First Day on the Road

Saturday, February 13, 2016

I spent much of February running back and forth to Tulsa for some health issues, so was not prepared for this Earthwatch. After hastily packing last night, I spent the night awake with insomnia. I think I managed 4 hours of sleep. Nonetheless, sans breakfast and coffee, I picked up Deb Hirt—a photographer acquaintance who has set her sights on bird photography and an MS in Ornithology—at 7 am for the drive to the Texas coast. 

This is our fourth overnight birding trip together: South Padre Island, TX, April 2014; High Island, TX, April 2015; Kearney, Nebraska, Sandhill Cranes March 2015, and now Whooping Cranes at Aransas NWR, February 2016. We have also taken day trips to many nearby birding areas. Deb has no car and while she has a driver’s license has not driven in several years. I presently have no birding buddy. So the fit is good. I drive and help Deb with her bird I.D. and Deb takes photos of the birds we see.

It’s a 10-hour drive to Aransas National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR) on the Texas coast, so we planned to break up the drive by spending Saturday night in Waco, TX, where I had reserved with a Quality Inn,. I also planned to have Deb brief me on the Expedition Briefing while I drove so that I would be better prepared when we got to Aransas.

Briefing in Brief:

The refuge is 115,000 acres of scrub-shrub and saltmarsh vegetation, one of 556 national protective sites run by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. Established in 1937 by Franklin D. Roosevelt to serve as a safe haven for threatened and endangered species, Aransas NWR is the principal wintering grounds for the last natural migratory flock of whooping cranes in the world. This wild western flock is at about 308 individuals, up from an all-time low of just 15 in 1941, 75 years ago.

Research aims:

· Better understanding the coastal marsh ecosystem to determine the effects of both natural and anthropogenic impacts on coastal habitats and whooping crane resources

· Investigating patterns that drive whooping crane territory quality and food resource availability

· Using data gathered to inform future conservation efforts that could help lead to whooping crane population recovery (When the flock has reached 1000 individuals, many scientists and Earthwatchers will consider their work well done.)

Data collection methods:

1. Ecosystem assessments of vegetation and water quality

· Noting GPS location of crane groups’ territory (cranes must be off the territory or at a great distance before these data can be collected)

· Recognizing wolfberry plants and counting number of red and number of green berries on each in five 30-foot sample areas 15-meters apart

· Counting number and size of blue crabs each 100-meters

· Gathering water salinity, conductivity, temperature, and location of sample

2. Conducting wading bird observations from boats and observation blinds

· Identifying and recording crane behaviors

· Identifying individual birds and family groups (through leg bands affixed by the US Fish & Wildlife Service, and by color; the young birds have rusty brown heads/necks and usually hang out with their parents who, like humans, mate for life but occasionally get a “divorce.”)

· Identifying sub-adults (they have no rusty coloration but have no territory and hang out together, generally in larger groups of 4-8 birds)

Internet photo of Whooping Crane family; youngster with rusty head in center

One of the rarest and largest birds in North America, whooping cranes (Grus Americana) grow five feet tall and can exceed a seven foot wing span. Despite their impressive stature, these birds are facing an uphill battle to survive. With increasing development, expansion in the agricultural, industrial and tourism sectors, and shifting climate, the Guadalupe-San Antonio and Mission-Aransas Estuaries are experiencing increasing amounts of stress from humans and the environment in supply vs. demand for freshwater.

All of our driving this our first day was south on I-35, a busy interstate highway. In Waco we holed up in a Quality Inn that I had reserved. The Inn was old and the room layout funky with both beds foot to foot in front of the windows/air conditioner with the closet and bathroom around a corner. We unpacked and then Deb, who works in the kitchen of Stillwater’s Olive Garden, treated me to dinner at a local Olive Garden, where she received a discount. Before going to the Olive Garden we tried unsuccessfully to track down the Waco Lake Wetlands but ran out of light.  It was a tiring, boring drive on the Interstate, but we saw many vultures in the sky and kestrels on electrical wires along the way, as well as a handful of red-tailed hawks.