Inland, Dreaming of Waves

Where Cabeza de Vaca ...

Monday, April 23, 2007

My second day of birding in the environs of High Island, I headed to Anahuac National Wildlife Refuge, one of many strung along the Texas coast. You could spend weeks and not get to them all.

Anahuac is northeast of High Island, on the East Bay. I had to drive right past it to get to High Island the day before.

I was early enough to get this atmospheric photograph. The light was lovely—I wish I had a better camera to capture it.

Then it was on to the visitor’s center, which is tiny, but that doesn’t matter—it’s all about the grounds anyway. And driving. This is Texas, after all. I like the idea of a national wildlife refuge that leads to the sea. Shouldn’t they all?

I spent time near the visitor’s center in the hummingbird garden, but then I headed just a teeny bit down the road and around the corner, looking into the White-Fronted Moist Soil Units, otherwise known as a marsh. They seemed to go on forever. Close in were blue-winged teals, northern shovelers, and long-billed dowitchers (at least, that’s what I called them. They’re more likely to be long-billed because it’s a freshwater marsh, but I’ve never seen long-billed and short-billed together, so what do I know?).

Out in the marsh, I saw some large dark birds, which turned out to be two species of ibis—white-faced and glossy—almost identical in coloring. Now, as I look at the range maps in my Sibley’s guide to birds, I wonder if I really saw the glossy ibis. It’s rare in Texas, evidenced by green dots all along the coast on the map. I do seem to remember a list of birds, posted at the visitor’s center, that included them, but perhaps I’m remembering another spot on my trip. The only noticeable differences can be seen in the coloring around the bill. Yet at the time, looking at them through my scope from a long distance, I was certain I saw both.

Sometimes birding seems like Waiting for Godot. When will that nemesis bird arrive? Would I recognize it if I saw it?

The fun really began after I drove down the road and parked behind some other cars. Aging birders with scopes punctuated the side of the road facing a blackish mudflat, partly flooded. I joined them, feeling young, as I usually do when I’m out birding. (I’m not sure what I’ll do when I’m the same age as most birders, or even older!) After birding long enough at an angle to get sandpiper neck, it occurred to me that I could adjust the head of the scope so that the eyepiece was actually at eye level and I could stand up straight and not grimace in the direction of the birds. I hoped no one noticed my revelation—sometimes my obliviousness to the obvious astounds me.

I felt such joy as I stood there. I had never seen so many sandpipers and plovers in one place. There were certainly enough of them for everyone who was there, and then some. Some bearded man came by and joking accused us of hiding the buff-breasted sandpipers, but there were so many others: black-bellied and semipalmated plovers, black-necked stilts, yellowlegs, willets, whimbrels, Hudsonian and marbled godwits, ruddy turnstones, semipalmated and Western sandpipers.

And that is only a partial list. Birders beside me were calling out “white-rumped sandpiper” and “dunlin” and others. I wished I could see a long-billed curlew, as my father-in-law had when he visited Texas in February, but I had to settle for the whimbrel.

Finally I had to stop. My eyes were giving out from staring at all the small grayish birds scurrying around on the black mud. I cracked my neck as Dana Scully did on one episode of The X-Files and moved on to the willows, where some birders pointed out a nighthawk resting in a tree. Usually I see them flying overhead. (Right now, in August, the nighthawks have been coming out earlier in the evening, even in the late afternoon. Perhaps they’re getting ready to migrate.)

It was the most transcendent birding I’ve ever had.

The ironic thing about Anahuac was that, despite what I said at the beginning of this entry, I did hardly any driving in the refuge. The rest of the day was almost all driving, though, so it more than made up for it.

After Anahuac, I made a snap decision to go back to White Oaks. I just had to see Heron Island and the anhingas again, since I was quite certain I wouldn’t see them (or roseate spoonbills) for a long time. And it was on my way. So off I went, not bothering to pay an entrance fee this time and skirting the picnic tables, where some woman had made me flash my bright orange sticker the day before. (Hey, I bought a $20 T-shirt! And some postcards!) I went to the island and walked through the woods a bit. I visited the trees in the parking lot: still no painted bunting. Damn.

From this point I would be driving a crescent moon, or eyelash, route, along the coast of Texas. Instead of going north to Houston and around, I had followed my father-in-law’s advice and decided to take the ferry from Port Bolivar (pronounced “Ball-i-ver” by the locals), at the end of Bolivar Peninsula, to Galveston Island. On the way I drove through Gilchrist, which was a long necklace of houses on stilts strung along the beach. (In this style; this one is actually from Galveston Island.) They all looked run-down. I wondered if I could actually afford a beach house in Gilchrist and, if so, if I would want to live there. How bad are fire ants, anyway? And the mold? And the cockroaches? Could I live with cockroaches again? And we haven’t even begun to consider hurricanes yet.

After Crystal Beach, which looked considerably more like the stereotype of a beach town than Gilcrist, I came to Rettilon Road and drove to the beach—in fact, I drove onto the beach for the first time in my life. I couldn’t believe how trashed it was. There was a lone trash can with bags piled around it, from the weekend, I guess, and far down to my left a couple barbequed by their truck, attended by a flock of gulls.

I stopped at the barrier that marked the Houston Audubon Society Bolivar Flats Shorebird Sanctuary, but didn’t actually cross over. I watched some tricolored herons on the beach and then got out of the truck to attempt a picture of a laughing gull surrounded by Western and semipalmated sandpipers. (The Westerns had much more red coloration.) All the pipers hopped on one leg, flared their wings straight up, and tucked their bills under their wings. Until I kept creeping closer, that is. In response, they dispersed, staccato-style. I wished then I’d stolen that really big lens from the female photographer at Boy Scout Woods. I felt guilty for disturbing them.

At Port Bolivar, I found my way to the ferry without much difficulty and was one of the forward vehicles. I don’t think I’d been on a ferry since taking one from some port in France to Dover in 1983—and that crossing was quite a bit choppier, as you might imagine. The entire trip took about 20 minutes. Gulls led us the entire way, and their shadows passed over the boat. I went up some incredibly steep steps to the upper deck to see the gray sea and city from there. I was afraid going back down them. When I drove into Galveston, there were gulls on every lamppost (and anything else vertical). I had a desperate craving for a frappucino but couldn’t find a Starbucks to save my life. Isn’t this America, people? You should be able to find any chain at any moment!

I had to settle for a Chillacino at Ben and Jerry’s. It was just fine. I didn’t bother with anything else in Galveston, just kept on driving southwest, the Gulf of Mexico on my left, down Galveston Island. Soon enough I found myself on the Texas Independence Trail. There were beach access signs along the road at intervals, so I took one and
found myself on this beach, with a sign about nesting turtles.

There were many more houses on stilts, a necessary building style on a barrier island. At times when I was driving Galveston to Freeport, I felt as if I must have gotten lost somewhere, the landscape seemed so undeveloped. (Somewhere in the string of islands along the Texas coast is Follets Island, where Cabeza de Vaca and his companions may have been stranded for a while, early in the 1500s. They certainly came this way, on rafts, but there is much debate about where they actually landed. I had no choice but to drive down Follets, since it’s on the way to Freeport.) Signs along Highway 3005 (the road along Galveston Island) stated that it was not a hurricane evacuation route (since it was parallel to the ocean instead of leading away from it). Finally I came to a series of bridges that eventually got me to Freeport (very industrial, not at all beautiful) and on my way to Highway 35. The bridges gave me the willies—they soared up so high (I suppose to get them above storm surges) that I couldn’t see anything in front of me but the road and anything on either side but the drop-off.

The next highway (332) was a hurricane evacuation route. Much to my relief, of course. Somehow I ended up on Highway 2004, though from looking at the map I’m not sure how. Or maybe I just saw a sign for it; anyway, I was sternly warned not to pick up hitchhikers because of the prison nearby. When I reached Brazoria, a sign proclaimed it the “Cradle of Texas.” I found myself noticing signs all throughout Texas—they seemed so much more distinctive than signs in Colorado. But I suppose that’s merely a function of familiarity.

Past Bay City, I crossed the Colorado River again, which flows south from Austin.

My plan was to sleep at Goose Island State Park, which is on the other side of Aransas National Wildlife Refuge. Then tomorrow I would bird Aransas first thing. But I had spent too much time today at Anahuac and White Oaks and couldn’t make it. I found this place to stay in Port Lavaca (The port of the cow). It’s an RV park and bird refuge just past the Formosa Plastics complex at Point Comfort.

I asked a woman sitting in front of her RV if she was the camp host. She said no and told me where to find them. She also asked me where in Colorado I was from and said she had been a camp host at Mesa Verde. I told her my first name and held out my hand for her to shake. She shook my hand but didn’t tell me her name. I’d never had that happen before. When I went in the bathroom and saw my hair sticking out in every direction (hey, it was clean this morning!), I thought I knew why. And, of course, a woman her age should really be the one initiating a handshake.

The camp hosts were more pleasant, although they were also taken aback by my request “to camp in a tent or sleep in my truck.” I asked them if that was an unusual request, and they covered it pretty well. The man took me on his bright green golf cart to show me the tent sites. I picked the one in the corner, away from the road (at least, away from the main road). Then we went back to his site, and I paid him $6 for the site and a $5 deposit for the key to the locked bathroom. He talked about some people who have an “agenda,” referring to homeless people who travel around on their bikes. He mentioned a couple, a man of Spanish and Indian descent and a woman who was “full-blooded Indian.” I wondered how he could tell.

Now I am sitting in the back of my truck, with the end pointing toward the beach. I feel exposed: the bed is open and people keep driving down the road. I need to close up the back and finish Chapter 3 of Anderlini for Lynne Rienner. The wind is so strong it’s rocking the truck a little. I haven’t camped since that lakeside campground in Oklahoma, near Tulsa. I’m looking forward to waking up tomorrow and birding.

I visited quite a few port-o-potties today, at White Oaks, Rettilon Road, and Galveston Beach. (That was a note in my book. Strange, the things that you write down on a road trip.)

Here's another Galveston beach bird.

posted by Price of Silence @ 9:45 AM