We made an early departure from the Shady Grove RV Park to get to the Botanical Garden as early as we could...after the sun rose. We found a nice grassy spot at the end of the overflow parking lot between a couple of palm trees and parked Speedy. It would be staying there overnight and through tomorrow.
After getting settled, we walked over to the lake to see if we could get another look at the Jacana we had seen a couple of days ago, but it was nowhere to be seen. There were a good group of birders already there and no one had seen it. It turned out that it was not seen all day. Maybe it figured that it had done its part in attracting birders to the Birdiest Festival and was time to move on.
From there we moved over to the lake and watched the birds there. It was even more crowded than on the 16th and we spent the rest of the morning there.
Registration for the festival opened after lunch and, as expected, ours was a bit messed up. When we registered online, my registration went through just fine, but there was a bit of a hiccup when I tried to register Ellen. I called the botanical garden and they straightened it out and assured us that both registrations were fine. When we went to pick up our packets, mine was there but Ellen's was not.
The concern here was that I'd signed us up for the all-day trip to King Ranch tomorrow and the trip was full. I showed them the confirmation email that I'd gotten and they said to come back later and all would be straightened out.
We did a quick tour of the vendor tent, but there were very few vendors, just a Swarovski booth and another local equipment company, a couple of birding guided tour companies, a booth selling clothing, the local Audubon group, Texas Parks & Wildlife, and Aransas NWR. The refuge booth was staffed by the current visitor services manager, who started there after we had been there, but we stopped and introduced ourselves and it turned out we had met briefly when she did a short assignment while we were volunteering.
There were a couple of presentations in the afternoon, one on Shorebird Identification, which was quite good. I wish we had been able to attend before we tried to ID all the shorebirds in the lake this morning. The other was on Wildlife Photography, which was okay, but not as useful as ones we've attended at home.
By this point Ellen's registration was ready and we were confirmed for tomorrow's trip.
The last event that we saw was a Raptor exhibition by a couple from the Adirondacks who rehabilitated and bred raptors. They had quite a group of birds with them including a white "Arctic" Gyrfalcon and an Aplomado Falcon. They had a Bald Eagle of course, and a Harris's Hawk. They also had several owls including a Eurasian Hawk Owl which towered over the Great Horned Owl it was perched next to. They also had a Snowy Owl, a bit out of its range here in Texas.
They flew the Gyrfalcon and the Aplomado Falcon. They flew free (with transponders attached just in case) and it was a good look at a couple of exceptional birds.
The day ended with an al fresco Fajita dinner provided by the festival, after which we retired to Speedy for a quiet night in the parking area.
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