Last night we drove south to Rockport. Most of the drive was in the dark, and we passed several refineries glowing in the night. Ugly places — talk about your Dark Satanic Mills. Our first birding stop this morning was Goose Island State Park, which is on the Lamar peninsula. Before we entered the park proper, we stopped off to see the Big Tree, which is the Texas State Champion Oak, whatever the hell that means. It’s a big ol’ tree, and best of all, we saw a BLACK-CRESTED TITMOUSE in its branches, a lifer for us both. The area was different from most what we’d seen in Texas so far, since there wasn’t garbage everywhere. The reason? The Lamar Women’s Club. (See photo.)

The park was nice, too, though there were pretty slim pickings in the bird department. We drove around a bit and had no luck until we parked the car in front of some bird feeders on Warbler Way. I have to admit, it’s nice to bird from the car on a miserably hot day. Lots of birds there, but the only new one was a DICKCISSEL, a double lifer.

Then onward to today’s big gig, the Aransas NWR. As we drove in, Pole saw a MOTTLED DUCK in someone’s front-yard pond. She got out to get a closer look, spooking it away before I had a decent look. Lifer for her, dammit.

Aransas gets a lot of mileage out of having alligators all over the place. Right by the entrance, there’s a small gator viewing area. It runs along a creek, and you can safely ogle the critters from behind a fence, laughing at their powerlessness. We took a quick look, and then headed for the nearby Rail Trail, which runs along the selfsame creek. Just before entering it, we spotted a WHITE-FACED IBIS fearlessly disporting itself in the reptile-ridden waters. The crazy thing about the Rail Trail is this: even though it runs along the gator creek, there’s no fence to keep the buggers out. In fact, soon after we started walking it, we saw a gator sitting on the grass facing the trail, only about 10-15 feet away. What an insane place for a path. The gator could have attacked us easily, and I don’t think beating it on the snout with a tripod would have disturbed its birder munching. We walked the rest of trail pretty quickly, because we decided we weren’t frigging idiots. After we left the path, I saw a snake dash off the road into the bushes. Pole hates snakes, so the addition of another cold-blooded abomination kept her on edge for the rest of the day.

We hopped back in the car, and driving along, saw a tom turkey crossing the road. He wasn’t skittish at all, so we wondered if he was sick, or whether he was just sex crazed. At our next stop, we met a Finnish birder who had just arrived in Texas. He mentioned the turkey’s odd behavior, and asked us if was mating season. This guy’s English wasn’t great, so what came out was, “Is it playtime for turkeys?”

We made a few other stops in the refuge, and at one we saw some javelinas, which is Texan for peccary. Last new birds of the day were some BLACK-BELLIED WHISTLING-DUCKS. By now it was dusk, and the bugs were coming out, so we hit the road. On the way back we made a stop at Goose Island to check out Warbler Way, but didn’t see anything new.

It seemed a slow day compared to the last two, but slow for Texas still yielded five new birds for Little Year, all of them lifers.