Yesterday we failed in our mission to find the rare Spotted Rail. If you are confused about what that last sentence meant, you could read the last blog entry for the long explanation. The short explanation is that a bird that is seldom seen in North America is hanging out at the same state park we are visiting. While some birders have traveled many miles to see this bird, we didn't even know the rare Spotted Rail existed until yesterday (when we failed at our attempt to find it).
But we're going to do better today! Instead of taking a leisurely walk to the 75-acre lake like we did yesterday morning, we are on a mission to get there earlier today. So we drove the pickup, and noticed the parking lot was already quite full. Sure enough, we found over twenty people with telephoto lenses pointed towards the edge of the water. The rare Spotted Rail had been seen earlier, but they were waiting for him to appear out of the reeds on the water's edge. So we took our place in an open spot behind the yellow tape. We have to say that we feel a little funny with our small point-and-shoot camera amongst these two-foot-long telephoto lenses and tripods.
We had only been there thirty seconds, when we heard a hushed whisper, "There he is! There he is!" Then began the symphony of cameras clicking as the high-speed shutters of those expensive lenses went into high gear.
Most of the shore of the lake is covered in 10-inch-tall grass. That makes it difficult to photograph an 8-inch bird. But today this rare bird decided to take a short walk in the only short-grass shore line. It just so happened that open shore line was right in front of us! Mission accomplished!
Mark was standing right behind, and he took a picture with his cell phone that shows just how close Denisa was to the rare Spotted Rail in the lower right corner.
Our rare bird stayed out in the open for less than a minute, and from all the clicking of cameras we're guessing that there were hundreds of pictures taken in that minute. It was like we were part of the bird paparazzi, snapping pictures as fast as we could. Then the Spotted Rail flew back into the reeds, and didn't come out for quite some time. Because of the great open-view sighting of the rare bird, most of the real photographers packed up and left. It obviously couldn't have been better lighting or a more open sighting. There really was no reason to hang around. But we're easily entertained, and we love taking pictures of more common birds as well.
As children we went on more than one "snipe hunt." We weren't sure what we were looking for then, but we found out today that this little bird with a long pointy beak is a snipe.
The Sora Rail was back today,
as well as this duck with a too-big-bill.
We hung around long enough to see the rare Spotted Rail again, but this time he was hidden by the grass on the shore.
We were certainly blessed to get that wide open shot of this red-eyed-green-billed rare bird earlier!
It was another lovely day to be outside, so we explored other parts of Choke Canyon state park. We probably wouldn't have seen it ourselves, but someone pointed out this coiled indigo snake.
We watched as the snake poked his head out of that thick coil . . .
and then slithered his five-foot-long body through the grass to relocate in a more protected area. We later found that these nonvenomous indigo snakes are good to have around because they are ophiophagic. That's the new word of the day. Ophiophagic is the word meaning snakes that eat other snakes. So indigo snakes eat rattle snakes. See if you can use that new word in a sentence today!
Among all the birds we have spotted in the last couple days, we also saw a few fishermen at the 75-acre lake here at Choke Canyon State Park. Some of those fishermen obviously aren't carefully disposing of their fishing line. It looks like this bird used the fishing line to suspend her nest between the branches.
Denisa is glad to see that her new favorite vermillion flycatcher is back today. You just can't take enough pictures of a bright red bird!
After accomplishing our mission so early in the day, we drove the pickup back to our campground so we could explore the rest of Choke Canyon State Park on our bicycles. We love a flat park with no hills! We bicycled into the cabin area, and found that this was also a favorite hangout for this group of collared peccaries.
We thought it was special when we found a single javelina at the lake yesterday. Well, today we found that these guys are everywhere!
We found a herd of thirty javelinas close to the cabins, including this mother with her young one.
This state park is a no-hunting zone, so all the animals are feeling very safe. They know that the only shots coming their way are camera shots.
We're feeling very safe here as well. Even though Choke Canyon was out of our way, we're glad we're here. We're also glad that our mission has been accomplished. We now have pictures of the rare Spotted Rail (the bird we didn't even know existed before yesterday)!
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