Date:         Thu, 11 Apr 2013 22:39:38 -0500
Reply-To:     mcneely4@COX.NET
Sender:       Vanagon Mailing List <vanagon@gerry.vanagon.com>
From:         Dave Mcneely <mcneely4@COX.NET>
Subject:      brief trip report
In-Reply-To:  <CANrF1zikBooM2wmfUnUugP=P3_OegerF096TweWkFFbg6-HN=w@mail.gmail.com>
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Bonnie and I went to S. Louisiana for a professional conference, and appended some birding and general field tripping.

We left Edmond, Oklahoma on Wednesday, 3 April, drove to Mount Pleasant, Texas for the night, and continued to Lake Charles, LA on Thursday.  The conference work lasted through Sunday, then we went on to High Island, Texas and Bolivar, Texas for birding.  We camped on the beach east of High Island just outside McFaddin National Wildlife Refuge.  This is along a very narrow beach where Texas in its great wisdom had built a highway along the ocean to promote tourism.  Formerly, the highway went all the way to Port Arthur on the Lousiana border.  Flattening dunes to build a highway is not wise.  The highway is no more, some 80 miles of it.  The surf and storm surges over the years collapsed it, and eroded the beach until only a narrow strip remains.  In places, remnants of the highway form a good surface to park and camp.  We took advantage.

However, on the occasion when we were there, though Texas's tidal amplitude is usually only about a foot, and we had checked the tidal forecasts, strong southeasterly winds had built the surf above forecast levels.  We woke in the middle of the night with the van rocking from the wind.  We stepped out to find the surf crashing against the lip of highway that was a couple of feet above the beach, and we thought it better to pack it in.  We retreated to an Audubon Society refuge where members are allowed to camp in a parking lot.  The next day we drove along the beach again, to find that the surf had washed over our former campsite, and tides had been 3 feet above forecast levels due to the unexpected strong winds.  Good thing we had moved.

We met our objective of seeing numerous neotropical migrant birds, however, along with lots of resident birds.  We also saw a Cottonmouth (a kind of pit viper, a highly venomous snake) and lots of alligators.  There is also a large rookery (some three thousand nests) of several heron and egret species, along with Neotropical Cormorants and Roseate Spoonbills.  The birds collectively made quite a noise!

From High Island we went to Anahuac National Wildlife Refuge with more alligators and additional interesting birds including the first White Ibises I had seen in several years.

We then headed homeward, stopping to camp at a primitive site called Neches Bluff for its perch above the Neches River in the Davy Crockett National Forest near Nacogdoches, Texas.  Our campsite was set amidst 120 foor tall pines, and beautiful American Holly trees and Flowering Dogwoods in full show.  Nacogdoches claims to be the oldest European settlement in Texas, as the Spanish built a mission and presidio near there to make peace with the Caddo Indians, and to threaten the French across the Sabine River in Louisiana in the late seventeenth century.

At our Neches Bluff camp site we also encountered a large Corn Snake, a beautiful version of its much plainer cousin the Great Plains Rat Snake.

We had left Edmond with temperatures in the low forties, with drizzly rain and blustery north winds.  In S. Louisiana and S. Texas the weather was beautiful, temperatures reaching into the seventies.  As we left Neches Bluff Wednesday morning it was 62 F, but by the time we had reached Nacogdoches 25 miles away, a hard, cold rain was falling and north winds were fierce.  We only got 16.7 mpg on the drive home that day, after averaging 20.6 mpg for the rest of the trip.  We reached Edmond to find that the city had been experiencing an ice storm that brought down massive tree branches all over town.

In our 1405 miles we saw 112 species of birds, the main objective of the trip.  The camper performed flawlessly.

mcneely