A Summer Saturday at Brazoria National Wildlife Refuge

On a steamy hot Saturday morning in June, my husband and I took a Jeep drive to Brazoria National Wildlife Refuge.

Rain fell from low dark skies.

When the sun came out, the blackbirds gave chase, with the foxtail reeds and puffy white clouds waving them on.

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The air was heavy and moist and just slightly crusty from the salty sea breeze. The lilies seemed perfectly still until you noticed the bees and the ants busy afoot.

The egrets and alligators, the coots and the gallinules moved at a Sunday pace.

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As a birdwatching trip, it was pretty successful with a handful of noteworthy sightings:

A dickcissel–a new addition to my life list  Sorry, we didn’t get a picture.  

A brown-headed cowbird–another addition to my life list.  Steve got a good picture, and she’s beautiful. We couldn’t identify it until we got home and did some research.  Tricky female birds!

A reddish egret in his breeding white morphs. Note the pink bill with a black tip and the blue-gray legs.  He’s rocking the spring fling!

A red-winged blackbird chasing a purple gallinule. We don’t know what all the ruckus was about. While my mind considered all kinds of anthropomorphic injustice scenarios, my husband simply suggested, “Perhaps the blackbird had babies in a nest and the gallinule got too close.” Perhaps he’s right.

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Check out my Instagram account to see some bird and comic drawings inspired by this outing to Brazoria National Wildlife Refuge.