Day 10, Rock Pigeon (feral), Birding and Nature Centre, South Padre Island, South Texas

Wednesday, 26 February 2020: our temperature early this morning is -1C (windchill -5C). Sunrise is at 7:27 am, and sunset is at 6:11 pm.

All six of the photos posted this morning were taken towards the end of Day 10 of our 13-day birding trip to South Texas in March 2019. The Birding and Nature Centre on South Padre Island was our last stop of the day, made because we found we had time to call in. We spent about two hours there on this first visit, seeing 29 species of bird. As usual, I did not see every one of these on the list. The following morning, we returned for our planned visit. This is such an amazing place to visit!

This day started off with leaving the hotel that we had driven to on Day 9, the Holiday Inn Express Hotel & Suites, Brownsville, and driving to the first stopping place for Day 10. We stayed at this hotel for three nights, before having to drive all the way back to Houston on 30 March, ready to fly back home to Calgary.

Our early morning drive on Day 10 started off with driving in the wrong direction for quite a distance. One fun thing that happened as a result of this mistake, was that we spotted two beautiful Agave plants growing on either side of someone's front gate. We stopped in awe at the gorgeous orange flowers that grew from the tip of each leaf spike. I had never seen anything like these before and, once I got back to Calgary, I searched and searched on Google Images for photos that would give me an ID for these plants. Nothing - absolutely nothing - so I thought they must be something really unusual. Indeed, they were, lol! Some time after our return home, Anne B sent an email saying, guess what, these flowers were fake! She had looked at a close-up and could see the fabric lines and some frayed edges. A fun memory.

Once we were heading in the right direction, we drove east from Brownsville to Boca Chica, which is on the coast of the Gulf of Mexico. The first bird we saw was a Meadowlark, perched on top of a Yucca plant along the Boca Chica Highway. Closer to Boca Chica Beach, there were police vehicles, and at one place we were stopped by two men. One told us we could not go any further, but the second man told us we could go on. Managed to get a couple of very quick photos of Laughing Gulls on the beach, and then we were told to leave. Apparently, there was going to be some test at the nearby SpaceX Space Launch Facility there. We were able to grab a couple of quick shots of the SpaceX prototype from the road, then quickly continued on our drive away from the area. Quite exciting.

"The SpaceX South Texas Launch Site is a spaceport and test at Boca Chica Village near Brownsville, Texas, for the private use of Space Exploration Technologies Corporation (SpaceX).
Its stated purpose is "to provide SpaceX an exclusive launch site that would allow the company to accommodate its launch manifest and meet tight launch windows." The launch site was originally intended to support launches of the Falcon 9 and Falcon Heavy launch vehicles as well as "a variety of reusable suborbital launch vehicles",[4] but in 2018, SpaceX announced a change of plans, stating that the site would be used exclusively for SpaceX Starship. SpaceX CEO Elon Musk indicated in 2014 that he expected "commercial astronauts, private astronauts, to be departing from South Texas," and he foresaw launching spacecraft to Mars from there."

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SpaceX_South_Texas_Launch_Site

From Boca Chica, our next stopping place was the Sabal Palm Sanctuary. On the way there, we briefly stopped to take a few photos of a beautiful Harris's Hawk perched on a high wire. In order to get to the Sanctuary, we had to drive through an opening in "The Wall". I had really been hoping that, at some point, we would actually see a length of The Wall, having heard about it endlessly on TV.

"The Sabal Palm Sanctuary is a 557-acre (225-hectare) nature reserve and bird sanctuary located in the delta of the Rio Grande Valley in Cameron County near Brownsville, Texas. It is noted for being one of the last locations in the Rio Grande Valley with a profuse grove of sabal palms, an edible-heart-bearing palm much prized by pre-Hispanic inhabitants and noted by early explorers. As a relatively habitat-rich remnant of this Valley, it is a prized birdwatching and butterfly watching location for persons interested in the ecology of the Valley and adjacent states of northern Mexico.

The Sabal Palm Sanctuary closely approaches the southernmost point in the state of Texas, and is the southernmost point accessible to the public.

The Sanctuary occupies a parcel of the former Rabb Plantation, a 19th-century sugarcane plantation on the bank of the Rio Grande - at that time, a river deep enough to float light steamboats. The plantation's produce was shipped directly from the riverbank; the successful plantation's Queen Anne mansion, built by Frank and Lillian Rabb in 1891-1892, was adaptively remodeled in 2013 to serve as the Sanctuary's visitor center." From Wikipedia. The Mansion is a really fine building.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sabal_Palm_Sanctuary

Taken in: United States / Texas / South Padre Island (show map)

Taken on: March 28, 2019

Tags:

USA

United States

South Texas

DAY 10

South Padre Island

The Birding and Nature Centre

nature

wildlife

avian

ornithology

bird

Pigeon

Rock Pigeon

Rock Dove

Columba livia

Columbidae

feral

adult

iridescence

perched

sign

side view

sky

clouds

outdoor

28 March 2019

Canon

SX60

Canon SX60

Powershot

annkelliott

Anne Elliott

Sets appears in: • 13-day trip to South Texas, 19-31 March 2019 • Birds of South Texas, 19-31 March 2019 more » • Canon SX60 « less

Groups appears in: • Bird Lovers • PHOTOGRAPHERS OF CANADA more » • NATUREPIX • Birds , Birds Birds • *I Love Birds* • Nature, wildlife, and the great outdoors • Birdshare • Birds of South Texas • Birds of the world/ Oiseaux du monde • Canon SX30 / SX40 / SX50 / SX60 / SX70 • Any kind of wildlife/nature « less

Camera: Canon PowerShot SX60 HS, f/5.6, 1/640 sec, 43.2mm, ISO 100 (more info) (hide info)

Camera:	Canon PowerShot SX60 HS
Lens:	3.8-247.0 mm
Aperture:	f/5.6
Exposure Time:	0.002 sec (1/640)
Focal Length:	43.2mm
ISO:	100
Exposure Bias:	0 EV
Flash:	Off, Did not fire
Exposure Mode:	Auto
Metering Mode:	Multi-segment
White Balance:	Auto
Color Space:	sRGB
Software:	Adobe Photoshop Elements 12.0 Windows
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