From our campground on Baffin Bay, south of Corpus Christi, we ventured north to Padre Island for a day trip to explore the world’s largest remaining undeveloped barrier island. We had only one day to fit this in, so we willingly put up with the showers and the wind that whipped off the gulf and onto shore. What a spectacular spot. One of the best birding spots in the country according to “them that know about these things,” we were not surprised to see birds in numbers that defied counting. And since we are bird watchers but not bird identifiers (Marilyn defines bird “identifiers” as those who refer to what is just a pretty bird to us as a “long legged, bug eyed, fluffy feathered, curve beaked, wobble throated, rainbow crested Sightiana), we were just delighted to walk among the throng and not be too worried about what to call each and every one of them- although there were a few we knew we had never seen before and did want to get back to the bird book to look up.
In the stiff breezes of the day, huge rafts of birds lifted up in waves, hovered over head to allow us passage underneath them, then settle back to the beach and surf behind us. It was hard to know whether to look foreword to see what would appear next, up to see them gliding on the wind, out to sea to take in the pounding surf, behind to see how closely they would settle back in or straight down to avoid stepping on the thousands of Portuguese Man-of -Wars that were washing ashore. It was a walk on the beach, on the wild side, for many miles, with something for all the senses to enjoy. And not a single one of those birds showed us any disrespect by taking care of business while hovering above.
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