Gambel’s Quail

  

Canada Goose.

Crissal Thrasher.

Northern Rough-winged Swallow.

Missed the Burrowing Owl.

 

We’ve shed El Paso and we’re at Hueco Tanks State Park.

 

The Great February Birding Trip Map

 

 

 

 

Birds remaining.  149.

 

 

 

Got our quail fix this morning

  

Scaled Quail.

 

 

 

Now we're in El Paso.

 

The Great February Birding Trip Map

 

There are several city parks here that might be holding some birds we want.

 

 

 

 

Balmorhea

  

We would have gone to Balmorhea State Park to camp, but they're closed indefinitely; a major rehab project.  Instead, we stayed at Saddleback Mountain RV Park.

 

The Great February Birding Trip Map

 

 

 

 

Balmorhea Lake was very good to us.  Six new species of birds for the year.

 

Curved-billed thrashers.  Not new.

 

Eared grebe.  New.

 

Hooded merganser.  New.

 

Bird count remaining at the start of the trip.  161.  Current count remaining.  154.

 

 

 

Yay! We did it!

  

We got west of San Antonio!  We're in Fort Stockton for the night.

 

The Great February Birding Trip Map

 

You know you're in West Texas when:

 

 

A West Texas rest stop.

 

Tomorrow, we were going to drive to El Paso, but we couldn't get reservations for the state park where we want to be until the weekend, so we'll slow down our travels for the next couple days.  Tomorrow, Balmorhea.

 

 

 

The Great February Birding Trip

  

Take three.

 

Maybe this time will be the charm.  We're at Braunig Lake RV Resort for an overnight stop.

 

The Great February Birding Trip Map

 

We're on our way to West Texas and the Panhandle to see how many Texas winter birds we can find before they leave for the summer.  First though, we'll have to see if we can escape the gravitational attraction of San Antonio that we haven't been able to get past yet this year.

 

A favorite rest stop along the way.

 

With any luck, tomorrow, Fort Stockton.

 

 

 

Snake bird

  

The anhinga.

 

It swims with its body underwater and just the long thin head and neck exposed.  From a distance, it can look like a swimming snake.

 

I don't have any from-a-distance pictures, so you'll have to squint and pretend.

 

 

This bird is native to South Texas.

 

 

 

Just because

  

 

 

 

 

American Flamingo.  Caribbean Flamingo.  (Not native to Texas.  Only this close in zoos.)

 

 

 

Feeding time

  

Fan out.

 

Surround the meal.

 

Everybody dip.

 

Come up for air.

 

Gulp.

 

And repeat.  The American White Pelican Water Ballet.

 

 

 

We had this plan

  

…for the Texas Year.  Birding.  We were going to spend January at home watching winter birds here, February finding winter birds in West Texas and the Panhandle, March back at home, and April going up and down the coast looking at migrants.  Winter birds and migrants, all handled by the beginning of May.  It was an awesome plan.

 

So far, we have birds here at home and a few from San Antonio.  We've gotten new seals put around the slides on the bus.  The old ones were 15 years old.  We have a couple of refurbished eyeballs.  The old ones were 70 years old.  We've gotten a couple covid shots and a deep freeze with frozen water pipes and power outages.  February is almost over, and February birding hasn't started for us yet.  Maybe February will happen in March this year.  April Migration can't be postponed, so we might have to go directly from February to April.  Who knew birding could be this complicated???

 

 

Candycorn for a face

 

 

 

…and elegance.

 

 

 

 

 

It’s getting less-bad

  

More people in Texas have power and water tonight than last night.  Our power and water are still on and the boil-water alert has expired.  It’s above freezing here during the days.  Two more cold nights and we should be out of this.  We see forecast lows in the 50s and 60s later in the forecast!

 

Here in the Valley, conditions have been a lot like the big cities up north you see on the news, except without the frozen roads.  Road conditions in San Antonio as I write.

There doesn’t seem to be any way through, north to south or east to west.

 

I was out doing a couple errands yesterday.  The power was out to about every other stoplight with almost everyone properly treating them as four-way stops, but that was slow-going getting through each intersection.  The blocks-long lines at gas stations were reminiscent of the gas crisis in the 70s, where I would go to work in one car while Judy waited in a gas line with the other car.  The next day we would switch cars and repeat.  But as I was driving yesterday, I realized the scope of the problem here, stopped what I was doing, and drove straight home so I wouldn’t be contributing to the height of the crisis.

 

We have a mixed situation here at Sandpipers.  Power has been out to about half the park since maybe Sunday.  Today the big shuffle happened.  People without power at their sites started up their RVs and moved them to sites with.  Didn’t get everybody, but some relief for some.

 

 

One more note.  Some of the pansies at our house are happy.

 

Well, maybe not thrilled, but not outside frozen either.

 

 

 

A failure to anticipate

  

Texas is in an energy crisis.  The most energy-rich state in the Union doesn't have enough energy to meet an unexpected demand.

 

The utility structure asked itself "What is the worst that could happen?" then suffered a failure of imagination.  When building the energy infrastructure there was a choice between building a resilient system for more money, or the minimum that could be gotten away with for less money.  We went cheap.  Now our state is in crisis.  Boil water alerts because the water treatment plants can't properly process.  Lack of water supply because there is less processing and people are using more by running taps overnight to prevent freezing.  People are supposed to boil any water they can get, but they don't have electricity or heat to make the water safe.  There are mile-long lines at gas stations because only a few stations can make the pumps work or get more fuel when they sell out.  It's a mess and people are suffering because the industry and the state never imagined that it could get as cold again as it last did in the late 1800s.  (A hundred-year event, which with climate change, will likely visit us much more frequently than that in the future.)

 

 

The governor of our state went on television to say this is what you get with the green new deal because the windmills are frozen.  That's an absolute, and political, lie.  Not about the windmills, they are frozen, but about the scope of the problem.  Wind energy provides about 15% of our power in Texas and about half of the windmills have been knocked offline by the weather.  Windmills can be built to survive freezing weather, but Texas didn't need to do that.  It never gets cold here.  (I'm told they have windmills in Norway.)  The bulk of the problem is that natural gas pipelines are frozen, and the big oil refineries outside of Houston are shut down because they can't operate in sub-freezing temperatures.  None of that stuff was built to withstand temperatures ten degrees lower than normal.  (It's not like all utilities can't operate in colder weather.  I hear they even have electricity in Chicago!)  We have a state-wide industry problem, not a clean energy problem.

 

Compounding further, there are three energy grids in the United States.  Eastern, Western, and Texas.  Texas is isolated from all other energy in the country.  Can't operate in cold weather?  Just call California, Nevada, or Arizona for some of their electricity.  Oops.  Can't do that.  We're Texas.  Know why we have our own energy grid, disconnected from the entire rest of the country?  Federal regulations.  If we connected with other states, we would have to suffer federal regulation just like every other state.  Know what federal regulation might have done?  It might have made us build our infrastructure to higher standards.

 

To quote Pogo, again, "We have met the enemy and he is us."

 

 

 

Tuesday

  

Our power outage last night turned out to be no big deal.  It was only out from about 7:30 to 9:30, but by 9:30 we were already asleep with all the blankets piled at the end of our bed just in case!  That was a lot of sleep, thank you.

 

The dripping faucet overnight worked.  We had water this morning.  It was only a trickle, but that was not on us, it was on the city pumping station power outage and their backup generators that ran out of gas.  By mid-day we had water and electric both!  A warmer day tomorrow with a high of 65, then back into the freezer with lows in the 20s the next two nights.  Then we're over it.  A high of 80 on Sunday!

 

 

Judy got her one-week post-surgical eye checkup today.  Her vision is now 20-20 in both eyes!  She has never had 20-20 vision in her life!

 

 

A friend in Alaska made new masks for us.  They have birds on them!  Perfect!

 

 

A bird-art wall.

Thank you Christie, and Rock!

 

 

And here is a drone camera, camouflaged to look like a hummingbird, to photograph butterflies up close!

 

https://fstoppers.com/documentary/drone-disguised-hummingbird-captures-incredible-footage-monarch-butterfly-swarm-480714?fbclid=IwAR0YfVlaUs187Sw2njx6_kJjcjKIxu_U7iNy9XI6zcvo6WRXcViVeXPM_J4

 

Unhappy spider plants

  

 

And a frozen fountain.

 

The thermometer hit 25 degrees last night.  A hard freeze.  We woke to no running water inside.  As the weather warmed to freezing, the water flow returned.  Another low of 25 degrees is expected tonight.  The above-ground loop of water pipe outside now has a comfy warm blanket on it, and we will leave a faucet dripping inside the house tonight. 

 

We drove to McAllen and checked on the motorhome today.  It's sitting there, furnace running, temperature inside right at 50 degrees, just as we set it.  It's our backup plan if things happen to go south at the house.

 

When we came back home from the bus, our water was working at the house, but it has been off and on as people have been repairing pipes.  The entire state of Texas was below freezing last night.  I don't think that has ever happened before.  This sub-freezing weather is expected on and off throughout the week before suddenly bouncing out of it with a high of 70 on Saturday.

 

Oops.  The water is still on but the electricity just went off.  Rolling blackout perhaps.  Never seen that before.  The computer is still working because it's a laptop (battery power) and we have a battery powered jetpack for internet.  Better send this out while we still have battery life left.  Life's an adventure isn't it.

 

 

 

Progress

  

The last illustration of total covid cases I sent out was in January and the U.S. number was still headed up without relief.

 

Finally, now we can see the total number of cases clearly tapering off.

 

Are our mitigation efforts working?  A reflection of immunizations?  Don't know, but a good indication we should keep doing what we're doing; distancing, masking, and vaccinating.

 

 

 

Something

  

I walk through the house with this rhythmic thumping sound at my heels.  That thumping sound.  It reminds me of something.  A ball dropped repeatedly right behind me as I walk.  A thumping sound following me.  Reminiscent of something.  Something.  A clock ticking.  A rhythmic clock ticking.  Being followed by an ominous clock ticking.  A clock inside a crocodile.  Who has a ticking clock sound alerting them that there is a crocodile following them?  Captain Hook!

 

https://video.disney.com/watch/captain-hook-tic-toc-croc-4d128244c24c47fae64e78e5

 

Yes.  That's it!

 

 

 

 

It's the same, but not quite the same.  My childhood returning to haunt me.