22 T Hee (ACU DUB OUNY By Uri erie 
Look! A Long-billed Curlew! 
By Mrs. Emma B. Pitcher 
In several articles, Roger Tory Peterson and Edwin Way Teale have 
written of the incredible variety of birds around Rockport, Texas, an 
unprepossessing coastal resort and oil center just north of Corpus Christi. 
Greatly intrigued, my husband, Al, and I went to see too. It was a cold, 
wet and windy second week in February, 1966, but we drove hundreds 
of miles along the shore and neighboring countryside with our binoculars 
always in action! 
The big shorebirds were the most exciting for me. The first Long-billed 
Curlew was unbelievable (even to a long-term student of the Calumet 
Dumps), but he soon became a familiar sight. Curlews could be found 
in the short grass or along the water’s edge, always probing and sweeping 
with graceful bills, and always on the move. When the big willets flew, 
they flashed a handsome, bold wing stripe. There were thousands of 
them. Marbled Godwits were also plentiful; I once saw 37 together in 
the cove, and had seven in my glasses at once. Another spectacle was 
35 or 40 avocets sitting close together on one spit; their wing pattern 
was dramatic. 
We saw, at some distance, 31 of the 44 living Whooping Cranes. Their 
winter home is an isolated, windswept, almost barren, marshy shoreland. 
The Aransas Refuge peninsula contains 47,000 acres, protecting the miles 
of secluded coastal feeding area which the whoopers need. They were 
most impressive when flying because of their huge wing-spread. The boat 
trip to see them was cold and windy, but easily worth the fee because 
there were views of other good birds all along the way. 
Oystercatchers and Black Skimmers became familiar friends, along 
with Caspian and Royal Terns. Sometimes 35 or 40 skimmers sat very 
close to each other on a sandbar, all faced into the wind at exactly the 
same angle. Herring, Ring-billed and Laughing Gulls were everywhere. 
One large tidal flat was so crowded with dowitchers (we estimated over 
1,000) as to seem like an anthill. About 150-200 Dunlin ran with them. 
We saw a flock of 15 White Ibis wheeling lazily high in the sky, just as 
Peterson described them, and later saw four feeding close to us in 
the marsh. 
One day we drove for several hours down the hard sand beach on the 
gulf side of Padre Island, the 100-mile long barrier reef. There was 
driving rain, a sharp, cold wind and a heavy surf, but diving into the 
tumbling breakers were flocks of 12 to 15 Eared Grebes, whether fishing 
or playing we did not know. They’d come up only to dive again im- 
mediately. With such stamina, no wonder their order has survived some 
80,000,000 years. Herons, egrets, gulls, plovers and sandpipers fed as 
if it were a warm summer day, seemingly unaware of the penetrating 
wind and heavy rain. 
Rafts and rafts of Redhead and Pintail Ducks were everywhere. Red- 
heads lie low in the water and do not seem to feed actively, but the 
pintails are tipped up, with sprig tails flying all the time. We saw one 
lone, resplendent Wood Duck, occasionally a bufflehead and gadwall, and 
many baldpates and shovelers. 
Snowy and American Egrets were common. One flock of 15 Snowy 
Eigrets was feeding right beside the highway. Reddish and Cattle Egrets 
