Birthday trip to Hagerman (July 2018)

I expected my birthday trip to Hagerman National Wildlife Refuge to be a little bit of a bust since mid-July in Texas means temperatures in the upper-90s/low-100s. Typically, the flora is browning (if not already dead) and the weather is generally oppressive. However, the refuge was flooding some of the fields while we were there and there were birds all over the place!

I'm not sure what makes them decide to flood areas but the plume of water was pretty impressive:

Typically, the birds in the refuge are spread out. There usually aren't groupings of more than one type of bird. (With the exception of the Canada geese because they do what they want). In the area that was flooding, though, we saw snowy egret, cattle egret, great blue heron, little blue heron, mallards, Canada geese, red-wing blackbirds, and more:

Maybe it was because of the flooding areas, but there were plenty of birds in other parts of the refuge, too:

Great Blue Heron

Great Egret with Canada Geese

Cattle Egret

Neotropic Cormorant

Eastern Pondhawk(?)

It's not a bird, obviously, but it was absolutely gorgeous. I'm not 100% sure this is an Eastern Podhawk, but it looks similar to pictures I've seen of them.

Whitetail deer at Hagerman (July 2018)

For my birthday last month, I took a weekday trip up to Hagerman National Wildlife Refuge. It was very hot (mid-July in Texas) and I didn't expect to see too much in the way of critters, but I really wanted to go anyway.

We didn't get up to the refuge until late afternoon and by 5 o'clock we could see some summer storms starting up nearby so we decided to head home. That's when the most wonderful thing happened: we saw a trio of whitetail deer near the refuge's wheatfields. Two adults and an adorable spotted fawn.

It was the best birthday gift I could have imagined.