Category Archive

By Susan Heath On my trip to West Galveston Bay this week I was joined by Alan Wilde, Maureen Wilde, and Lynn Wright all master naturalists and residents of Tiki Island that watch over the oystercatchers. We started in Jones Bay and found that W5 & JC were flying around FR’s territory. Uh oh. Good thing FR wasn’t there! But … Read More

By Susan Heath Taylor, Morgan, and I went out to Bastrop and Drum Bays to check and see if there was any action there early in the week. I had hoped to see JK’s chick again (W7W) but the whole family was gone. The tide was high and they were probably on the beach. The only oystercatchers we saw in … Read More

By Susan Heath I had an online meeting scheduled for Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday afternoons last week so we had to change our schedule around. There was a set of triplets that needed to be banded and I was afraid to wait until Friday lest they fledge so on Monday I went to West Galveston Bay with Alan, Taylor, and … Read More

By Susan Heath Well, I forgot to do the blog over the weekend! I guess I got so used to not doing during the quarantine that I have to get back in the habit. Sorry about that! Because of the Memorial Day holiday last week I only made it out to the West Galveston Bay field site but there was … Read More

By Susan Heath It’s been a while since we chatted about oystercatchers and I’m happy to be back! As Nora O’Donnell says on the CBS evening news – there’s a lot of news to get to tonight! This week we visited all our field sites to see what’s been happening. On Tuesday I went to East Matagorda Bay with GCBO … Read More

By Susan Heath On Monday, Taylor Bennett (GCBO Shorebird biologist) and Morgan Barnes (GCBO intern) went with me to East Matagorda Bay. They closed the beaches in Matagorda County so we thought we might have to use an alternate boat ramp because the one we normally use is on the beach road. Fortunately we could still get to it so … Read More

By Susan Heath This week Alan and I were joined by Leslie Goodman and her son Travis Ly to survey West Galveston Bay. Travis is interested in a career in wildlife biology and I’m all about giving kids a taste of what it’s like! It was windy and that caused some issues with the boat but we made it work. … Read More

By Susan Heath   If I could put another title on this week’s addition it would be “Things are starting to get interesting”. On Monday I was accompanied by Amanda Hackney (Blackcat GIS) for the first trip of the season to East Matagorda Bay. In years past the birds out there have started nesting later than the ones in West … Read More

By Susan Heath It wasn’t pretty but we made it out to monitor the oystercatchers this week. We were supposed to go on Wednesday but there was a high chance of rain so I postponed til Friday. After seeing what the weather actually was on Wednesday it was clear we could have gone that day but you just never know. … Read More

By Susan Heath I was joined by Alan Wilde (Galveston Master Naturalists), Taylor Bennett (GCBO Coastal Biologist) and Morgan Barnes (GCBO intern) for our oystercatcher survey this week. The weather was bad on Wednesday so we had to move it to Thursday. It was cold but fortunately sunny and not very windy. On Sunday, while Alan was kayaking he discovered … Read More

By Susan Heath It’s that time again! Welcome to the Oystercatcher Diaries 2020. We did our first official oystercatcher survey on Tuesday and things are starting to happen. As is the case every year Struve Luci in West Galveston Bay has the early nesters. On January 31, we stopped by to do a check on them while out doing other … Read More

By Susan Heath Well folks, there’s good news and bad news. I was joined on Wednesday, July 3 by Alan Wilde, Amanda Hackney, and my sister Kay Heath to monitor the skimmers and the remaining oystercatcher activity.  Unfortunately the weather did not allow us to get much done. I checked the radar when I woke up at 6:00 and there … Read More