Category Archive

By Susan Heath On Thursday Alan and I were joined by Amanda Hackney of Black Cat GIS & Biological Services. It was time to do the colonial waterbird counts and Amanda is a great help doing those! The weather was beautiful for a change without much wind. So nice. We headed up towards Swan Lake. 20 & unbanded were incubating … Read More

By Susan Heath This week Alan and I moved our survey to Wednesday because of my schedule and the weather. The wind is back. Oh joy. A little wind is a good thing but I’ve had enough of 18-20 mph please. I had thought we would not be able to make it to Swan Lake this week because the wind … Read More

By Susan Heath This week was our Experience Auction trip on West Galveston Bay. Kyle Jones and him mom Joann joined us for a day on the water. Fortunately, the weather was beautiful and the wind was perfect at about 10 mph. That doesn’t happen very often! Right off the bat we saw three oystercatchers on the reefs by the … Read More

By Susan Heath On Tuesday, Taylor, Kenlynn and I headed out to check the birds in the Brazoria Bays. We haven’t been out to check on them in a month because the wind has been too bad and we had too many other commitments so it was great to be back out there. We headed straight to the mooring facility … Read More

By Susan Heath It was a busy week this week but I managed to get out and check on most of the oystercatchers. On Tuesday, GCBO education intern Adam Trujillo went with me to East Matagorda Bay to check on the two pairs that had hatching nests two weeks ago. Sadly, none of the adults were present so both nests … Read More

By Susan Heath It was too windy to check the Brazoria Bays this week so we had to skip it. We’ll find out what’s happening there in a couple of weeks if the wind ever dies down. It was windy again on Thursday and Alan was having a few back issues and didn’t feel he should be bouncing around on … Read More

By Susan Heath This is the spring of wind! It was too windy to check the entirety of East Matagorda Bay so Taylor, Kenlynn, and I took the boat to the ramp in Matagorda and went out to check on the nests at Old Gulf Cut since its pretty protected there. A7A & unbanded were still incubating but there were … Read More

By Susan Heath We got a break in the wind this week and were able to do a complete survey of the Brazoria Bays. Taylor, Kenlynn and I headed out Tuesday morning after a brief fog delay. We went to the Brazoria County part of West Galveston Bay and checked on the two pairs there. E3A was still incubating three … Read More

By Susan Heath It was windy, windy, windy all week and then miraculously on Thursday it was almost a perfect day. Alan and I were joined by my friend Rich Kostecke, an independent avian researcher from Austin, on our weekly trek through West Galveston Bay. Since we hadn’t been able to check Swan Lake last week and the tide was … Read More

By Susan Heath This week Taylor, Kenlynn and I headed out to check the birds in the Brazoria Bays on Wednesday. It was cold and windy again. Isn’t it supposed to be warm by now? Over the weekend, the storms that came through brought a very high tide and I was fearful of what we’d find. The trip across the … Read More

By Susan Heath On Tuesday, Taylor, Kenlynn and I made our first foray out to East Matagorda Bay. The number of pairs out there has dwindled from ten in 2011 to just four last year so I wasn’t sure what we would find. There was an unbanded pair on a reef by Chinquapin but that isn’t a nesting spot so … Read More

By Susan Heath Another exciting week with the oystercatchers! I had planned to go out to the Brazoria Bays on Tuesday with Taylor Bennett (GCBO Coastal Biologist) and our excellent intern Kenlynn Volz but the weather was too bad so we delayed until Wednesday afternoon. We had to wait out a thunderstorm complete with small hail at the boat ramp … Read More