Category Archive

By Susan Heath I’m beginning to get a complex about the weather. This season has just been awful with wind and now rain. I wasn’t able to go to Drum Bay on Tuesday to check on the chick there because there were heavy thunderstorms all day. I rescheduled that for Friday in combination with East Matagorda Bay which would mean … Read More

By Susan Heath I had some non-negotiable commitments on Tuesday and Wednesday this week which of course were the two days with the best weather. It was a tossup between Thursday and Friday. Neither looked very good from a wind perspective but Alan and I made a go of it on Friday. It was too rough to go check on … Read More

By Susan Heath On Tuesday, Alan Wilde and I went out to do a reef survey in Bastrop and Drum Bays both of which border parts of Brazoria NWR. The refuge biologist Jennifer Wilson and I have been talking about building some oystercatcher nesting platforms out there because the habitat is so eroded. The refuge doesn’t encompass the small islands … Read More

By Susan Heath I THINK the crazy winds might be over finally, but that didn’t happen until Thursday and we had to go out to West Galveston Bay on Wednesday in 18 mph winds again. What a drag! I was joined by Alan Wilde, Scott Buckel, and Bev Morrison for a bumpy tour of West Galveston Bay. There were white … Read More

By Susan Heath WIND. That is the defining word for the past week. The wind was blowing 20+ mph every day until Friday so needless to say we couldn’t go out to check on the oystercatchers until Friday. This meant I had to combine two days of work into one because I was scheduled to monitor Black Skimmers and do … Read More

By Susan Heath It was quite a week folks! On Monday John Wright escorted Alan and I and our Experiences Auction winners Jean Booth, Sandy Parker, and Liz Garney around West Galveston Bay in his very nice boat. The weather was beautiful for this excursion and I was very glad we had postponed from the original date which was the … Read More

By Susan Heath Well the weather really messed me up this week. We were supposed to do our American Oystercatcher Experiences Auction trip on Wednesday and on Friday I was supposed to go and count Black Skimmer colonies in West Galveston Bay. On Wednesday the wind was blowing 18 – 20 mph so I had to reschedule the auction trip … Read More

By Susan Heath Wind, wind, wind. Where does it end? I could go on but I’ll stop there. You get the drift. That’s a boat joke in case you didn’t catch it. There wasn’t an option to change our Wednesday monitoring day so even though the wind was predicted to be 18 mph we made a go of it. Alan … Read More

By Susan Heath On Monday I headed out to East Matagorda Bay with Taylor Bennett and Amelia Grider, our summer Beach Nesting Birds team, and Kaitie Braddock, our intern. I was pretty happy to get out there since we hadn’t been able to get out on last Friday due to the wind. The wind forecast today was not great either … Read More

By Susan Heath Well this week was a challenge, but before we get to that I think a lesson in wind driven tides is in order. The tidal range here on the Gulf Coast is only a foot or so but because of the orientation of bay inlets/outlets to the Gulf of Mexico and the shallowness of our bays, we … Read More

By Susan Heath Surprise! We have a nearly fledged chick! What? Who? Where? Patience my friends. On Thursday, I checked out West Galveston Bay with Alan Wilde, Jennifer Horton, and Dianne Forthman. While we were putting the boat in the water, we saw one member of the boat ramp pair on the dock. Hum. Where’s the other one? If you’ve … Read More