Egrets, herons hunker by the thousands

On the drive home from Baton Rouge to Beaumont the other day, I was watching several flocks of egrets heading west along side of me.  They seemed to slow up at the next intersection, so I decided to pull off the I-10 there to see if I could catch a picture of a passing flock..  When I  pulled to a stop, I found a fly-in taking place for thousands of birds which filled nearly every branch of the trees for a couple football fields in length.  They were mostly cattle egret, but a few anhingas, ibis and blue heron were mixing in -- apparently, unable to pass up a fait do-do.


They were still flocking in from the south and east, circling the feathery fete and then trying to push their way in for a branch -- occupied or not.  There were bird feathers floating in the air and the loud cacophony of  the flustering cluster had the hum of a Texas football game after the Hail Mary fell just beyond reach.  I surmised they were gathering in advance of northern front  bringing lightning and rain. I was in a hurry to snap as many photos as quickly as I could since the rain front and the missing sun were racing to see who could bring on the darkness first.


As I was pulling back onto the I-10, I stopped again because the service road offered another vantage point where birds were bunched on de-leafed trees.  I-10 truck drivers, zooming past, who saw me shooting pictures, blasted their horns.  It took me about three of these passing blares to realize they were trying to stir up the birds for me to get a better shot.


I snapped off a bunch of shots, but it was hard to get close to the trees and the gathering gloom smothered all the camera tricks I tried.


It was an interesting diversion from a monotonous drive.

Shoot for the star

Linda and I had the grandchildren this weekend.  This was the drop-off-- we met our daughter Vicky in Jennings, LA,  to pass the grandkids over.  Sullivan took the time to show his climbing skills at the park on the Interstate.

He was about halfway down when I decided to take a shot.   Always the kind of drama that he is,  and letting no good opportunity for showmanship go,  he climbed back to the top and told "okay,  now shoot."

The climbing piece resembles a derrick.  Makes sense, sense it is the Oil and Gas Park, in the town that since 1901 has claimed the moniker of "Cradle of Louisiana Oil."
--steve buser

Jennings, Louisiana, kids

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Sunset through the gun line

This is the traffic coming over the Calcasieu River bridge in Lake Charles,La as we head into the sunset and toward, Beaumont, TX.  You can seen them in this picture, because it is too dark, but the railings of the steep bridge are lined with crossed pistols (by one count there are 10,572 dueling pistols on the 6,600-foot bridge).
--steve buser

Lake Charles, Louisiana, Bridge

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Bird Brothers

Two birds not of-a-feather share an old stand out in the swamp of the Louisiana coast, near Texas.  I suppose both are envious of each other, the large egret is jealous of the gull's maneuvering ability and ability to get into tight spaces.  The gull would be jealous of the egrets sharp beak that allows it to stab larger prey in the water and its long legs which allow the egret to wade in good fishing grounds.

--steve buser

Leg up on the competition

When you live in a marsh, you look for any vantage point you can get for a lookout stand.   Being the first mover, often makes the difference between eating and being hungry.   This egret, down in the coastal plain of Louisiana, just across the causeway bridge from Texas, stands in front of the new Sabine Pass Liquified Natural Gas facility.
--steve buser

Egrets, Sabine Pass, Sabine Pass LNG

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Bird doing dooty

I didn't get the focus very good, but I thought this picture had it's own merits.

Checkout the bird on the left, she is not only helping stand lookout, but taking care of other basic callings, too.
--steve buser

Birds, Louisiana, Cameron Parish

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Drought deadly for wildlife

A Killdeer heads to the middle of where it's life sustaining pond used to be. This was shot a few weeks ago when the drought was just sitting in hard. Hopefully, this area along by the Cameron Parish coast got some of the rain from the last few days.

--steve buser

Killdeer, birds, drought

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New bridge will be ready to battle storms

Hurricane Rita slammed the Causeway bridge that connect Texas's Pleasure Island and Louisiana's Cameron Parish on Highway 82, the Gulf Beach Highway. The next Hurricane will have a harder time of disrupting the flow of traffic, as a new highrise bridge is being built to replace the drawbridge. Here the old is to the right and the new climbs on the left over the pass into Lake Sabine.
--steve buser

Highway 82, Cameron Parish, Louisiana, Texas

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Find the kids, quick!

Mom and Dad Black-Necked Stilts (Himantopus mexicanus mexicanus) scurry looking for the little ones when I stepped from my car to take a picture. If you look very closely you can see a rusty, blurry line across the middle of the picture. That is the barbed wire fence I was standing near (and thus it is way out of focus) -- which means they had nothing to fear from me. Not knowing anything about how fences work, the pair scrambled their kids into the brush and then tried to decoy me to other parts of the sparse pond -- two weeks of dry weather have dried up many of the watering holes.
--steve buser

Black-Necked Stilts, Himantopus mexicanus mexicanus

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Cormorants: I got your back

Even these young Double Crested Cormorants (Phalacrocorax auritus ) understand the law of survival. "I got your back, you've got mine." I think the pile of weeds they are sitting on along Hwy 82 in Cameron Parish, just near the Texas line is a remnant of Hurricane Ike which send a wall of water through this area last year.
--steve buser

Double Crested Cormorants, Phalacrocorax auritus, Cormorants, Louisiana, Cameron, Texas

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Wished I would have studied Red-Winged Blackbird

Talk about being sorry I didn't take Red-Winged Blackbird (Agelaius phoeniceus) in school instead of French, Spanish and Latin! It would have come in real handy today.

This fellow kept a steady chatter going, aimed at me. My guess is it went something like "Nest? What Nest? Come over here and see if I have a nest. Would I be over here if I had a nest of darling little ones over there? Over here! Come over here! You getting cold.

The fellow was on Highway 82 just over the line into Louisiana. I had gone down to Port Arthur to look for good birding spots and decided to run down Pleasure Island and across into Louisiana and Cameron Parish. It was a productive afternoon.
--steve buser

Red-Winged Blackbird, Agelaius phoeniceus, Cameron Parish, Louisiana

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