It is hard to describe my favorite thing about the Texas Aquatic Field Ecology trip because the whole trip was so memorable. My favorite part of the Texas Aquatic Field Ecology trip was being at Port O’Connor. We first met up with Cooper Knight, who would be taking us to the island of Matagorda for camping, fishing, birding, and seining. Once we arrived, we started unpacking the trailer and organizing items we had to take to the island for the two days we spent there. The island was approximately seven miles from the coast of Texas and took about thirty minutes for us to get out to it. Ashley Mckittrick, Morgan Ohm, Colby Dows and I were the first group to set off to the Matagorda island. On our way to the island, we saw at least 15-20 dolphins. Once we arrived at Matagorda island and unloaded the boat, we immediately put bug spray on. The mosquitoes were insane and it felt like this island was the breeding ground of mosquitoes. When we finished coating ourselves in “poison” as Dr. Williams would say. We then started helping one another set up our tents while waiting for the rest of the class to arrive. After having our tents sent up, we went and explored the island.
The next day was a busy one to say the least. Ashley Mckittrick and I went for a walk to explore the deeper part of the island. We ended up walking around 2 miles and we saw various types of bird species and plant species. We ended up coming across these berries that looked like black berries but we weren’t sure so we did not eat any of them. On our walk we ran into Noah Kuck birding, Noah told us he saw an alligator, so of course Ashley and I decided we had to go find it. Ashley, Noah and I decided to head back to camp to get a quick bite to eat then invite anyone else who wanted to come find the alligator.
Once we arrived back at camp, Ashley and I spoke with Dr. Williams and Cooper about whether or not we could eat the berries we saw on our walk. They were called Dewberries and are very delicious to eat. After grabbing a bite to eat, Ashley, Morgan, Kyler, Colten and I started our search for the alligator. While walking we did not come across the alligator and we all decided to head to the beach instead. This walk to the beach took 3 miles and it felt like it took forever. Once we arrived at the beach, it was the most beautiful sight of the whole trip. Millions of seashells lined the beach. Kyler and Colten were the smart ones and wore bathing suits, us girls did not but that did not stop us from swimming in the ocean. Morgan, Colten and I ended up swimming for at least an hour. We stopped swimming for a little bit and walked to the beach looking at beautiful shells and sand dollars. Being my first time seeing sand dollars, spotting them was very difficult. After exploring the beach, we had to go swimming one more time before we left. We spent at least another 30 minutes swimming and then decided we should head back. On our way back to camp we ran into a cute little Texas garter snake (Morgan was not a fan). This was also the day all five of us got extremely burnt from the Texas sun.
During the evening, I really wanted to find the barn owl because the previous night we heard it outside our tents. Noah Kuck and I set out to find the barn owl near some of the buildings on the island. Noah played a barn owl call on his phone hoping to bring the barn owl closer. After only a couple seconds the barn owl started calling back to his phone. Noah kept playing the call on his phone in hopes of the owl coming closer so we could see it in the air with our head lamps. Sure enough, we saw this shadow flying in the night sky and it kept getting closer. We shined our head lamps in the air and the barn owl flew right over our heads only being 25 feet away.
After our exciting interaction with the barn owl, I went back to camp to go herping with Ashley. I used a simple gadget to catch these amphibians, half a fishing pole and some fishing line tied to the end like a noose. Ashley and I went to look around the buildings on the island because we figured that’s where we would find the most amphibians. We found multiple Mediterranean House Geckos and after trying what felt like one hundred attempts to catch the gecko. I was finally successful.
The next morning consisted of packing, organizing, and heading back to our next adventure. This was the end of our trip to Port O’Conner.