Today is our last full day here at the KOA on South Padre Island. It is sad to think that we have to leave the warmth and sunshine and head back to dreary cold, snow bound Ontario. But the reality is, we have to go home to work to earn some more money so that we can afford our upcoming Summer vacation. We have 2 exciting destinations planned, so be sure to tune back into the blog at the end of June to see where we are off to.
After breakfast, Karen did some laundry, enough to give us clean clothes to wear for the drive home. Then we went for another visit to the South Padre Island Birding and Nature Center.
Every time we visit the Center, we see something that we have not seen before.
Although this isn’t a bird, on all our previous visits we had not seen this turtle. A Red Eared Slider. It was very fortunate to get these 2 photos because the turtle slipped back into the water before I could take a 3rd photo.
Something else we had never seen is an American Bittern. If there hadn’t been others pointing it out to us we would never have seen it. It took me a long time to even see it in the tall grass, finally when it moved a bit I was able to find it to take photos.
We watched for several minutes till it flew off.
We saw all the typical birds that winter here so I won’t bore you with more photos of the same birds, but this Great Blue Heron was interesting to watch. It had just caught a fish, and I even got a little video of it swallowing its catch.
Great Blue Heron swallowing a fish.
The Sanderlings were also enjoying the beach.
There were numerous jelly fish stranded on the beach, the high winds and waves from the last few days must have blown them ashore.
Various other unidentifiable things had also washed up onshore.
The other day we saw the statue of El Cristo de los Pescadores, so that inspired us to go in search of the other statue on the island. The statue of Padre J. Nicholas Balli. The island was named for him as he started the first settlement on the island back in 1800.
Near the statue of Padre J. Nicholas Balli is a memorial for those who were killed or injured when a section the Queen Isabella Causeway collapsed and fell into the ocean on September 15 2001 after one of the support pilings was struck by a barge. You can read about the incident at this link. Queen Isabella Causeway Collapse.
We came back to our trailer and did some packing and preparing for our departure tomorrow. Karen and I went to the KOA Sunset Deck to see our last sunset until we return to the island again.
If you want to see all of our photos from today you can click on this link to our FLICKR site.
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