Trip09

Nice night. It rained off and on, then the wind came up and blew all the mosquitos to El Paso. It dawned bright and calm in the forties. Did some birding from the car, and by mid-day it was sixty degrees with a sea breeze. T-shirt and shorts for a run, but otherwise it was chilly without a windbreaker.

We went in search of the secretive sedge wren. We got distracted. Wow! What a great place to bird. We saw 38 different kinds of birds today. Tons of great, large, colorful, easy to spot wading birds. Snow geese by the thousands. Egrets by the thousands. Roseate spoonbills. Hundreds of white pelicans. Hundreds of herons and cormorants and ibis. And a bobcat. We got a long look at a huge male bobcat that haunts the area. Saw a new bird of prey: a black shouldered kite. Saw him flying. Watched him hunt. Then later, Judy spotted a pair of them perched on adjacent posts, so we got an extended look.

There sure are a lot of warning signs around here not to annoy the alligators. I swear, they really use that word. Do not annoy the alligators.

We don't get to see our neighbors sleep seven people and five dogs in their 23 foot camper after all. They had a difficult night with the mosquitoes. The mosquitoes are only a problem around sun down and after. We didn't have any bug problems all day today. But our neighbors were in an old leaky motorhome that didn't seal up well. They were infiltrated by intruders all night.

They packed up today and went back to Dallas.

We discovered how to peacefully coexist with the mosquitoes. We go anywhere we want and do anything we want all day long. By about five o'clock, we finish everything that involves going outside, then leave the doors and windows closed as much as possible. A few mosquitoes get in anyway, of course. When we're completely through going in and out for the night, Judy fires up the vacuum and wanders the entire motorhome sucking up mosquitoes. They're not a problem.

Life on the beach. Fresh shrimp stir-fry for dinner tonight.

We saw all those big birds. We saw lots of little birds too. There are several really cool kinds of sparrows here. We saw bushes with sparrows in them, but didn't see many sparrows clearly. How many wrens did we see? The slam-dunk, can't miss sedge wren? Zero. Not a single wren of any kind. What is their habitat? Salt marsh. Where are we? Surrounded by salt marsh. It's going to take another day here, ignoring the big obvious birds, looking down into the bushes.

Then, south along the coast.