"UTC" is shorthand for "Upper Texas Coast" and used in the site designations for stops along that portion of the Great Texas Coastal Birding Trail (eg. UTC-122 is the designation for the county park where we stayed). Yesterday (Saturday) we packed up and headed south for the Central Texas Coast. This image is one of 2 white morph Reddish Egrets I found Wednesday morning in a marsh just off of the beach. Thursday was by far the best weather day and was spent with Bill from the Gulf Coast Bird Observatory as my guide in search of sparrows on the Katy Prairie west of Houston. Neither of us had much luck in a photographic sense (though Bill fared better than me) but it was an enjoyable day of birding with a tally of some 40 species including a first sighting for me Harris's Sparrow.

Along the coast it was very windy most days and, if you are a Snowy Plover, you can gain a little protection by hunkering down in a rut left by a passing vehicle. I actually saw this a lot and it was kind of scary; I feared for the birds because, while I was moving slowly looking for birds, most vehicles traveling on the beach were exceeding the posted speed limit (15 mph) by double or more.

Friday was just plain nasty with fog that didn't lift until about 1 o'clock (how does it stay foggy with 15 mph winds?) followed by showers in the afternoon. So I spent the day holed up in the trailer adding more images to the online catalog/database, and managed to get the total up over 2,000. If you remember I had mentioned in this entry that my goal for February was to hit 1,000 images. I have doubled that so needless to say I'm pretty happy with the total though, in a way, it is partially due to the fact there's been a bunch of days with crummy weather forcing me to remain indoors and keep myself amused.

We are now in Rockport, not far from Aransas National Wildlife Refuge where, among other things, I plan to take a boat ride out to photograph some wintering Whooping Cranes on the refuge the first part of the week. This is, of course, a second attempt here since we were driven out (and followed all the way back to Florida) by a nasty winter storm back in December. As soon as I finish here I am going to take a walk over to the "duck pond" here at the campground; yesterday afternoon the neighbors mentioned the whistling ducks that hang out there during the day. This morning while Roxie was taking care of business I watched 3 flights (totaling about 30 birds) land over there. We will know soon.