Sunday, December 16, 2012

Mustang Island, Texas

Corpus Christi Airport Photo Display
We traveled to Corpus Christi to watch our no-longer-fledgling gain his full plumage on his wings. While there, we drove with some friends out onto Mustang Island to see the sights - and me get in a little birding. South Texas is a birder's paradise - this our second trip there. Even in the Corpus Christi Airport, there is a nice display of wildlife photographs being displayed.

Roseate Spoonbill - Photoshop
I have found, that different species have different tolerances before fright-flight. A flock of Roseate Spoonbills launched themselves when I came into sight of them resting in a wetland just off the main road through the island. When blowing up the image to the right, it was pretty grainy because of the distance the bird was away from when I took the shot. So in the spirit of the art display at the airport, I used the Photoshop software Artistic/Watercolor feature to make the image presentable. As an added feature, off to the upper left of the picture is a front-on spoonbill standing on the bank of the pond - its spoon-shaped bill can be obviously seen. This kind of gives the composition a bit of a naturalist artist appearance.

Below I am posting a series of bird photos taken from the break water south of Port Aransas, and a few from the wetland south of where I saw the spoonbills. (Identification will come later.)

Brown Pelican

Ruddy Turnstone

Great Blue Heron

Black-necked Stilt

Boat-tailed Grackel

Redhead Duck