Texas Birds and Boats

Plus a 'Christmas gift' of RSV

I’m getting a late start to 2025 here on Substack but now that I’m back from my trip, and back in the land of the living, I hope everyone had a wonderful holiday and New Year. I had a productive trip to the coastal bend and south Texas, although there wasn’t nearly the quantity or variety of birds as last year’s trip. I finally had a chance to do a quick review of my photos, and I have thousands of photographs to sort through and edit so please be patient.

The weather was perfect for most of the trip: sunny and mid-60s to low-70s, with a few days in the low 80s. My artist friend and I began our trip in Rockport TX, in a cute AirBnB for the first 9 days. We spent our days exploring coastal areas along Aransas Bay, the Rockport/Fulton/Corpus Christi marinas, Conn Brown Harbor in Aransas Pass, wetlands and the South Jetty in Port Aransas, and driving along the beach at Padre Island National Seashore. Our evenings were spent enjoying the local restaurants along with a good cold beer. Man, I wish I could get some of that food here in New Jersey!

Great Blue Heron, Corpus Christi Marina, Brown Pelican, American Avocet, Port Aransas South Jetty, Royal Terns

For the next 4 days, we stayed in Port Isabel and spent most of our time at the South Padre Island Birding and Nature Center. We had some very foggy mornings and we lost one full day to rain, but by then we welcomed a rest day. While we really enjoyed photographing the birds at the SPI Birding and Nature Center, the rest of South Padre Island is too much of a kitschy tourist trap for my taste. The winds were brisk the entire time and we didn’t try driving on the beach due to the deep sand at the entrance points. We returned to Rockport for the final day and night to avoid an extremely long drive back to IAH in Houston for my flight home.

It was very exciting to end 2024 with a life bird, the Neotropic Cormorant, photographed at the South Padre Island Birding and Nature Center. Its typical range is slightly inland and along the Gulf coast of Texas and Louisiana, southward through Mexico, Central America, and South America. While nearly identical to a Double-crested Cormorant, The Neotropic Cormorant has a smaller body and longer tail, but the distinguishing feature in adults is the v-shaped white outline extending from the corners of the mouth and under the chin. They also develop white plumes on the side of their head in breeding season, similar to Double crested Cormorants. You can see in the first photo the tiniest bit of white plume developing.

My first photograph of 2025 was another lifer although not a bird. It’s a Guatemalan Cracker Butterfly. Its range is from Costa Rica north through Central America to Mexico. It is a rare stray to the lower Rio Grande Valley of South Texas where I photographed it at the South Padre Island Birding and Nature Center as well. Major thanks to the nice young man who pointed it out to a group of us. Such amazing camouflage! My first bird of 2025 was a Tricolored Heron, always a welcome sight no matter how often I see them.

I also brought home a nasty case of RSV (Respiratory Syncytial Virus). With an early morning flight out of Newark, I rushed out of the house without an KN95 mask, and it never crossed my mind to search for one at the airport…duh! A little boy, maybe 4 or 5, was in the row in front of me. Anyone who flies knows that it’s easy to see through the gaps between seats and I had a clear view of him. He coughed, and coughed, and COUGHED for the entire flight and his father never asked him to cover his mouth. I could just feel the germs swarming all over me!

It started about 6 days into the trip with a runny nose. Oh, allergies I thought. Then after several more days, sinus pressure but I was still in denial and insisted it was allergies. Then a cough developed that my asthma inhaler and Dayquil controlled…just a cold I told myself. When I got home, it really hit me with a nasty cough, head congestion, fever, and fatigue. I tested negative for Covid, but it was too late to test for RSV, although my PCP was pretty sure that’s what I had. Get vaccinated if you haven’t already!

Current events have definitely impacted my mood, so writing interesting content for Substack is challenging right now. I know this is a very stressful time for a lot of us so I hope my photos can bring a bit of beauty and peace into your lives. Stay tuned for many more photos and thanks, as always, for following along.

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