The following is a guest post, written by my husband, Stephen Hannington. I have been a keen bird watcher since I was six years old when a cousin introduced me to the world… Continue reading
They don’t necessarily roost in the same corner every night–they move around. At this point we had created a bit of a birder traffic jam in the neighborhood.
The milky white of the owl was startling and her yellow eyes locked on us with appropriate caution and concern. I had to remind myself to breathe.
I wasn’t expecting the Eastern Phoebe, but there he was, a juvenile, swooping for insects and returning to his same branch.
First there were about 50 birds up in the sky circling overhead. Then another group came in—this time a hundred or so. It was still pretty light outside. Then bigger groups of Purple… Continue reading
Nighthawks have been a new bird for me here in Texas. I’ve heard them and seen them overhead as they come out at sunset when I’d leave the grocery store, but I never got a good look at one until this day at Anahuac where we saw around 25.
I turned to the open water that revealed hundreds of egrets, herons and Roseate Spoonbills, perched, sitting on nests, flying in, flying out, stretching their wings, squabbling over space on a branch, preening, snoozing, or just looking pretty.
When the adult was nowhere in sight I heard its hen-like kek-kek-kek. She was calling her chicks who popped their heads up to see where she was.
The trees were dripping with egrets and roseate spoonbills and though a soggy day, it meant very few birders were at the rookery.
We were late. This rare and endangered little hummer only hangs out in the area between December and March and we were there in early April and no one seems to know where it goes for the rest of the year.
