We love Goose Island because of the privacy of the individual campsites in the woods, the beach sites not so much because of the wind and close quarters. We did venture out to a beach section of the park as we were told we might get a glimpse of the rare and endangered whooping crane.
Whooping cranes near Saint Charles Bay east of Rockport, Texas. One of our most rare birds, only around 500 exist in the world.
A banded (see red band on its right leg) immature whooping crane in flight training with an adult. When the time comes it will fly with other family members in small flocks all the way to the northernmost area of Alberta, Canada to its nesting grounds along the expansive freshwater marshes, a trip of 2,500 miles in about 25 days.
A Laughing Gull, one of our not so rare birds, awaits our departure to see if we left anything edible.
The “Big Tree” is estimated to be over 500 years old and has been pruned and thinned considerably since I first saw it over twenty years ago.