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| Beach Walk - Padre Island National Seashore |
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| Sunrise at Mustang Island State Park |
We returned from South Padre Island to Mustang Island for a few more days. What can we say, we just like the beaches in that area. The night of our return we had a rip-snorter of a thunder storm with wind gusts over 50 mph. After 3 hours of rocking and rolling inside the motor home, we fell into bed and awoke to another lovely day at the beach.
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| Sunrise at Padre Island - this was the view from our front windows |
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| A pristine, deserted beach - the brown stuff is Sargasum Seaweed washed up from the Atlantic Ocean |
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| The vegetation on the dune separating the beach from the campground. |
From there, we moved to Padre Island National Seashore. The camping there is first-come-first-served and very inexpensive ($8 regular fee, $4 with the America the Beautiful Pass), so it is very popular. We checked-in mid-week when there were free campsites and then watched as it filled up with tenters and RVers for Easter weekend. There were at least 20 tents on the beach off of the campground. Many RVs also had another group of people tenting in the same campsite.
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| Easter weekend beach campers |
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| We love watching and taking pictures of Pelicans - these are off of Mustang Island |
The campground has what they call "dry camping" or "boondocking". This means that there are no electric or water hook ups at the campsites. You use what you carry in with you in your RV. We had 65 gallons of water, batteries and a generator for lights, and propane for refrigerator, stove, and hot water. So, we were careful with our water and use of lights. We ran our generator for a half-hour each day to keep the batteries charged. We rinsed the salt off in the cold-water showers at the campground after we went swimming. We were very comfortable.
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| Pelicans are so interesting to watch (and photograph) |
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| Tiki loves to retrieve her ball |
We were content to walk or sit at the beach, read our books, and watch the waves and the birds. We got up with the sun (well, Tiki did) and we went to bed with the sun. It is a peaceful life.
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| White Pelicans coming in for a landing. They follow the boats with fishermen back to shore hoping for a handout. |
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| Reddish Egret dancing for its dinner - sorry it is a little blurry |
One day, we went on a van tour with a husband and wife team of birders to see the birds of Padre Island. They are VIPs (Volunteers in the Park) and drove us around the island looking for birds, and telling us about the birds we saw. There were a few new birds for us, the Long-billed Curlew, the Wilson's Plover, and the Sandwich and Forster's Terns. We got some more close up time with the White Pelicans. We learned more about the Reddish Egret. While it's white egret and heron cousins stalk quietly through the water to sneak up on dinner, the Reddish dances and prances, herding the fish to shallower waters where it would be easier to pick them of. While our guides were describing this to us, the Reddish we were watching started dancing! Great fun.
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| If you look closely, you can pick out the Cattle Egrets and the Snowy Egrets |
While we were at Mustang and at Padre Islands we had been seeing flocks of 20-30 medium sized white birds flying north around sunrise and sunset each day, about 10 or 20 flocks a day. We asked everyone, including our birder guides, about them, and no one seemed to know what they were. Russ finally got some good pictures of them. The flocks are composed of two bird species. In the picture here, there are Cattle Egrets with yellow bills and yellow legs. Some of them also have mating plumage, yellowish colored feathers on their chests, heads and backs. The white birds with the black bills, black legs and yellow feet are Snowy Egrets. We've never seen flocks of more than one type of bird before. It was great to solve the mystery.
After almost 4 weeks on the Texas beaches, it was time to move inland. On the day we left it rained - the grey day matching our sadness about leaving the beach.
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| Ruddy Turnstones get their name from turning over stones to find food. |
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| Red arrow shows Padre Island, Mustang Island is just north of it. |
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