High Island & Sabine Woods 4/23/12

Today our coach went to the fiberglass shop and to speed things up we elected to go to a motel for 3 days. I got on the internet and found a reasonable place to stay in Baytown east of Houston and near East Galveston Bay. From there we will visit High Island again.

I brought with us a crock pot of stew I had fixed yesterday plus lunch goodies, Super 8 serves breakfast. The next morning we are up early and off to High Island.

It was fairly quiet here in terms of what birds were around and what birds we could see.

This is Prothonotary Pond.

In the back of this clearing in the shade is a water drip feature that draws the birds in to bathe and drink. The trees in the foreground are Mulberry Trees and the birds love the fruit so they come to eat and drink.

They have built small bleachers so you can spy on the birds and rest at the same time. They must have spotted something at the water drip. While here we were told that at Sabine Woods a rare bird has been identified. It is Tropical Mockingbird, looks much like our Mockingbird but is darker and has a much longer tail. Since it was quiet here we decided to drive over there and see if we could find it. It would not have been much of a drive if we could have taken Hwy 87 but during hurricane Allen in 1980 the road disappeared and they have never replaced it. 

We arrived at Sabine Woods which is managed by the Texas Ornithology Society.

There is a covered area with picnic tables and as we talking with a man there, in flew the mockingbird and sat still long enough for us to get good looks.

This is the water drip feature at Sabine Woods and this White-winged Dove is trying it out. We had lunch then drove back to High Island where we stopped at Smith Oaks Sanctuary.

This is the rookery where there are hundreds of birds nesting. This is an island in the middle of Claybottom Pond. In 1994 Amoco donated this pond and adjacent acreage to the Houston Audubon. Once they took over the land and made it a no hunting area birds began nesting on the island. In 1995 50 heron nests were found and birds were flying in to roost every night. By 1997 332 pairs of birds nested on the island and the first pair of Roseate Spoonbills arrived. The number of pairs grew to 1,083 in 2003, and now it is unbelievable. They say that at sunset year round thousands of birds arrive at dusk to spend the night on the island. The most birds observed in one evening was 13,000.