Beach

We didn’t get what we expected. We expected a beautiful, seventy-five degree, blue-sky day on the beach. What we got was a beautiful, seventy-five degree, totally foggy day on the beach. We packed up for a picnic, and spent the day driving down the island. We thought we would be looking out over the ocean for sea birds. Instead, we were watching for shapes looming in the fog to make sure we didn’t drive into a fisherman parked on the beach. It was a great, unexpected, day.

Texas

Barges on the intracoastal waterway. They just push them around like boxcars that don't have to be on rails.

Birds

Got the pink flamingo! Flamingos are not on the Texas bird list, but one got blown off-course from Mexico and landed on an oyster shell island in Aransas Bay. He spends his days standing around with white pelicans and cormorants. The Wharf Cat whooping crane tour boat goes right past him every day. Had our best whooping crane day ever. Saw more than thirty of them. I know how many because I asked the tour narrator how many we saw, since my counting skills don’t go past: one, two, many. Never was any good with numbers. Greater flamingo!

We saw ten percent of the world population of whooping cranes.

After the boat trip, we drove down the Fulton Beach road to find the flock of redheads that had a female black scoter in it. We found it. That’s another bird that is not on the Texas bird list. Black scoter. We’re racking up the out-of-range birds here.

I printed a list of all the birds that are possible here in the winter, marked off the ones we’ve seen already, and have gone on a campaign to find the ones we haven’t seen yet in our fifteen years of visiting here.

Tomorrow, the northern gannet. It’s a pelagic bird, but we’re told we can see it from the beach if we know what to look for. Some local birders are helping us by telling us what to look for. Later, to the Corpus Christi dump for the lesser black-backed gull. Still on the lookout for the stilt sandpiper. It is proving to be difficult. We’re told that even though stilt sandpiper is on the list, it’s not really here in the winter. We’ll keep looking. Maybe we’ll find another bird blown off course.

Can you find the flamingo in this picture?

Grandkid update

Matt and Kari's Alex. Current picture. He's 2 1/2.

Birds

Zoom in a little more.....

Black Skimmers.

They look like the fastest birds on the planet...... without even leaving the beach.

Birds

But in the air, it's a ballet. Long slim wings. Graceful flight.

Birds

Lower mandible longer than the upper. They hold their lower mandible right in the water while they fly, skimming the surface, and snag whatever unfortunate minnow lurks just below.

Birds

Zoom in a little....

Birds

See those black birds on the mudflat, in front of the white pelicans? Black Skimmers.

Birds

400! We made it to four hundred birds. Short-eared owls on the access road between the highway and the beach at dusk. They like to hang around in the dunes during the day. Gull-billed tern giving us a low altitude, low speed flyby, and least bittern. We went to the marsh and watched and watched until Judy spotted it. Secretive little guy. Got a ten second look. Least bittern! Number 400.

Ten seconds wasn't enough to get a picture. Here he is from the internet.

Birds

Can you see the snipe in this picture? There is a sipe hiding in the dried seaweed on the oysterbed. Practically invisible, isn't he?

He seems to think so, anyway.

Birds

We went in search of the stilt sandpiper. We found the cute little semipalmated plover. We found the even littler western sandpiper. We found the spotted sandpiper and the snipe. Found the american oystercatcher. Judy took a great picture of the oystercatcher, but the camera disk died. We bought a new disk, and got a picture of the oystercatcher from the internet.

Next.... the stilt sandpiper.

Port a

We use GPS navigation in the Jeep, and the motorhome, both. We marvel at how useful it is, and how much information it provides. Change your mind, change your route, it just calculates a new one for you, complete with miles to next turn, miles to destination, and estimated time of arrival, given the nature of the roads you're traveling. Could it be any better than this? Five years, ten years from now, we'll be recalling how primitive it was. "Can you believe it didn't even tie in to live internet traffic reports and route us around delays?"

Address

We still have mail service, even though we're on the road full-time.

Our year-round address is:

2770 Arapahoe Road

Suite 132, # 156

Lafayette, CO 80026-8016

For the month of January every year, our address is:

5601 State Highway 361, #414

Port Aransas, TX 78373-4840

Either address will forward mail to us if we don't happen to be there at the time.

Our phone number, as always: 303-666-6018

Football

Hey. Happy Sunday.

Let's have some football!!!

Football

Hey. Did anyone else catch that bugle solo of the star spangled banner before the game?

Now that was a moving performance.

Port a

Wow, is this park packed! Gulf Waters RV Resort. Sometimes it empties out to about half full, but then fills right back up. I’m glad we bought a site here, but now I wish we’d bought two. The price for a new one is twice what we paid for ours a year ago.

When we stayed here last August, ours was one of the few sites finished in the new section. We were the only people staying on this pond. This time we have neighbors. It’s nice to have neighbors. There is always someone to say hello to and visit with.

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A good day birding today. We had a target pond we'd never been to and a target bird we haven't seen yet this year. We got them both! The pond is in the town of Holiday Beach, which isn't even on the map. A little exploring, and we found it, surrounded by trees and rushes, with a few grassy openings. Lots of cover and food for birds, and a few clear spots to view from. This is the best pond we've ever seen here. Ducks, herons, more night herons than we've ever seen in one place, egrets, ibis, more moorhens than we've ever seen in one place, coots, grebes, siskin. Alive with birds. Our target bird was the fulvous whistling duck. There are plenty of black bellied whistling ducks in South Texas, but the fulvous is rarely seen outside Florida. Ten minutes of watching and suddenly there they were, right in front of us. Fulvous whistling ducks.

Good birding on the way there and back too. Osprey, kingfisher, shrike, doves, spoonbills, black bellied whistlers, gadwall, Judy spotted a couple american oystercatchers from the highway so we went back and got them for the first time this year. Got a gull-billed tern for the first time ever.

It was a good birding day.

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Waiting at the ferry crossing for our drive from Port Aransas to Aransas Pass, we hear the siren approaching. A medical emergency vehicle coming up behind us shuts off his siren when he gets close, skirts the ferry line, drives right through to an empty boat, the gate goes down and off they go, all by themselves, “speeding” across the channel. I never thought of that: what happens when an emergency vehicle has to cross the channel. They run up to five boats, out of four landings on each side. The ferries have a rule, that there must be an empty boat, or one arriving, at all times, to accommodate emergencies. That should do it.

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Did a little more birding. Found some birds we were hoping to find. Didn't find some we expected to find. Found some we hadn't even thought about finding. That's pretty much the story of any birding effort we've ever been on.

We haven't added any birds to our life-list lately. In the meantime, we decided to keep track of how many birds we see while we're here the month of January. We figured we should be able to get to 100 no problem. We were right. We're at 116 so far.

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We eat out of the back of cars. Food brought fresh to us. Once a week the shrimp man comes through the park: fresh jumbo shrimp, ten to the pound. The tamale lady comes twice a week: fresh tamales for dinner. For barbeque, we have to drive to town. Judy is outside pulling the heads off shrimp.

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Inca doves.

They might look soft and cuddly, but let me tell you they are not. They're cold and aloof. Every time you try to wrap your arms around them for a group hug, they just fly off.

I don't know what their problem is.

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And even the moonrise.

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Javelina. Charming little pigs. Don't want to get too close.

One of our brothers tells me they can really wear your legs out if you happen to get between mom and baby while you're out for a bicycle ride.

Football

Seattle and Denver continue the march to their match up. Today we’re huge Pittsburgh fans. If Pittsburgh wins, Denver plays them at home next week. If Indianapolis wins, Denver has to travel there next.

Go Pittsburgh!

Football

The Seahawks and the Broncos continue their march to the Superbowl match up. Tomorrow, all the Seahawks have to do is beat the Redskins. All the Broncos have to do is beat the two-time defending Superbowl Champion Patriots. One step closer.

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Day ten. The sock tan is gone.

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If you drive five miles down the beach, then ten miles down the four-wheel drive beach, then Yarborough Pass through the sand dunes, and out onto the tidal flats of the Laguna Madre......

We all have to be careful.

Life and death

It’s a difficult thing, this dying. Judy’s mom got diagnosed terminal in October and has been in decline since. The last few days of the process were particularly slow and difficult, but it is done now. Judy’s mom, Helen, has passed on.

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Nothing like a run on the beach.

The aftermath.

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That picture of Annie after running on the beach, that's pretty much how I
look after as well. The difference is, Annie looks so much better after she
cleans up. Here are before and after pictures of Annie. The before and
after pictures of me aren't so dramatic.

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Turns out we know the people in the Bluebird. We met them at Dakota Ridge
in Golden last November. They live in Carbondale and just stopped at Dakota
Ridge for one night on the way home.

They came down here to Texas to check out Gulf Waters. They like it so
much, they were looking at lots for sale by the end of the day. They ended
up buying a site from the first phase over on a different pond a hundred
yards away. They don't close till next Friday, so they're still next to us.

They'll be here until the middle of the month, then they're off for a two
month caravan trip to Belize. Fun neighbors.

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Our motorhome is like a supermodel. When people walk past in the RV Park,
heads turn. People look. They look as they walk past. They look back
after they've walked past. It gets attention.

Then the forty-five foot Bluebird pulled in next to us. Now we're
invisible.

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Know how sometimes you can't think of a word? You might be right in the
middle of a sentence, and suddenly there is a word that just won't come out.
You can think of twenty words to describe it, but not the one word you're
looking for, then you remember it, and life goes on.

That happens more and more to Judy and me, so I've had plenty of opportunity
to observe it. Know what struck me? It's always a noun. I can think of
all the adjectives and adverbs to describe it, but I can't think of the
noun. If the word I was looking for was the word "house", I could describe
it as that square thing with the pointy top you have on your property in the
middle of the yard, that you live in, until the noun came to me. Why do you
suppose it's always a noun?

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We get to watch the egret fish our pond everyday.

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The beach house.

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Driving here, eastbound on Interstate 10, we decided not to drive through
San Antonio. We turned south at Kerrville on a small Texas highway, Highway
173, to skirt San Antonio, and followed it around to Interstate 37 south to
Corpus Christi. A random choice. It just seemed like a good idea at the
time. As we were driving, we were surprised to see the sign declaring this
to be the 173d Airborne Brigade Memorial Highway. How about that! My duty
assignment from forty years ago.

Snuck up on me, that highway. I was surprised such a highway existed, and
surprised by my reaction. I haven't had many good feelings about the Army
experience, but I felt really good about this. Glad they weren't
memorializing me specifically, I survived the experience, but appreciated
the acknowledgement. Nice they did that.

Port a

I mean horned grebes. Those birds feeding in the surf were horned grebes,
not eared grebes. Now I don't have to explain why they had thirty ears.

-----Original Message-----
From: Steve Taylor [mailto:spt@thetaylorcompany.net]
Sent: Monday, January 02, 2006 11:15 PM
To: Bill Taylor (E-mail); David Taylor (E-mail); Tom Taylor (E-mail)
Subject: port a

We got a Wild Kingdom moment at Davis Mountains. We were watching the
sparrows and goldfinches at a bird blind, when with a burst, they all took
off at once. When that happens, we know to look up. That sudden flight
means there is a hawk. There was a hawk, a sharp-shinned hawk, blasting in
through the trees, like they do, nailing the slowest goldfinch. That
happened fast. Tough on the goldfinch, but feeding time for the hawk.

From the beach we spotted a flock of thirty eared grebes feeding in the
breaker line, just offshore. Yesterday, we had that little least grebe
swimming at our feet. Loons, two kinds of cormorants, six kinds of herons
and egrets. Ibis, black bellied whistling ducks, geese, mottled ducks, a
white-tailed hawk drifts past. Went looking on the beach for the piping
plover and found the snowy plover instead. Killdeer, yellowlegs,
long-billed curlew. Turnstones, sanderlings, least sandpipers. Three kinds
of gulls, three kinds of terns. Inca doves and a great kiskadee.

We saw a great blue heron lick his lips.

Really. He has a long thin tongue that looks like a piece of wire. He can
extend and run it down each side of his bill, in a motion that could be
described as licking his lips, if he actually had lips. And who's to say,
in fact, that he doesn't? He could have lips. Really really thin lips that
we can't even see, but he knows they're there, or else why would he be
licking them in the first place?

Port a

We got a Wild Kingdom moment at Davis Mountains. We were watching the
sparrows and goldfinches at a bird blind, when with a burst, they all took
off at once. When that happens, we know to look up. That sudden flight
means there is a hawk. There was a hawk, a sharp-shinned hawk, blasting in
through the trees, like they do, nailing the slowest goldfinch. That
happened fast. Tough on the goldfinch, but feeding time for the hawk.

From the beach we spotted a flock of thirty eared grebes feeding in the
breaker line, just offshore. Yesterday, we had that little least grebe
swimming at our feet. Loons, two kinds of cormorants, six kinds of herons
and egrets. Ibis, black bellied whistling ducks, geese, mottled ducks, a
white-tailed hawk drifts past. Went looking on the beach for the piping
plover and found the snowy plover instead. Killdeer, yellowlegs,
long-billed curlew. Turnstones, sanderlings, least sandpipers. Three kinds
of gulls, three kinds of terns. Inca doves and a great kiskadee.

We saw a great blue heron lick his lips.

Really. He has a long thin tongue that looks like a piece of wire. He can
extend and run it down each side of his bill, in a motion that could be
described as licking his lips, if he actually had lips. And who's to say,
in fact, that he doesn't? He could have lips. Really really thin lips that
we can't even see, but he knows they're there, or else why would he be
licking them in the first place?

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Santa Clause found us while we were in the Davis Mountains. I got a birding
telescope. Judy got a new tripod. Coincidentally, the scope and the tripod
match and can be used together. We got to use them both today. We drove
fifteen miles down the national seashore beach to Yarborough Pass, crossed
the four-wheel drive road through the dunes to the Laguna Madre side, pulled
over for lunch, and scoped some birds. A nice day in the sun. A fifty-bird
day.

We stood and watched a least grebe feeding in the water right at our feet.
He was so cute!

Port a

_____________________________________________
From: Steve Taylor [mailto:spt@thetaylorcompany.net]
Sent: Sunday, January 01, 2006 8:45 PM
To: Bill Taylor (E-mail); David Taylor (E-mail); Tom Taylor (E-mail)
Subject: port a

The pass through the dunes.

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Sometimes they display at each other.

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Blue herons winter here. Sometimes they stand in the water.

Sometimes they stand on the dunes.