Trip19

A quiet day. A catch-up day. No birding.

Watched both games yesterday. Our record is still perfect. No team we have rooted for has advanced. We’ll let you know when we pick a favorite for the Superbowl so you’ll know where to put your money.

We haven’t tried to drag the Jeep sideways for over a week now, and we’re close to Corpus Christi, so we thought we’d go ahead and replace the worn front tires. Judy got the names and addresses of the larger tire stores in Corpus Christi, and I put the addresses into the Navigator to find out which was closest and most convenient for us. It worked. We prioritized the list. We called the best one. Then we called another. And another. And another. With all the tire sizes available, why would Jeep have to go and invent a new one? None of the existing ones already invented would work? I don’t think so.

Apparently our 2002 Jeep is still new enough, that the round of tire replacements has not begun. Basically, we’re driving on tires that no one has ever heard of, except for Jeep designers of course. We decided the front tires are just fine until we get home. Then our local tire shop can order them for us.

We struck out with that effort, but the oatmeal and coffee while sitting in our sunny front window went well. We signed up for a couple more nights here. I messed with the water pump and some fittings. Judy did some laundry. Called the office to see if Jamie needed to send anything to us here to sign. Had lunch. Watched the northern shovelers, cormorant, killdeer, and snipe in the pond in front of us. We don’t get to see snipe very often. Decided to go find Dovie.

We find Dovie every year. Judy has a couple shirts hand painted by Dovie. Egrets, pelicans, spoonbills, that sort of thing. Most every year, Dovie is not at the shop in Rockport we found her at the year before. We always find her, though. Sometimes we find her at her house. This year we found her at “4 the Birds”. We drove to Port Aransas. Struggled through a 20 minute ferry wait by watching smooth gray bottlenose dolphins rolling through the water. And pelicans. But this is not a birding day so we didn’t look at the pelicans very much.

These are sixteen car ferryboats. Two rows of four cars each on either side on the control tower(Bridge?). The part that holds the ferryboat driver, anyway. On the way down from Galveston, we crossed this ferry with the Bounder. Towing. They put us on one side of the ferry, along with one other car. Eight cars on one side, the Bounder, Jeep, and a pickup truck on the other. So. One Bounder = six cars.

We drove on. We were headed for Rockport. It wasn’t a birding day, so we didn’t slow down as we passed the kingfishers, cormorants, and ducks. There were probably some ducks in there we hadn’t seen yet, but we were focused. Driven.

Judy visited with Dovie. I got to run around the marina. Dovie agreed to make a couple things for Judy. We’ll pick them up at the end of the week. We drove on. We took a walk around the Rockport Art Center. We looked for our brick. I sent them money and they agreed to put a brick in the walk for us. We never found the brick. They were closed today, so we couldn't ask them where to look. We drove around the marina and wrote down the phone numbers of some birding tours. They run tours by boat over to the Aransas National Wildlife Refuge to see the wintering whooping cranes. It's not just about whooping cranes, even though that would be reason enough. They put an ornithologist on the boat and he’ll point out fifty species of birds or so on the trip. We've done it a few times before. It’s always an interesting trip. We decided to drive up to Goose Island State Park to take a look. We’ll probably move to there next, but we drove up there anyway. We didn’t stop to look at the ducks in the Bay, because this is not a birding day. Well, we did stop to look at the cormorant, because he didn’t look quite right. In the Binocs, he turned out to be a loon. Cool. We drove on.

Passing the Aransas Bay park, Judy told me to turn the car around and go back. We were in construction traffic, so that took some doing. Eventually we did get back to where she had spotted……

The Swan.

There are no swans here, so it made no sense at all for a swan to be in the bay, but there it was, The Swan. It was not a Trumpeter Swan. We’ve seen them. It was not a Tundra Swan. We’ve seen them. We looked in the book. It was a Mute Swan. It is not supposed to be here, but there it was. Unmistakable. An adult Mute Swan. A new bird for us. A pretty good score for a day when we’re not even birding. We watched it for a while, then moved on. To Goose Island. We cruised out onto the peninsula area to eyeball how the Bounder would fit. It’s right on the bay. We looked over the ducks in the water. What’s that? A Golden eye? We’ve never seen a Golden eye! A Common Golden eye. Not common for us. This day just keeps getting better. We struck up a conversation with some other birders there. We told them about the Mute Swan. They left to go find it. We watched a 30” cormorant swallow a 15” fish. That was impressive. We drove on. About ten feet. There was a little sparrow looking bird picking through the rubble on the shore. Big for a sparrow, but streaky chest like a sparrow. Like one of those crummy Savannah Sparrows. But it wasn’t a Savannah Sparrow. We looked some more. It didn’t act like a sparrow. It was walking instead of hopping. There is something else listed for here called a pipit. We’ve never seen a pipit, so we didn’t know if this was one or not. We looked it up. That’s it! An American Pipit! Three new birds in one day. A good day.

A tour of the forest part of the park. A visit with the resident birder. A quick ferry ride. Dolphins. Pelicans. Texas barbeque in Port Aransas. Raced the sun home.

A 150 mile day. Round trip in the Jeep.

Tomorrow. The adventure begins. One hundred twenty miles round trip down the beach. One hundred miles of that is four-wheel drive only.

We’ll take water. We have a shovel.