Brazos Bend…great birding plus those silly armadillos
It has been really cold for here, in the 40s during the day and 20s at night. Not the best for hiking. We had all our winter stuff out for Christmas in PA and are still using it. It made it up to nearly 60 degrees today and that felt pretty nice. They say there is more of that to come this next week. Good thing since we aren’t moving very far over the next week or two. We have hiked four or five hours each of the past three days so have seen many of the trails and a sampling of lakeside, marsh and woodland. We started our lifelist for birding…we added about 50 from here even with the icky weather. Else, just strolling and enjoying. This is a place to come back to one day.

Lots of hurricane damage still to be repaired here too. But, decidedly warmer. Only a portion of the state park is currently open. But many trails and an observation deck is open to aid in bird watching. Local Wildlife refuges also have damage and are sometimes hard to find due to missing signs, roads, etc. We identified egrets, herons, pelicans, ibis, spoonbills, ospreys, and various hawks and raptors.
We enjoyed some wonderful seafood gumbo, crab, shrimp, scallops and flounder. Nicely done during our day of touring city sites. One item of note, the many carved tree stumps left over from hurricane Ike. Remnants of many grand old trees were carved into art rather than being removed to the ground after the storm. We also enjoyed a magnificent Christmas light show arranged in Moody Gardens as part of their holiday celebration. A recommended activity if you are near the area between mid November and the end of the year. Temperatures have been running quite mild this mornings low was in the low 60’s with the high in the mid 70’s. But, the wind from the north is scheduled to cool it off to a more seasonable 40’s & 60’s for a few days.

We are down on the shore checking out the nature preserves and parks. There is still quite a bit of damage from hurricanes; most recently Ike. They don’t have any camping facilities yet. There were miles of boardwalk at sea rim and now there is one rebuilt section about ¾ of a mile. Lots of home and facility reconstruction still going on along the shore too. It is so weird to see everything from mobile homes to complete schools and public buildings up on stilts. Between that all the refineries and tank farms I am not sure why people want to live here. That’s just me, I guess.

It is pretty cold and has been rainy and windy so shore bird watching hasn’t been so great. They are not very active and we get cold too fast. This is an area for a slightly different time of year next time. I want to come back again.

We enjoyed some wonderful seafood gumbo today along with crab, shrimp, scallops and founder. Nicely done. Topped it off with key lime pie and all was good.

It seems that is tournament day. We awakened to the drone of outboards at 6:30 and the sound was continuous for over half an hour as a continuousline of them came across the lake. Seems like everybody wanted to fish past our camp. We had picked a quiet site (except the attack pack of course) out on a point in a nearly empty campground. I had gotten up early to go birding. Not so good. I couldn’t really hear myself think let alone hear any birds!

But, it is a big lake so once they all got out they didn’t really interfere with our fishing. I won the catch count today, a couple bass and a sunfish. Kent “0”. That doesn’t happen often. We did lots of bird watching again today. The boat provides a great vantage point for shorebirds and the eagles.

They do something odd here, they put out lots of floating lines to catch catfish then go around and check them once in a while. One old guy in camp brought in more than 10 most days. Another guy out in his little john boat was hauling several 20+ pounders and talking about a 73 pounder he had caught. I wonder, what on earth does one do with all that catfish?!

Forecast was for high 70’s….wrong…..Kent never took off his winter coat all the time he was in the boat.

The campground host has two dachshunds and a Chihuahua terrier mix and they come racing across the campground whenever they see anyone. They swarm around your feet and make a ton of racket. Real defenders of their turf. It is pretty annoying first thing in the morning. We nicknamed them the attack pack.

Off we go fishing again. I had a little better luck today. I hooked two bass and even got one small one into the boat. Kent caught a little cat fish and then this HUGE…UUUUUGLY sucker. I got it into the dip net but couldn’t even lift if into the boat. Kent had to two-hand drag him over the side of the boat (of course we had to try to weight and measure and all that cause that is what real fishermen do) then we had trouble getting it back out of the boat. In the end, the sucker was back on his way and Kent got a couple impressive pictures.
We released everything again today. Either too small or in the case of the sucker, too ugly!
We watched heron fish; they hardly ever miss and are a riot to watch “stalk” the strike. We saw eagles again too as well as lots of loons. They don’t do the familiar Canadian lake yodel call much in the winter though. They make more of a little barking sound when they float and chat to one another. Its just a bunch of males hanging out. No showing off for mating season right now I guess.
We saw a muskrat or something like it playing along the bank. Always something to entertain even if the fish are not biting. Nice day.

We woke up to about 30F but the birds were singing and the sun shinning brightly. We dawdled a little while to let it warm up a bit then headed out to try our hand at fishing mid-morning. Pretty chilly, a long sleeve, T-shirt, sweatshirt, wind breaker plus winter parka. At least we didn’t have to break out the snow mobile suits! Kent caught a few but I never even got a bite. Maybe tomorrow. I hope we catch enough for at least one mess of fish for supper one night. We shall see. It is supposed to be nice for a few more days.

Oh, it’s about 40 miles off the beaten path but it has a great lake view and is a quiet place. We spotted a bald eagle hunting along the causeway as we came across the lake. It is a regular spot for some of the locals and they have given a few fishing tips. Mostly for catfish though and we are not so into catfish. The first couple days have been rainy but the forecast promises some sunshine starting Wednesday.