Texas Point Quad,

I had a free day yesterday, so I decided to head down to the coast to check out the general conditions.  My two main areas of curiosity were the gull and tern flocks on the beaches, and the possibilities of shorebirds in a few areas where there had been some a few weeks ago.  

The beach was crowded with humans.  Many of the beach campsites were flying rebel flags and were attended by pit bulls.  That's not my demographic, and the flags appeared to have frightened away everything but winter-plumaged Sanderlings, so I continued west.  

Texas Point, the area all the way to the SW corner of the state, was my next destination.  I knew there'd been good numbers of shorebirds there in May, and I wanted to see if any remained.  We're currently in the atlas period for the Louisiana Summer Bird Atlas (see http://www.museum.lsu.edu/~Remsen/SummerBirdAtlas.html and http://ebird.org/content/la/about ), and I thought there might be some species present that are generally hard to find at this time if for no other reason than lack of habitat.  

I found the following shorebirds, plus a few others.  

Stilt Sandpipers; I tallied 19.

White-rumped Sandpiper; 42.  

Wilson's Phalarope; 4.

Western Sandpiper; 2. 

The Westerns were the biggest surprise to me.  I've seen them in "fall" migration as early as late June, but not as early as June 9.  There's no telling if these are early migrants, but given the plumage, that's my guess.  

Wilson's Phalaropes sometimes show up early on their return trip south, but these I think are a bit too early.   I'm guessing they're holdovers from the large flock that frequented this area over the past month.  One of them had a badly injured leg, which would seem to support that idea.

Next week, I'll start hitting quads in the interior.