Happy Late Easter!

My parents came to visit this weekend and gave me a chocolate Easter bunny. And when I bit it's head off, I thought of this cartoon.

Anyway, I went to visit them and my sister in Galveston with the main plan to take them birding and maybe playing on the beach a little. We took the ferry to Bolivar Peninsula--which was hit pretty hard by Hurricane Ike back in September. What a mess! So many houses gone, all the trees leaf-less and destroyed. So much debris! And they are still working on cleaning it up a bit. Worst of all, the home of the best burger in the world was wrecked. So sad.

We did get to High Island, which gave me a chance to show the family some great views of some migrants like tanagers, indigo buntings, grosbeaks, orioles, etc. And I took them to the rookery to see the nesting spoonbills, egrets, and herons. And of course we also saw a few gators, and even a couple of armadillos. It was cloudy and windy all day, but we managed to still see some cool stuff!

Saturday, we were not so lucky--as the weather got worse and we almost got blown away by 40mph winds. But, before that we went to Moody Gardens to the aquarium to see some seals, penguins, and seahorses. We lost power for about an hour later on.

The sun finally made an appearance just after I headed back to College Station, and it sounds like they were able to actually get outside and see it.

Overall it was a nice break, and it good to see them--since it will probably be December before I do again.

And now I have chocolate. Back to work. Ugh.