BlathrWayne Lorentz

The Turtle Bayou Nature Preserve also has a less-traveled eastern unit. There's hardly any bids to hear there, though. It's much drier, and a much less thorny hike along the water.

Two roads diverged in a wood, and I took the one on the right because there was more shade.

Man, that FM-563 traffic just never stops.

I spent the morning at the Turtle Bayou Nature Preserve. Turtle Bayou used to be a oil town, but when the oil ran out, so did the people. All that's left of the town is an abandoned ferry landing, scattered concrete foundations, and the occasional bit of rusting oil infrastructure.

Today, the preserve is a refuge for various birds and other wetland critters from coyotes to crawfish. It is also occasionally occupied by herds of cattle, who crop the greenery, fertilize with abandon, and churn up the soil so it doesn't get too compacted. Pretty much the same thing that deer and elk and buffalo used to do here, before they were driven out by suburbia.

The area also functions as a geologic sponge, regulating water levels and cleaning pollutants from the water that flows from the surrounding 88,000 acres into Galveston Bay. That's why the Chambers-Liberty County Navigation District supports this project. It helps both birds and barges.

Birds tallied on this visit:

• American Goldfinch
• American Kestrel
• American Wigeon
• American Crow
• Belted Kingfisher
• Boat-tailed Grackle
• Blue Jay
• Blue-gray Gnatcatcher
• Brown-headed Cowbird
• Carolina Chickadee
• Carolina Wren
• Cedar Waxwing
• Common Gallinule
• Dark-eyed Junco
• Golden-crowned Kinglet
• House Wren
• Mallard
• Northern Cardinal
• Pine Warbler
• Red-bellied Woodpecker
• Red-shouldered Hawk
• Red-winged Blackbird
• Royal Tern
• Ruby-crowned Kinglet
• Savannah Sparrow
• Sedge Wren
• Swamp Sparrow
• Yellow-rumped Warbler

My recommendation: do not hike the trails with flat-bottomed shoes. You need hiking boots at a minimum. Well-worn cowboy boots are probably best. Especially if it's rained in the last week, and if the cows are visiting.

It was a foggy, depressing day so I went out to Turtle Bayou where I knew there wouldnʼt be any other people; and there werenʼt.

I did find lots of birds, though. I recorded nine new species for my list:

• Golden-crowned Kinglet
• Purple Finch
• Winter Wren
• House Wren
• American Pipit
• Eastern Phoebe
• Ruby-crowned Kinglet
• American Goldfinch
• Yellow-rumped Warbler

There was also a metric ass-ton of mosquitoes. But thatʼs OK; the birds have to eat, too.

I thought about it for a while, and I think itʼs probably been close to 30 years since I was last bitten by a mosquito.

I donʼt know why the mob bothers hiding the bodies of its enemies in Indiana corn fields, or New Jersey stadia, or Nevada reservoirs. Chuck a corpse in a gulf coast swamp, and itʼll be chewed up, digested, and reduced to gator nuggets in a matter of hours.

Even if the F.B.I. knows where to look, the agents will be like, “Yeah, weʼll just let them have this one.”