Whooping Cranes - Wild Texas Forums: Parks, Travel & Recreation

Shannon · 10-20-2004, 01:42 PM

Republished from the newsletter of Captain Tommy Moore (no relation to Justin and I) for news on the Winter 2004 whooping cranes:

Quote:

Greetings to all!

The Bass Ranch’s helicopter pilot sighted the 1st Whoopers of the year yesterday morning on San Jose Island. San Jose Island is the barrier island that separates Aransas Bay from the Gulf of Mexico. This is very exciting news because not only have they arrived a bit early, we are expecting a record 200+ birds to arrive this year.

It is also rumored that we could have multiple sets of “twins” this year. It has been very rare for two juveniles to arrive with a nesting pair of adult birds.

The Aransas/Wood Buffalo flock is the world’s only wild migrating flock of Whooping Cranes. Of course, the best way to see these magnificent birds is traveling through the Aransas National Wildlife Refuge aboard Skimmer, our 40-foot shallow draft birding vessel. We will cruise the shorelines helping you identify the outstanding number of species that reside or travel through our area.

We will run scheduled trips from November 13th through the end of March. If you can get to Rockport between Thanksgiving and Christmas you should find glorious weather, excellent birding, and small crowds. Early in the season there are plenty of wolfberries and blue crabs for the whoopers to eat. Things get exciting because all of the families are sparring to sort out their territories as the rest of the flock arrives. The Juveniles have a lot of color and are fun to watch as they still rely heavily on their parents to feed them. Remember, our 7:30 trip goes no matter what and we need a min 10 for a 1:00 pm trip. We see more species in the mornings but the whoopers are always exceptional! We will be closed on Wednesdays this year but will be available for large groups.

The Rockport-Fulton area always has an abundance of birds. Our coastal trips over the last two weeks of September produced an impressive list of birds:

Great Blue Heron
Great Egret
Brown Pelican
American White Pelican
Double Crested Cormorant
Neotropic Cormorant
Magnificent Frigatebird
Snowy Egret
Little Blue Heron
Tricolored Heron
Reddish Egret
Cattle egret
Green Heron
Black Crowned Night Heron
Yellow Crowned Night Heron
White Ibis
White-Faced Ibis
Roseate Spoonbill
Mottled Duck
Turkey Vulture
White-tailed Hawk
Osprey
Crested Caracara
Clapper Rail
Black-bellied Plover
American Oystercatcher
Black-necked Stilt
Lesser Yellowlegs
Willet
Spotted Sandpiper
Long-billed Curlew
Ruddy Turnstone
Whimbrel
Sanderling
Least Sandpiper
Short-billed Dowitcher
Laughing Gull
Ring-billed Gull
Herring Gull
Lesser Black-backed Gull
Caspian Tern
Royal Tern
Sandwich Tern
Forster’s Tern
Gull-billed tern
Black Tern
Common Tern
Mourning Dove
Eurasian Collared Dove
Barn Swallow
Bank Swallow
Northern Mockingbird
Great-tailed Grackle
Belted Kingfisher
Sedge Wren
Texas Seaside Sparrow
Groove-bill Ani
Orchard Oriole
Blue-Wing teal
Black Skimmer
Carolina Wren
White-Eyed Vireo
Semipalmated Plover
American Bittern
American Kestrel
Marbled Godwit
American Avocet

We saw our first Peregrine Falcon of the year on the marker at Long Reef Sunday evening. Some of these birds are here for the winter and some are just passing through on their migration further south. If one had the opportunity to do some inland birding in our area this number of species could very well be doubled.

New this year!

This year in addition to our Coastal Tours we will be offering Inland Birding Tours. We have teamed up with private ranches in the area representing over 15,000 acres of the extremely diverse habitat that make up the Texas Coastal Bend. These ranches are all located on geographic borders that act as “traps” for various species. Ranch owners, managers and local guides will take you on ½ day and full day tours. The combination of a coastal trip aboard skimmer and one or more inland trips will allow you to experience the full potential of our area in the shortest amount of time. Please check out the Birding Page on our website for tour details and pricing.

We are proud to announce have signed a sponsorship agreement with Nikon Sport Optics. We have 3 Nikon Scopes on board this year as well as premium Nikon binoculars available for rent and demonstration. We have added a birding optics pro shop featuring Nikon Binoculars & Scopes priced from $65 to $1300. We also have accessories such as cleaning systems and harnesses. If you are in the market for birding optics, you now have the opportunity to try out various Nikon products in the field so you can confidently choose the product that is right for you and your budget.

For those of you in the San Antonio Radio listening area, we will be doing a live birding report every Saturday at 2:10 pm during the Wildbirds Unlimited Birding Show on KLUP AM 930.

Special thanks to all of you that helped make our 1st year a great success. We hope you will join us again this year.

Happy Birding!

Capt. Tommy & Darcy Moore
Rockport Birding and Kayak Adventures
Toll Free 877 TX BIRDS
(361) 727- 0643
www.RockportAdventures.com

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