Here’s what I found from reading my Sibley’s Field Guide to Birds of Eastern North America.  The Red Shouldered Hawk has orange bars across its chest whereas the Red Tailed Hawk has more of a streaked chest and belly.  Sure the Red Tailed Hawk has a red tail, but sometimes it’s hard to see the tail of these hawks.

Red Shouldered Hawk

Here’s the same bird right before it flew off.

Red Shouldered Hawk Getting Ready To Fly

A Little Blue Heron goes hunting for food.  First the bird checks the left hand side.

Little Blue Heron Hunting For Food

Nothing on the left, how about behind?

Little Blue Heron Staring Intently

Whoa!  There’s something!

Little Blue Heron Dives For Food

Damn, didn’t catch a thing.

Little Blue Heron Catches Nothing

This was actually an accidental picture.  I was just trying to take a picture of a White Ibis.  It wasn’t until I got home and started reviewing the pictures that I noticed that this bird had caught a Crawfish.

In this first picture, you can just make out it’s a Crawfish in its mouth as you can see the see the pinchers.  In the foreground is a Common Moorhen.

White Ibis Eating Crawfish

In the second picture you can again see the Crawfish pinshers as well as its tail.

White Ibis Eating Crawfish2

The Crawfish is about to become a meal.  For the last time you can see the pinshers poking out of the Ibis’ bill.

White Ibis Eating Crawfish3

I started off seeing some gators swimming through the water.

Alligator Swimming

The gator below seemed content to warm up while in the water.

Gator Warming Up In Water

Then as I’m walking around 40 Acre Lake, I saw the biggest gator in the park.  I wonder how old this gator is?

Largest Gator At Brazos Bend

Walking around the corner I come upon yet another gator.  This one was resting on a log in the water.

Gator Resting On Log

Up until now, most of the gators were either in the water or a fair distance away.  Not so with this next gator.  He was only a few feet off the walking trail.

Gator Sleeping Covered In Duckweed

So much for the gators well off the trail.  This gator was laying on the grass and was absolutely huge!

Gator Closeup Shot

It’s over now.  Every gator was sleeping on the grass right next to the walking trails.

Two Gators Resting

I was reasonably comfortable walking on the trails despite the close proximity of the gators.  Not so with this guy.  All of the other gators had their head down and their eyes closed.  There was also a few feet between the gator and the trail.  This guy was head up, eyes open, and right next to the trail.  I was worried he was going to charge after me.  Thankfully he didn’t.

Young Gator Near Walking Trail

Last, but not least there was this big guy.

Gator Resting With Mouth Open

All in all it was a pretty good day.  I wish I would have seen more birds, but seeing so many gators was refreshing and new.

Tomorrow morning I plan on heading out to Brazos Bend State Park.  A day or two after that I plan on revisiting Anahuac National Wildlife Refuge.

I’ll also probably visit the Houston Arboretum, but after that I am undecided.  I’d like to try a couple of new places I haven’t been before.

For any birders reading this blog I would welcome any suggestions.

By the way, the weather here in Houston has been absolutely beautiful.  Other than this upcoming Saturday, this area is supposed to be nothing but sunshine.  I love this type of weather!  Most all of my plants in the backyard are starting to bloom, even some plants that I thought were doomed from the cold weather.

I’m still waiting on the Monarchs to show up as well as the Hummingbirds.  I’ve counted a total of 10 Purple Martins, 2 of which seem to be staying in my Martin house.  The other 8 must have found a home relatively close by, just not at my place.

For you long time readers (at least since last Summer) remember Michael J. Frog (American Bullfrog)?  Well he’s still around.  He’s hanging around my pond right now.  I don’t think it’s quite warm enough for him to venture over to my pool area (where he hangs out all Summer).  He’s been around the last 4 years.  The funny thing is, I’ve never heard him calling for a mate, and I’ve never seen another Bullfrog around other than him.

Oh yea, why visit this blog?  Well for one, I plan on taking lots of pictures over the next few days.  I’m assuming many of the photos will be of birds, but I’m also going to try and get some other wildlife shots as well.  I’d also like to try and hook up my birdcam near Coco’s (my African Grey Parrot) cage so y’all can get a taste of her vocabulary.  Her latest phrase is from the McDonald’s commercial:

“Bada-da-da-da, I’m Lovin’ It”

Speaking of Butterflies, during the snow we recently had, Leecy and I went out and collected all the Monarch Caterpillars we could find so that they wouldn’t freeze to death.  It’s been a couple of weeks and those Caterpillars are now starting to hatch.  Just today we had 5 hatch.  I took them all outside and 3 of them did fly off after a short period of time, whereas 2 of them decided to just hang around because they weren’t quite ready.

I brought the two back inside since it is supposed to storm later today, so I can try and release them again tomorrow.  There will probably be some others that may hatch tomorrow and “supposedly” the sun will be out as well.

On this visit, I’m happy to report that I didn’t get a flat tire!

For the first time I actually filled up my entire 16gb compact flash (CF) card, and I didn’t bring a spare.  One of the reasons I filled up my CF card is I’m trying to change up my photography based on advice I’ve been given.  I used to take 1 picture, then move on to the next picture.  Now I’m trying to shoot multiple frames per second.  The good news is that I’m occasionally getting some shots that I surely would have missed, whereas the bad news that because I’m shooting both RAW + JPEG I’m really filling up my CF card.  I’m also trying to shoot without a tripod as I have no doubt missed many shots because of the time it would take me to set up my tripod.

Enough about the technical stuff.  Now for the fun stuff.  I saw a ton of birds this outing, much more than I saw during my last visit.  It also helped that I had some experienced bird photographers with me.  Weather-wise the trip was fine, not too cold, not too warm.  Lighting-wise it was horrendous.  It was a very cloudy day, all day, so I had to shoot with high ISO settings to compensate for the lack of decent light.

On the birding side of things it was a great day to see a wide variety of birds.  We saw 7 types of Raptors, male and female Vermilion Flycatchers (beautiful birds), White Ibis, White Pelicans, Brown Pelicans, Sparrows (see the Savannah in a future post), Grebes, Clapper Rails, Egrets, Yellowlegs, Herons, and Ducks.  Of course, just because I saw these birds mentioned above, doesn’t mean I managed to get some great pictures of all of them.

Oh before I forget, not only were there a wide variety of birds, but there were also bunch of cowboys herding their cattle through the Refuge.  I had no idea that they still did this but it sure was entertaining to watch!

I’ll post pictures from this outing today and throughout the week.  Would love to hear your feedback.

Brown Pelican Diving Anahuac National Wildlife Refuge

Brown Pelican’s were very rare, and were on the Endangered Species list until November 2009.  Their reason for decline was because of pesticides which would cause their egg shells to be very thin.  It’s pretty miraculous that these birds were estimated to only be around 10-15 individuals in Texas during the 1970′s, and now are doing pretty well.