Rain today

The weekend is finally here, but doesn't look like I'll be kayaking today. This is steadily moving in our direction...

Winter Birds

Here are some Graveline winter birds. I took all these pictures on Saturday on a kayak trip across the bay, down the bayou to the gulf (a trip I've done many times). It was breezy but not cold, and not only did we see all these birds but also collected some fresh oysters from the edge of the bayou which we steamed... they were delicious. Hope I live to tell about it. Anyway, If I could get the text to line up with the pictures I would, but here's a list of what we saw, most of which I was able to capture on camera. I've moved the list around to match the order of the pictures. Blogger is not too easy to manipulate. In fact, I'm sure there's an easier way to post pictures, but I haven't yet found it. Maybe I should be on myspace?

Great Blue Heron (above)
Great Egret/American Egrets
Bufflehead
Brown Pelican
Willets
Brown Pelican
Louisiana Heron
Red-Breasted Mergansers (female)
Great Blue Heron
Immature Little Blue Heron
Grebe
American Egret
Great Blue Heron
Snowy Egret
Cormorant
Brown Pelicans and Cormorants
Red-Breasted Mergansers (male)
American Egret

We also saw a white pelican , lots of terns, and an osprey diving for fish.

Spring in January

It's been way too long but here I am back on the water. It's over 70 degrees this weekend and feels like spring is here very early. T-shirts were comfortable for this outing. Mom and I went through the south cut, past the boat ramp, and towards the gulf. It's been so long I wasn't up for going all the way to the mouth of the bayou, so we turned up to find the winding trail we had been on once before. Not at all sure we were on the right path until we saw it open up into the bay... but sure enough, it got us there. A new house we'll call the lookout house is being built over by the ramp (visible in this photo just above the paddle), and can be seen from most places in the grass to give you a good reference point.

The GPS track says 4.5 miles and shows the meandering paths. Egrets, heons, and PELICANS were plentiful. Lots of jumping mullet!