Crops & Clips: Flashback to April, 2017

A new month begins, prodding me to get out of my COVID-19 pandemic-induced funk and start looking through my photos from three years ago. I will try to find images which depict favorite memes: critters of all kinds, flowers, fences, reflections and skyscapes as well as photos which speak for themselves. We remained in Florida the entire month, but did spend a week on the west (Gulf) coast with our visiting Illinois family. 

The month of April started off with a handsome male Northern Cardinal on a Pond Cypress which is just sprouting new leaves...



...a male Black-and-White Warbler...



...a male Prairie Warbler...



...and a male Gulf Fritillary. The "male" theme was accidental as they represented the first four creatures I photographed on April 1, 2017. In the case of the butterfly, only the males possess a series of pheromone-secreting androconia, visible as transverse (ladder-like) striations on six veins on each of its fore-wings. (You may need to enlarge this image to see them):



Great Crested Flycatcher:



Northern Mockingbird:



Green Heron:



In the rookery, a pair of Green Herons shared a tender moment with their first egg, on April 9:



Our daughter and family visited from Illinois. Our granddaughters went out with MaryLou to view the Bald Eagle nest:



We spent Easter vacation on Sanibel Island on Florida's Gulf Coast, where we watched an Osprey eat a fish:



At Ding Darling National Wildlife Preserve, a Reddish Egret hunted, energetically dashing to and fro:







On the beach, a Willet displayed its distinctive wing markings:



A Ruddy Turnstone probed in the sand:



A Royal Tern flew along the water's edge:



Dunes at Bowman's Beach on Sanibel island:



A Tiki Hut on the boardwalk at Bowman's Beach:



Marsh Rabbit at Bowman's Beach:



Back home, at the local nest, the two eaglets were climbing on the branches and would soon fly freely:



Common NIghthawks had returned to breed:



Carolina Wrens had been present all year, but were singing much more vigorously in early Spring:



A notably tortuous neck on this Tricolored heron:



Solitary Sandpiper and reflection:



A Bunting eating the "Shepherd's Nettles" seeds of Bidens alba on April 21. It is probably an immature Painted Bunting, as its back has a greenish cast, but... 



... it appeared to have some blue feathers on its breast, suggesting it may be an immature Indigo Bunting. (This was probably an aberration due to the color temperature of the processed image). Both species usually migrate north before the end of April:



A Mottled Duck and Black-necked Stilt:



Sunrise as seen from our back patio...



...and our front yard:


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Linking to:

Fences Around the World

Skywatch Friday

Weekend Reflections

Saturday's Critters

BirdD'Pot

Camera Critters

All Seasons

Wordless Wednesday (on Tuesday)

Our World Tuesday

Wild Bird Wednesday

My Corner of the World

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Please visit the links to all these posts to see some excellent photos on display

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Corpus Christi beach before Hurricane Harvey

We spent 5 days on North Padre Island, just outside Corpus Christi, Texas, with our daughter, her husband and their two daughters. We departed on August 20, less than a week before Hurricane Harvey made a direct strike. Our condominium was located on the beachfront, third floor. Our bed was situated right next to a glass wall which overlooked the beach and the expanse of the Gulf of Mexico:



These are views which greeted us at sunrise:







Mary Lou and I walked the beach early each morning. Our companions along the way were friendly humans...



...and a few feathered critters. Sanderlings scurried back and forth as the surf rolled in and receded:







Laughing Gulls were numerous. They exchange their black heads for "earmuffs" at the end of breeding season:



This adult Herring Gull has a yellow bill and develops a few dark head streaks as winter approaches.



A Royal Tern flew overhead:



The Willet is a large sandpiper with a substantial straight bill. It flashes white wing patches in flight and loudly calls out its name: 





Ruddy Turnstones were quite numerous:



A special treat was this tiny Piping Plover, a threatened species (and endangered in the Great Lakes area) with a yellow-orange flag and a blue-green band respectively on its left and right upper legs. The colors indicate it came from the northern Great Plains states. The light was poor and I could not read the number on the flag, and it flew off before I could draw nearer:





The younger family members went fishing from a pier at night, and I joined them. I tried out the low-light performance of my new mirrorless camera. These images were hand-held and brightened in post-processing but no filters were applied:





I assume that the green lights under the pier are intended to attract fish:



At Port Aransas, we took a successful dolphin-watching boat tour, but I got no decent photos because of my poor reflexes and the annoying shutter lag with my new camera. 

This is a view of the harbor over the "fence" on the stern of the boat. I did not realize how drastically this scene would change only a few days later:



The boat captain pointed out a flock of Roseate Spoonbills, which he called "Texas Flamingos:"



The Lydia Ann Lighthouse, placed into service in 1857, guards the passage between the Gulf and the bay. Hurricanes destroyed the outbuildings several times, the worst in 1916 and 1919. It was deactivated in 1952 and is now under private ownership. The light was restored and returned to service in 1988 as a private aid to navigation:



On my 82nd birthday, just a week after I took these photos, the eye of Hurricane Harvey had already passed directly over Port Aransas and was then producing massive devastation in Houston, Texas.  My birthday occurs at the height of hurricane season. In recent years, four Atlantic and Gulf hurricanes made landfall on August 29: Katrina (2005) Gustav (2008) and Isaac (2012). 

At this point I have not heard how the lighthouse fared. I was reminded of how I spent my birthday when we lived New Orleans in 1969. I was in a school which served as a hurricane shelter, providing medical care to hundreds of evacuees after Camille struck on August 17. At that time it was the worst hurricane to ever strike the US mainland. See: Remembering Hurricane Camille

An excerpt: Remarkably, these words were written in 1999: “For many, Camille is a distant memory, an historical footnote from a time long gone. But Camille is also a harbinger of disasters to come. Another storm of Camille’s intensity will strike the United States, the only question is when. When this future storm strikes, it will make landfall over conditions drastically different from those in 1969. The hurricane-prone regions of the United States have developed dramatically as people have moved to the coast and the nation’s wealth has grown. Estimates of potential losses from a single hurricane approach $100 billion.”

[Thirty Years After Hurricane Camille: Lessons Learned, Lessons Lost, by Roger A. Pielke, Jr., Chantal Simonpietri, and Jennifer Oxelson ,12 July 1999]

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Linking to Misty's  CAMERA CRITTERS,

Linking to Eileen's SATURDAY'S CRITTERS,

Linking to FENCES AROUND THE WORLD by Gosia

Linking to SKYWATCH FRIDAY by Yogi, Sylvia and Sandy

Linking to WEEKEND REFLECTIONS by James

Linking to BirdD'Pot by Anni

Linking to Wild Bird Wednesday by Stewart

Linking to Wordless Wednesday (on Tuesday) by NC Sue

Linking to ALL SEASONS by Jesh

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Please visit the links to all these memes to see some excellent photos on display

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