We’re sheltering in place

  

But since our place has wheels, we’re celebrating the arrival of the new year at Falcon State Park.

 

Falcon State Park map

 

The post for every other site is bagged (alternate sites).  Nice separation.

 

 

 

 

We have a great yard.  The bird feeders are all hung.  We have ten different attractors.  Songbird seed blend; fruit and nut blend; dried mealworms; whole peanuts in the shell; hummingbird food;, cake suet; homemade peanut butter, cornmeal, lard blend suet paste; finch seed sock feeder; marshmallows; and a water mister.

 

This will be our home for five days.

 

 

 

You just never know

  

You never know what exotic places birding adventures will take a person to.  Like here.

 

 

What are the chances we'd have ever given these oil storage tanks a second look if there weren't two crested caracaras standing on them?

 

 

 

Ready for the Alamo Bowl

  

 

 

We follow two college teams.  We get to root for both of them in the same bowl game Tuesday.  Go teams!

 

 

 

 

Local security

  

I don't know if a lot of cities have these, or if they're more of a border thing.

 

Mobile observation posts.  I think they're mostly for security and for border protection.  They can pop up anywhere.  Sometimes I see them in shopping center parking lots, sometimes in parks like this one, sometimes just at intersections.  Sometimes they're out in desolate areas that hardly have any traffic at all.

 

Low-tech and obvious, but they're probably meant to be obvious as a deterrent for whatever it is they're trying to deter.  The windows are pimped, so we don't even know if there is really anyone in there at all.  Maybe they're just decoys.

 

 

On another subject, leaning over a jigsaw puzzle is a lot harder on the low back than I recalled, when I thought this was a good idea.

 

 

 

 

Something new

  

 

8 power, just like binoculars, but it's a monocular.  Click a button, and what you're seeing appears as a photo on your cellphone.

 

 

https://www.amazon.com/Swarovski-Digital-Long-Range-Monocular/dp/B08747PYZJ/ref=asc_df_B08747PYZJ/?tag=hyprod-20&linkCode=df0&hvadid=459655373910&hvpos=&hvnetw=g&hvrand=3302097457526765475&hvpone=&hvptwo=&hvqmt=&hvdev=c&hvdvcmdl=&hvlocint=&hvlocphy=9028175&hvtargid=pla-944947253885&psc=1#customerReviews

 

The long-lens on my camera is essentially a 10 power, so this wouldn't be that much different.  I could look at a bird and shoot it with one machine instead of two.  Brilliant!  Maybe I need this!  (Too bad I didn't find out about it until after Christmas this year.)

 

Of course, it might be like trying to design the perfect car by crossing a sports car and a pickup truck and getting something that isn't as good as either, but it sounds really cool!

 

 

 

Merry Christmas

  

It got off to a frosty start.

 

Turned on some big-screen holiday spirit.

 

Spent some time with the kids.

 

 

 

 

It was a very Amazon and Fed Ex Christmas at our house.

 

Broke out a holiday standard, a jigsaw puzzle.  Haven't done that in a couple decades.

 

 

By afternoon it was warm enough for a snooze in the sun on the deck.

 

Got the coolest present.  It's a digital photo frame, but it's got its own website that the kids can upload to any time they want.  It came set-up with a lot of pictures from them to start.

 

 

 

Excellent!

 

Scored some mighty fine fiber art.

 

Merry Christmas everybody!

 

 

 

See all these lumps on the ground?

  

 

They're birds.  Long-billed Curlews resting.

 

 

 

 

There’s a new bird in town

  

Well, not exactly “in town”.  It’s a 320-mile round trip away, but that’s close enough.  Off we go to Choke Canyon State Park for the day.

 

 

Choke Canyon State Park and Spotted Rail Map

 

It’s a rare bird, a spotted rail.  It has only been seen in the U.S. twice before, and both of those sightings were in the 1970s.  A very rare bird.  It’s normally only in the Caribbean and Latin America.  Birders are flying in from all over the country to see it and add it to their life-lists.

 

Range map.

 

Judy and I got there about 11.

 

We didn’t have to find the bird right off; all we needed to do is find the clump of people who had seen it last and were waiting for it to come back out of the reeds.

That wasn’t hard.  A safety conscious bunch; they were nicely separated into family groups and masked.

 

A stake out.  We had the bird pinned down in that clump of green reeds and sedge grass.  Saw it an hour later, at 12.  A brief sighting, it’s a secretive bird, but a good enough look to count it.  Lifer!

 

After brief glimpses of the bird from close-up, we went across the pond, a little farther away, and looked back.  While everyone was standing on one side of a clump of dry reeds waiting for another glimpse of the furtive bird, it came out the other side of the clump, shielded from their view, and gave Judy and I great looks through the scope while it poked around for food.  (It’s that black dot on the lower left of the brown clump.)

 

 

Our views through the higher power scope were much better than what you see in my I.D. photos.

 

Just so you know, here is what a spotted rail looks like up close (photo from the internet).

 

 

 

A Christmas cactus

  

Doing what it's supposed to do in December.

 

It's blooming!

 

 

 

Christmas is for kids

  

When the kids are little, we have presents stacked high around the tree.  As the kids grow up and go off on their own, the pile of presents shrinks.

 

We might buy a gift for each other, but it won't look like much under the tree.  Until now.  We made an agreement.  We won't open a single package from online shopping until Christmas morning.  As the boxes arrive, we'll just stack them under the tree until Christmas morning.

 

Not only will we have packages to open, but by that time we'll have totally forgotten what we ordered, and each present will be a total surprise!  Merry Christmas!

 

 

 

A vulture day

  

Cloudy afternoon.  Low diffuse light.  Plenty of company circling for no apparent reason.

 

 

Mostly turkey vultures

 

 

With a few black vultures mixed in.

 

Some looking like stealth bombers.

 

 

One kind of bird flying around begets others, so worth a closer look to see what else is there.  Mostly in silhouette.

 

A hawk.

 

A kingfisher.

 

An anhinga.

 

 

 

 

 

Happy Birthday to me

  

 

And lucky me, Judy made a traditional birthday cake from mom's original recipe with crispy crunchy on the outside and creamy on the inside 7-minute frosting.

 

 

We avoided the melted wax from a blaze of seventy-five candles.  Even without the candy birthday decorations on top it still tastes great!

 

 

Coffee on the deck, an afternoon drive to the island.  Stopped on the way to find an Aplomado Falcon.  Missed.  Tried another spot.  No luck.  Texted Jon for help.  Tried another spot.  Still no.  Saw a lot of other birds.  Never made it to the island.  Drove to Brownsville for take-out wings.  Ate them at Oliviera Park waiting for 250 screaming parrots to fly in at dusk and roost in the trees.  Identified three different species.  An excellent day.