A Black-crested Titmouse

 

 

 

With a black oil sunflower seed treat.

 

As he navigates through the trees with the greatest of ease.

 

Do the Chachalaca

 

 

You put your left foot in,

 

…you put your left foot out….

 

That’s what it’s all about.

 

You may have already noticed

 

 

 

I really like gnarly old trees.

 

 

 

The sun will shine again!

 

 

 

And no flooded streets the next morning.  The drainage is so much better now, no Lake Sandpipers even after 10 inches of rain from this storm.  That’s a lot of water!

 

Well, maybe Sandpipers Pond.  There is still some standing water.

 

 

We’ve been so dry

 

 

A prolonged drought.

 

The streets are flooded, so it’s an inconvenience, but today’s rain is so welcome.

 

 

On the wall

 

 

Below the television.

 

We got the fireplace.

 

Warm and cozy.

 

Common ground dove

 

 

Cute little thing.  Even smaller than an inca dove.  About the size of a big sparrow.

 

Not migratory, they are permanent residents in the southern U.S. and Mexico.  Rich chestnut wing patches when they fly.  Hardly any tail.

 

 

Jesse doesn’t always smile

 

 

 

She does usually, unless she wants something.  Then she looks like this.

 

Or this, if she has to explain it more than once!

 

Long-billed Curlew

 

 

 

A shorebird that likes dry land too.

 

Usually, we see them on the beach, probing the sand.  We found this one 60 miles from the ocean, grazing for bugs in the grass.

 

Getting ready for the summer diet, I guess.  They winter here in South Texas and Mexico.  In summer, they migrate up into the plains states to breed out in the grasslands.

 

It’s fun to travel

 

 

…and see all the different places.

 

But there is plenty of cool stuff right in our neighborhood too.  Here is Santa Ana National Wildlife Refuge.

 

 

 

With observation decks to look out over ponds.

 

A view of the mighty Rio Grande from a remote vantage.

 

And a suspension bridge between two towers for a bird’s eye view into the forest.

 

Scissor-tailed Flycatcher

 

 

 

Stretching.

 

Or preening.

 

Or maybe just showing off.

 

A spectacular bird, dashing out to snatch a bug and returning to its perch, it can be seen in the south-central U.S. down through Central America.

 

 

Sugar Cane

 

 

The entire sugar cane industry in the valley closed down this year.  The growers couldn’t get enough water commitments, so they couldn’t afford to plant, which made it unprofitable for the Sugar House processing plant to stay open, so it shut down.  Now that the processing plant is down, there’s no point in planting cane even if more water does become available.  There is no place to process the product!  No more black clouds on the horizon from cane fields burning prior to harvesting.  No more black snow at our house from drifting ash put out by the burning fields.  The end of an era.

 

 

 

Can you spot the Cactus Wren in this picture?

 

 

 

He wanted to check me out.

 

But he didn’t want to get too exposed.

 

His call sounds like a car that won’t start.  Easily recognized.

 

Not uncommon in Southwestern deserts.  And right at home in this habitat as well.  There were prickly pear cactus right below him.

 

Keeping Time

 

 

Time has been kept locally for thousands of years, as long as we have been keeping track of time, from the days of shadows and sundials.  When the sun is at its highest point, call it noon.  When portable timekeeping came into play, in maybe the 1500s, when traveling, those portable clocks had to be reset for local time at every location.  That wasn’t much of a problem until the late 1800s; that’s when trains came into popular usage.  Every location keeping track of its own time didn’t really work for train schedules, so time zones were instituted.  Divide the globe into 24 roughly equal one-hour slices and there we have it.  At the sun’s highest point in the sky, in the middle of each zone, it will be noon (roughly).  East and west of center, in every time zone, noontime won’t correlate exactly with the clock, it will be plus or minus a rounding error.  Close enough.

 

 

Remember the citrus grove?

 

 

An entire newly planted orchard back in 2022.  Each tree encased in a bag to protect it from pests and extreme weather.  Not Ruby Red grapefruit, but Rio Red.  A South Texas specialty, even sweeter than Ruby Red.

 

The early protection paid off.  Here is how it looks now.

 

Thousands of trees, and super healthy.

 

 

La Sal del Rey

 

 

(The King’s salt.)

 

The lake was very white today.  It’s an evaporative lake.  It has been very dry here lately.  Several intermittent inlets.  No outlet.  It sits on top of a giant salt dome.  Hypersaline at least.  Solid salt on occasions like this.

 

 

 

I like how water blows into the animal tracks along the shore, then evaporates to white.

 

Deer, nilgai (deerlike exotics), javelina, wild boar.

 

 

This is breeding territory for snowy plovers.

 

They nest in the sand along the shore.  No closeups today.  A couple very distant shots with a long lens.  Don’t want to disturb them.

 

 

This is the plover crouched down in a sandy depression.  It might be the nest, it might be diversionary behavior.  We’ll let that question remain unanswered.

 

 

And a raccoon track in the center of this frame.

 

They have hands on their feet.

 

We crossed the border

 

 

It wasn’t the same.  It has always been so easy, so friendly, but crossing on the weekend was different.  It was militarized.  We walked across the bridge from the U.S. like we normally do, no problem.  But there was a long pedestrian line to get past a point in Mexico we always just cruise through.  Package scanners.  Body scans.  Cars next to us in the vehicle lane being held up and searched.  Town was normal after that.

 

To get back to the U.S. there was a vehicle line that is not normally there.  Usually, cars drive right out of Mexico to the U.S. checkpoint.  That’s a careful examination there.  Suspicious cars get pulled over for a more intensive search.  This time cars were being stopped on the Mexican side of the bridge, drivers removed, while each car got a cavity search.  Surviving that, each car got to proceed on to the U.S. process that they were going to get anyway.  The traffic backup in Mexico went all the way through town.  The line barely moved.  There was a pedestrian hold up on the Mexico side of the bridge too.  Never figured out what that was about, but then they let us through.  The last part of the crossing at U.S. security included an extra scanning.

 

Why the change?  The Mexican government committed to an additional 10,000 troops at the border, and they are making their presence felt.  Maybe our little crossing at Progresso is now intercepting more drugs headed for the U.S. and more U.S. weapons headed for Mexico, both serious problems.  Couldn’t tell any difference from our vantage point.  What we could tell though is, it’s certainly different now.

 

 

The 2025 Great Backyard Bird Count Final Results.

 

 

There are about 1,000 bird species known to live in or visit the United States.  Worldwide, the count is more like 10,000.  For this most recent 4-day count, 8 out of every 10 known bird species worldwide was observed and counted.  That’s amazing!

 

…

 

Explore another year record-breaking results.

Dear Steve,    Final numbers for the 2025 Great Backyard Bird Count are in! Together we smashed records, found more birds than ever before, and had a lot of fun. Thank you for being a part of it!   What we accomplished, in the numbers: 8,078 species of birds identified 217 countries or eBird subregions 387,652 eBird checklists 611,066 Merlin Bird IDs (step-by-step, sound, or photo) 189,741 photos, videos, and sounds added to Macaulay Library 838,113 estimated global participants 409 reported community events We summed up the full event on our website—click the button to enjoy the full recap of the weekend’s highlights, featured photos, stats, and other details that made the event one to remember and celebrate.   See More Results from the GBBC 2025 Again, a sincere Thank You for being a part of the 2025 GBBC and making it another incredible event!   Mark your calendars! Next year's GBBC is February 13–16, 2026.     – From all of us at the Cornell Lab, Audubon, and Birds Canada   Hooded Crow by Andreas Stadler / Macaulay Library. Many thanks to GBBC founding sponsor Wild Birds Unlimited. They’re ready to help you with all your backyard bird needs via their stores and podcast.    The Cornell Lab of Ornithology is a membership institution dedicated to interpreting and conserving the earth’s biological diversity through research, education, and citizen science focused on birds.   You received this email because you are subscribed to Lab Project Participation, Discounts, and Promotions from Cornell Lab of Ornithology.   Cornell Lab of Ornithology, 159 Sapsucker Woods Rd., Ithaca, NY 14850 Unsubscribe Manage preferences