Anne Elliott's photos with the keyword: Rockport

DAY 3 is DONE - yay! Haven't decided yet, but I might just post a few local photos that I have taken recently, mainly so that I don't forget to post them, rather than start on Day 4. HAPPY EASTER, everyone! It seems an appropriate time to think of all those (around the world) who have been affected by the enormous damage that Notre Dame, Paris, has recently gone through. I can't remember if I have seen this stunning Cathedral twice or three times, many, many years ago. I was reading on the Weather Network this evening that three beehives had been installed in Notre Dame during 2013 as part of a city-wide initiative to boost dwindling bee numbers in the city. Nearly 200,000 bees have been found alive below Notre Dame's main roofing. Having flooded my photostream with Whooping Cranes the last few days, and then with Cormorants, this morning, I posted a few odds and ends of plants and birds taken at a beach. Tonight I added th elast 15 images from Day 3, mainly taken at the unexpected rookery in Rockport. After leaving the beach, someone happened to notice either herons or cranes on the top of a beautiful stand of trees. We decided to check it out and as we rounded a corner of the road, we couldn't believe our eyes! We had come across another rookery, this one in Rockport. There were quite a few Great Blue Herons, Egrets, and at least one Black-crowned Night Heron. I posted a dreadful photo of the latter, just for the record. The only reason I spotted it was because of the bright red eye. People are not allowed to approach the rookery, of course. I was reading that, after Hurricane Harvey in 2017, people did an amazing job of clearing out all the debris of broken branches under and around the trees at the rookery - and then realized that they had removed all the branches that the birds would be needing to rebuild their nests. Needless to say, that was put right by adding piles of broken branches nearby.

The Crested Caracara is one of my favourite birds to see and photograph, and we were so lucky that this one was perched in a bare tree close to the road. Wish we had them up here in Alberta : ) This one is brown rather than black, so I am guessing it is an immature bird. Just added 9 more photos this morning, still from Day 2 of our 13-day trip to South Texas. Another 3 or 4 images and I will be ready to start on Day 3, our second full day in South Texas. A day on a tiny boat, watching Whooping Cranes and other species. Having posted so many images from basically our first full day, I rather think I will have to be somewhat more 'disciplined" in my choices, or I will never finish : ) Had hoped to finish Day 2 today - almost there. Later morning, on Day 2 of our holiday, 20 March 2019, after our drive to The Big Tree and then along the Lamar Beach Road area, we went to the Connie Hagar Cottage Sanctuary. This is a small, 6.25 acre nature sanctuary that exists in Rockport itself. Such a peaceful place to wander, watching for plants and butterflies as well as birds. There is a small pond, where we watched a young White Ibis, a Great Egret and a Snowy Egret all feeding together. Lovely to see their reflections in the water, too. A couple of nights ago, I was Googling and came across an article from 19 March 2019, telling about a group of students who chose to spend their Spring Break week helping to tidy the Sanctuary. Good for them! "The Connie Hagar Cottage Sanctuary is a mixture of oak motte and native grasses. This is the original location of the famed Rockport Cottages, operated by Connie and Jack Hagar. Mrs. Hagar moved to Rockport in 1935 and devoted her life to documenting birdlife in the Rockport area." From link below. aransaspathways.com/connie-hagar-cottage-sanctuary/ After spending some time at this Sanctuary, we went to the Aransas First Cove Harbor Wetlands Sanctuary, followed by eventually finding the Newbury Park Hummingbird Garden. This was definitely not what we were expecting - just a small area of grass and trees with picnic tables. However, we did see a beautiful Pipevine Swallowtail butterfly and a small, purple Winecup flower. Afterwards, a repeat drive along Cape Velero Drive and area turned up some nice birds, too.

My friends left the ID for these birds as just "Sparrows". If anyone can help with the ID, five of us would be really grateful. Thank you! OMG! It's 4:30 pm, 11 April 2019, and it has just started SNOWING!!! A heavy fall of huge flakes, but I doubt anything will settle, as it was raining a bit today. OK, I was wrong - it DID settle. However, it should melt reasonably fast. Just added 12 more odds and ends this afternoon, still from Day 2 of our 13-day trip to South Texas. Having posted so many images from basically our first full day, I rather think I will have to be somewhat more 'disciplined" in my choices, or I will never finish : ) Had hoped to finish Day 2 today - almost there. Later morning, on Day 2 of our holiday, 20 March 2019, after our drive to The Big Tree and then along the Lamar Beach Road area, we went to the Connie Hagar Cottage Sanctuary. This is a small, 6.25 acre nature sanctuary that exists in Rockport itself. Such a peaceful place to wander, watching for plants and butterflies as well as birds. There is a small pond, where we watched a young White Ibis, a Great Egret and a Snowy Egret all feeding together. Lovely to see their reflections in the water, too. A couple of nights ago, I was Googling and came across an article from 19 March 2019, telling about a group of students who chose to spend their Spring Break week helping to tidy the Sanctuary. Good for them! "The Connie Hagar Cottage Sanctuary is a mixture of oak motte and native grasses. This is the original location of the famed Rockport Cottages, operated by Connie and Jack Hagar. Mrs. Hagar moved to Rockport in 1935 and devoted her life to documenting birdlife in the Rockport area." From link below. aransaspathways.com/connie-hagar-cottage-sanctuary/ After spending some time at this Sanctuary, we went to the Aransas First Cove Harbor Wetlands Sanctuary, followed by eventually finding the Newbury Park Hummingbird Garden. This was definitely not what we were expecting - just a small area of grass and trees with picnic tables. However, we did see a beautiful Pipevine Swallowtail butterfly and a small, purple Winecup flower. Afterwards, a repeat drive along Cape Velero Drive and area turned up some nice birds, too.

Later morning, on Day 2 of our holiday, 20 March 2019, after our drive to The Big Tree and then along the Lamar Beach Road area, we went to the Connie Hagar Cottage Sanctuary. This is a small, 6.25 acre nature sanctuary that exists in Rockport itself. Such a peaceful place to wander, watching for plants and butterflies as well as birds. There is a small pond, where we watched a young White Ibis, a Great Egret and a Snowy Egret all feeding together. Lovely to see their reflections in the water, too. I will get to those photos shortly. Last night, I was Googling and came across an article from 19 March 2019, telling about a group of students who chose to spend their Spring Break week helping to tidy the Sanctuary. Good for them! "The Connie Hagar Cottage Sanctuary is a mixture of oak motte and native grasses. This is the original location of the famed Rockport Cottages, operated by Connie and Jack Hagar. Mrs. Hagar moved to Rockport in 1935 and devoted her life to documenting birdlife in the Rockport area." From link below. aransaspathways.com/connie-hagar-cottage-sanctuary/ After spending some time at this Sanctuary, we went to the Aransas First Cove Harbor Wetlands Sanctuary, followed by eventually finding the Newbury Park Hummingbird Garden. This was definitely not what we were expecting - just a small area of grass and trees with picnic tables. However, we did see a beautiful Pipevine Swallowtail butterfly and a small, purple Winecup flower. Afterwards, a repeat drive along Cape Velero Drive turned up some nice birds, too.

Day 1 is finished - only a few photos taken on a local evening drive. These Turkey Vultures were seen on our first day in Texas. Our plane had arrived in Houston at noon on 19 March 2019 and then we had a very long drive along the coast to get to Rockport, where we stayed at the Pelican Bay Resort for three nights. A delightful place, with small cabins. Once we had unloaded our vehicle, we went for a local drive, including along Cape Velero Drive, where we saw these Vultures feeding on part of a carcass. They may not be among the most beautiful birds of the world, but they are very impressive and do an excellent job of cleaning up. In the evening of 31 March 2019, four friends and I arrived back in Calgary after an amazing 13-day birding trip (19-31 March 2019) to southern Texas! The following morning, I grabbed four photos to give an idea of what kinds of things we saw - four of my better photos, I should add : ) As usual, for me, it was not a trip to photograph just birds, but to capture anything else of interest, of beauty. This included flowers, insects, a few fungi, wild animals, and so on. As always, I missed quite a few of the birds that were seen by my friends. They are excellent birders and spend so much time birding and taking photos, and so are able to spot and capture the tiniest, fastest of birds. I am happy to have seen every bird that I did see! Everything from Whooping Cranes down to a small Yellow-throated Warbler. Unlike on our trip to Ontario and Quebec last year, we were thrilled to see Northern Cardinals close enough to photograph this holiday. Right now, I can't remember names of places, and I have a huge amount of getting organized with where and when I saw most things. However, I just wanted to let you know I am home, feeling back to being motivated to take photos again, after totally losing interest the last few weeks before we left on this exciting trip. I used both my old Canon SX60 and my less old Nikon P900 on this trip. The advantage of the P900 is that it has GPS and automatically loads on the map on Flickr. It may not always give an accurate location, but hopefully it will be close enough. Part way through the holiday, it looked like the Canon was taking somewhat better photos than the newer Nikon, so I was using the Canon as my main camera. I have now downloaded all of my images to my computer. Such a mixed bag - some reasonable shots and others just about as bad as they could possibly be, but I will be posting them on Flickr for the record. Once again, I will post photos in very roughly the order in which they were taken, to help give me a much better idea of just where we went and what we saw and when. Usually, I try not to post more than one photo at a time of a certain bird or flower. However, that hasn't happened so far with my Texas photos! Just wait till I get to the Whooping Cranes - at one point, we got the chance to watch a family of three feeding, giving us the opportunity to take lots of images. Apologies for posting so many photos too often. It took me about 10 months to complete editing and posting from our trip last year, to Ontario and Quebec! I really don't want to take that long this time. I only finished a few weeks before going on this Texas trip.