WHOOPERS

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Aransas NWR / Goose Island, Texas ~ 12/2019

Multiple days at a rebuilding, a still recovering Goose Island SP.

The aftermath of Hurricane Harvey still evident.

Lamar Peninsula felt scrubbed, severely pruned and brightly repainted.

Nice.

Three days on the water with Jeff Parker of Explore In Focus, captained by Kevin Sims and Lori McCullough Sims of Aransas Bay Birding Charters.

All quality people offering personable and knowledgeable professional photography and guide services.

Not to be missed if you are a wildlife photographer.

The alternate lifeblood of the area, barge traffic in the Army Corps barge channel; alternate and contrasting with local fishing guides and purveyors of whooping crane access, made itself known the first day.

A sunken paired gravel barge mid-channel with another string of gravel and sand barges run aground on top of the first. A second sinking gravel barge pushed ashore mid-channel to avoid it’s complete sinking, had the Coast Guard’s, Army Corp’s and private contractor’s noisy attention and focus as they scrambled to offload and re-float commercial barges.

This, as barge traffic backed up outside of the barge channel into a connecting bay.

The birds, Whoopers and most all else, retreated well into the center of the marshes as far from mankind and his commerce as possible.

My meager combination of 400 mm telephoto and 1.4 TC would not dent that distance.

By the third day the barge back up had moved on and Coast Guard’s, Army Corp’s and private contractor’s efforts had yielded some positive results.

The Whooping Cranes returned, visually accessible.

Back ashore, a privately held Lamar Peninsula photography blind yielded huge whooping crane, sand hill crane and whistling duck activity late in the day.

Gallery Link ~ Aransas NWR / Goose Island – 12/2019

Gallery Link ~ Aransas NWR – Winter 2017

Having been away from traveling and travel photography for a good 18 months while we relocated to the New Hampshire seacoast I find myself bumping up against that old learning curve and lots of relearning.

Some things have changed digitally in my time away.

Interesting to be back traveling … 18 months at this age is a long time.