South from San Antonio, New Mexico to Fort Stockton Texas. Stopped for the
night at the Fort Stockton KOA. We always stop here. Outskirts of town.
Nice enough spots. Food and fuel. Gasoline, diesel, and a fifties café
on-site. We always get chicken fried steak. And it's a good place for
birds. We pass through here in January. There are a few birds here then,
but not nearly like this. We have great-tailed grackles, western kingbirds,
and doves making a great racket. Mourning doves, white winged doves,
eurasian collard doves, and inca doves. All making their own noise. Then
Judy spotted scissor tailed flycatchers. They're common here in the summer,
but you never get to see them anywhere else, or any other time. We followed
the flycatchers. This is the first time we've seen them in years. We took
a walk down a brush-bordered path. We got cactus wrens. We got a bunny
rabbit. We got more kingbirds. I looked down a side path and declared: "I
want to look down that path and see scaled quail." I looked down the path.
It didn't happen.
We turned to continue on our way down the original path, and out dashed two
quail. Scaled Quail! Yeaaaaa! Scaled quail. Number 341 on the list.
Scaled quail. How perfect! We and the quail established a rhythm. They
would feed out in the open. We could get within fifty feet. If we got
closer, they moved on. If we stopped they stopped. If we walked fast, they
ran. We followed them for a long time. They probably were exhausted by the
time they got home to tell the kids about the stalkers that almost got them.
