Since we had left the park the past two mornings to bird in other locations, so we decided to stay a bit closer to "home" today. We first headed out to the bayfront area to check for wading birds and ducks.
We found a few Ruddy Turnstones, named for their habit of flipping over rocks to find food beneath them. We also saw a Willet that had caught a small crab for its breakfast.
We walked all of the way out on the long wooden fishing pier, and spotted a sailboat that appeared to have overnighted on the bay. But as we got closer we realized that it was grounded on an oyster shell reef and abandoned. A fisherman told us that it had been out there for several days. Oyster shell is really sharp and abrasive, and I imagine that the hull of that boat is pretty torn up after grinding around in the wind and waves.
After a morning of birding we headed into town for lunch. On the way back to the park we stopped at the Linda Castro Nature Sanctuary. This is one of several different properties in the Rockport/Fulton area set aside as nature preserves. We don't usually see much here, but today we found some good birds.
Later in the evening we checked out the feeding stations and water features. We found a few birds, but overall things continued to be slow.
Since the forecast called for the wind to continue and we weren’t seeing many birds, we decided to go ahead and leave a day early. So we packed up the next morning and headed back to our home, where ironically there were plenty of birds!
With only a four hour drive, we can easily come back to the coast when (if) the migrating birds show up.
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