By Susan Heath This week was more about skimmers than oystercatchers. I assembled a team to band the skimmer chicks on Struve Luci so Alan and I were accompanied by Taylor Bennett (GCBO Coastal Biologist), Sarah Belles (GCBO intern), and Elena Iacono (TAMU grad student). Elena is working on her PhD and she is going to run a bunch of … Read More

By Susan Heath Well I’m happy to say that it finally stopped raining! Mostly any way. Alan and I headed out on Thursday accompanied by Elizabeth and Elisha Hehir, graduate students at the University of Houston Clear Lake. They are very interested in birds and are going to take over maintaining one of my Motus towers. Yay! Thank you Elizabeth … Read More

By Susan Heath Has anyone started building an ark yet? If so, can I give you a couple birds to take along? Sheesh. The rain has been unrelenting. We were scheduled to go out on Thursday but we switched it to Friday because the weather forecast looked slightly better. Fortunately, Alan was on the ball and called me Thursday morning … Read More

By Susan Heath Well the weather was beautiful when Alan and I headed out to West Galveston Bay on Thursday. There wasn’t much wind so the water was calm and the thunderstorms hadn’t started building up yet. We didn’t really need to go to Swan Lake because the pairs up there are all done but I like to get a … Read More

By Susan Heath On Friday I headed out to West Galveston Bay with Alan. We got a late start because the GCBO truck died when I got about 2 miles down the road. Martin came to get me and the boat and took us back to GCBO where I hooked the boat up to my personal truck and got on … Read More

By Susan Heath On Thursday I headed out to West Galveston Bay with Alan Wilde and John Wright. The wind was only supposed to be 10 mph but it was really choppy in the bay and the ride up to Swan Lake was anything but smooth. At least the Railroad bridge was up for a change! 20 & unbanded were … Read More

By Susan Heath On Wednesday Taylor, Sarah, and I headed out to East Matagorda Bay to see if the skimmers were going to give it a go since the tide was down a bit. They oystercatchers have finished out there for the season and sadly no chicks were fledged. We made a circuit around the bay and found 40-50 skimmers … Read More

By Susan Heath On Monday we all enjoyed our holiday and then Tuesday it was back to work. We tried to go to the Brazoria Bays in the morning but the radar showed a huge slug of rain moving in from the west so we delayed until noon and all was well with the weather. All was not well with … Read More

By Susan Heath It finally stopped raining long enough on Tuesday morning for Amanda Hackney (Black Cat GIS) and I to get out to East Matagorda Bay and see what was happening. We mostly needed to count the nesting birds at the Oyster Farm and Old Gulf Cut for the annual colonial waterbird survey but of course, there’s oystercatchers out … Read More

By Susan Heath On Sunday the weather forecast for Monday looked abysmal and I was certain we weren’t going to be able to make it out to the Brazoria Bays but magically Monday morning the chance of rain had significantly diminished and the wind was only blowing 12 mph (to start!). Woohoo! Taylor, Sarah and I saddled up and headed … Read More

By Susan Heath We were supposed to head out to the Brazoria Bays on Wednesday but the weather made that impossible so we rescheduled it for next week. There should be a couple hatched nests and two fledged chicks out there so I’m anxious to how they are doing but I’ll just have to wait until next week. On Thursday, … Read More

By Susan Heath On Monday, Taylor, Sarah and I headed out to East Matagorda Bay to check on the birds. Taylor and Sarah had seen the pair that nests at the Oyster Farm on the beach a few days ago so we knew they didn’t have a nest. That allowed us to skip the trek across the bay and we … Read More