South Padre Island and Bay Cruise – Part 2
/Our second stop was the South Padre Island Convention Center. There are boardwalks on one side of the building for birds (and other wildlife) viewing. My best pictures there were: black-necked stilt,
An alligator that was still at first but then headed toward the shore…stalking
A Common Gallinule that was making its way close to the shore (fortunately it wandered further upslope…no drama),
And a Green heron.
We walked to an area where there was a small area of planted vegetation. The small birds there were too hard to photography in the vegetation, but there were quite a few monarchs roosting…a little rest before continuing their migration.
We continued around the convention center buildings. There was a Little Blue Heron on an abutment,
A pelican almost too far out in the water (I didn’t notice the grebe until I looked at the image on the larger screen of my computer),
A Great Egret (not the black legs and feet),
And a Reddish Egret.
At the front of the convention center, I took some pictures of the facades. These must hold up to coastal storms.
There were mud flats on the other side of the convention center….mostly drying since the tide was out. There were White Pelicans,
Black Skimmers (in the foreground), and
A strutting Tricolor Heron.
As we walked back to the bus, there were some White Ibis walking across the parking lot with us. The underside of the bill was different than I expected!
Closer to the bus were some laughing gulls in the parking lot. One seemed to yawn….a good ‘last’ picture for this segment of the field trip.
