Texas Nature: Great Blue Heron

Thursday, March 29, 2012

Great Blue Heron Cam

In the last post I talked about the Hawk Cam that Cornell University has online, now they have a Great Blue Heron Cam posted. In 2009 Great Blue Herons started building a nest at this site and early this year the university put up a couple of cameras which are online now. The herons returned about 10 days ago and the female layed her first egg just yesterday. Even though the Hawk Cam operates 24/7 it is hard to see what is going on after nightfall. With the Heron Cam one of the cameras takes good night video, so you can check at any hour and still see good pictures. To Check out the Heron Cam follow this link.
Heron Cam

Below are a couple a pictures of the nest. The video is much better than the screen captures below.

Great Blue Heron on nest.

Night shot of Great Blue Heron on nest.

Sunday, March 18, 2012

Pleasure Island Part 4

The fourth part of my series on Pleasure Island takes us to the North Levee. So far this area has been the least productive in my trips to Pleasure Island. Although it has not been as good as the other areas, it still provides plenty of opportunities to view and photograph nature. I suspect that part of the reason for it being less productive is that the levee road is surrounded by water on both sides with very little land to attract wildlife or grow plants. On the southeast side is Sabine Lake, where the road is protected by a rock barrier. You will see various shore birds walking on the rocks or floating on the lake.

View of Sabine Lake along north levee.

Willets along the north levee of Pleasure Island

Great Blue Heron

Little Blue Heron

The northwest side of the levee road is also bounded by water. There are narrow channels on either end of the road with a much wider area of water in the middle section. Unlike the lake side, the is a strip of land the can support a variety of plant life, including trees and shrub. In addition to shore and water birds this area should attract a variety other birds and wildlife that use the plants for food and shelter. Also this area should be of interest to those of us interested in wildflowers. I hope to have some photos of the wildflowers of this area in future post. For those interested in Texas wildflowers you can view some of my photos on my other blog and website at http://wildflowersoftexas.blogspot.com/ and http://www.wildflowersoftexas.com/