After the seminar I decided to head over to Laguna Atascosa. I had seen a sign for it off the loop around Harlingen. I'm trying to experience as many of the birding places as I can while I'm down here. As usual, it was a pretty good drive, it took about 45 minutes from the RV park to get there. But it was well worth the drive. I took the bay shore drive just around sunset. The water was beautiful. I saw a large number of herons and egrets fishing near the shore. On the way in I got a good sighting of an osprey. And the view of the water was lovely and peaceful.
But the highlight of the trip was when I spotted an ocelot near the road. When I first saw it, I thought it was a coyote. But then I realized that the body shape was wrong, the coloring was wrong, and the tail was certainly wrong. The animal I saw had a cat like tail and certainly the right blotchy coloring for an ocelot. The head was more catlike than coyote like although I thought it looked a little boxy. But this is one of the safe havens for ocelots - so I'm pretty sure of my id. I'm pretty sure I had not seen one of these in the wild before!
It was another one of those times where putting yourself out in the wild gives you opportunities to see things. The more you go out and explore, the more surprises you get like this one.
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