, flocking, black-and-white, and likely? The Magnificent Frigatebird! A bucket list bird of mine!

This is one cool seabird. I didn’t realize they’d come this close to the shore. They can fly for hours and hours and steal food from shorebirds (I guess that was today’s plan).

I immediately had to text Pamela about the ID. This was a memorable trip, even though the drive home was long!

Apologies for not sharing the plants I saw. Too tired!