Roseate Spoonbill

 

 

Is there such a thing as too many spoonbill pictures?

 

 

 

Laughing Gulls

 

 

 

Laughing.

 

Cracking each other up.

 

 

 

Something of an anniversary

 

 

Not a usual one like a wedding or a birthday.  This day, the 28^th of April, 1966, is the day I arrived back to Judy after two years overseas.  That was before the marvels of modern communication.  No phone.  No internet.  Essentially, our only communication was by letter, which often took as much as three weeks to make the journey by U.S. Mail to an Army Post Office address.

 

From the moment of that first teenaged spark, we determined to spend the rest of our lives together.  We also knew that the long separation could have an impact, so as time crawled by and we exchanged letters every day we could, there was a caveat.  As long as everything felt like it did before we were apart for so long, we would get married and never have to be apart again.  Fifty-nine years ago today, I finished the final leg of my journey back to Judy, and that just-in-case caveat was resolved in an instant with hugs and tears.  It was Thursday.  This is the day that we knew we had survived that separation.  The following Saturday we set the date for our wedding.  The very next Saturday we were married.  This is the day we determined we could say goodnight every night and wake up the next morning and still be together.

 

 

Rose-breasted Grosbeak

 

 

It’s such an eastern bird.

 

Judy and I are westerners.  We never even heard of them before we got this far east.

 

These grosbeaks only pass through here on their way to breeding grounds farther north.

 

A Black Skimmer

 

 

 

Doing its skimmer thing in some very shallow water.

 

Minnows better duck, they’re about to get snatched up.

 

He’s like a crop duster.  He makes a low-flying run then pulls up for a big turn and comes back for another pass.

 

 

In this mess of mangroves

 

 

 

There is a green heron.

 

On a nest.

 

With eggs.

 

At another nest, there is a little fluffy one already out of the nest wobbling around on the branches.

 

 

 

We don’t usually watch the NFL draft

 

 

But this year we’re familiar with several of the college players so we’re going to tune in and see where they go.

 

Quinn Ewers, Quarterback, Texas

He has played well for several years and got the team to the semifinals of the college playoffs last year.  He tends to go out for a few games each season for injuries, so don’t know if he’ll be durable enough for the NFL.  Each time he was out last season though, we got to watch Arch Manning sub for him and that was always exciting.  We get to watch Manning every game this coming season, with game plans built around his skills.

 

Matthew Golden, Wide Receiver

Smooth.  Fast.  Seems to us like he misses more clutch catches than he should though.

 

Jaydon Blue, Running Back

Cool name.  Can break the big one.

 

Travis Hunter, Wide Receiver and Cornerback, Colorado

Awesome.  Plays almost every down in a game, both offense and defense.  Makes impact plays on both sides of the ball every game.  He’s the guy we get most excited about on the Colorado team.

 

Shedeur Sanders, Quarterback, Colorado

Looks smooth.  Good quarterback.  Gets sacked a lot.  Maybe that’s due to offensive line play or maybe he needs to work on his decision making.  He’s good like his dad was, and he’s got the glitter and attitude to go with it.  Deon might be teaching good life lessons in responsibility to the college team, but the gold chains, swagger and bluster are distracting for us, Judy and me.  Can Shedeur be a superstar for the team, or just a superstar?

 

Shilo Sanders, Safety, Colorado

Much lower key guy than dad and brother.  Makes plays.

 

Jimmy Horn, Wide Receiver, Colorado

Fast.  Dependable.

 

 

There are a bunch of other really good players on these two teams, mostly from Texas, that are going to get drafted, but they’re not as high-profile as the key players that stand out to us.  Offensive and defensive line players don’t get the same amount of airtime as quarterbacks, running backs, and wide receivers.  It cracks us up when announcers talk about skill players, implying that the linemen are all not very skilled.  I’m sure it takes a lot more skill than I can recognize to be good player at any position on a football team.

 

Of course, we know nothing compared to dedicated football fans.  We get to see what people that actually know football think about our guys when the NFL makes its choices starting tonight.

 

Orange-crowned Warbler

 

 

Usually, they look like this.  Slightly gray above.  Slightly yellow below.  Nondescript.

 

If they get really excited though, they can display an orange crown.  Or if they just get really wet.

 

 

This bird can be found almost anywhere in the U.S. at one time or another.  Mostly Alaska and Canada in the summer.  Southern states and Mexico in the winter.

 

Life on the Beach

 

 

 

Even if we’re 60 miles inland.

 

We were going to sell the Mazda

 

 

We don’t really need two cars.  Once in a while we use both at the same time, but we could easily work around that with minimal planning and cooperation.

 

Then the rains came.  The roads flooded.  We drove through some puddles.  Okay, more than puddles, we drove through some flooded roads.  We’ve been doing this for years with the Jeeps we’ve had.  No problem.  The van is high clearance.  No problem.

 

A couple days later, the two front wheels quit talking to each other.  The wheels are not independent of each other; the van has all-wheel drive, so there is a transfer case up there.  I noticed the problem while backing out of a parking space with the steering wheel turned.  It felt like the pavement was really rough, but it wasn’t that rough.  The two front wheels weren’t able to run at different speeds to accommodate the turning radius.  So the van has been in time-out at the Ford dealer for the last two weeks.  They diagnosed the problem and made repairs to the transfer case in front.  After a couple tries, they just replaced the whole thing and that took care of it.  We got the van back today.  New car warranty.  No charge.  It’s perfect.  And we’re sure glad we had the Mazda to drive while the van was out of service. 

 

The timing is great.  We leave on a trip to Arizona in two weeks.  For the last five months, the van has been configured as just an empty vehicle to do errands around town.  Now we have it back as a blank canvas inside.

 

We can reconfigure it with all our camping stuff and make sure everything is just right for our road trip.

 

Olive Sparrow

 

 

Have you ever seen an Olive Sparrow?

 

Primarily, they live in South Texas and Mexico.  Gray with an olive back.  Racing stripes on the head.

 

 

A cool looking bird, they are secretive, but can be heard making an accelerating clicking call, like a bouncing marble on a hard floor.

 

 

Up Up and Away

 

 

American White Pelicans.

 

Beginning their annual migration to their inland summer range in the northern plains and Canada.

 

Buff-bellied Hummingbird

 

 

Standing at the back gate, admiring the leaf litter and compost on the ground of our thicket of native plants, I eventually noticed that little lump on a branch of the Mexican Olive.  Not right away, I wasn’t looking for birds, I was admiring decaying vegetation.

 

I was just working in the yard, so had no camera with me.  I did have a cellphone.  I don’t know why I had one while I was doing yardwork, but I pulled it out a snapped a photo as best I could.  I knew I couldn’t get much resolution, but I zoomed in a little and snapped another.

 

That came out surprisingly good, so I tried a real close-up.

 

What the heck!  Pretty good for a cellphone snap.  Standing motionless on a branch, keeping an eye on me, resting up for his next attack on the nearby nectar feeder.

 

Buff-bellied Hummingbird.  Nonmigratory.  A year-round resident from the tip of South Texas all along the Gulf of Mexico to the Yucatan Peninsula.

 

The Three Amigos

 

 

Those three bushes in our back yard.  Every year I send out pictures of them.  During the summer, they grow back like this.

 

Esperanza.

 

Lantana.

 

And Texas Firebush.

 

Sometimes they even look like this.

 

 

 

 

Every year they get blasted back by sporadic floods and winter cold and they get cut back to practically nothing.

 

Yet they return.

 

Except this year.  The Esperanza and Firebush are making their return.

 

 

 

The Lantana has succumbed.

 

It is no more.  A missing Amigo.

 

Morning Light

 

 

 

 

Blazing fast

 

 

 

Even when standing still as a stone.

 

It’s that streamlined.

 

Green Heron.  An ambush hunter.

 

It’s going to be a good year for migrating birds

 

 

Not for the people watching migrants, but for the birds themselves.

 

If we look at Windy.com, it shows the wind direction and speed.  It looks like this:

 

We’re focused on the southern tip of Texas.  The arrows indicate the direction the wind is blowing.  The length of the arrows indicates speed.  For migrants making the 600-mile crossing of the Gulf of Mexico from the Yucatan Peninsula, a tailwind is a good thing.  Less effort to get across the water.  A safer trip.

 

The best conditions for bird watching are for there to be a strong wind from the north.  That means that all the birds that make it across the Gulf will be exhausted and will stop and rest at the first sight of land.  That’s where we get to see them.  South Padre Island is the closest spot to here, but it happens all up and down the Texas Coast and over into Florida.

 

You can get a live reading on Windy here:

 

https://www.windy.com/?28.527,-94.955,7

 

If you click the link, there should be an animation running.  You can see how the air is moving throughout the region.  On the bottom of the screen is a list of days.  If we click on each day, we can scroll through the projected wind for the next two weeks.  It doesn’t change at all.  Nothing but tailwind and happy birds.  No fronts.  No major shifts.  No north winds.

 

The busiest days for migration are usually the last week of April and the first week of May.  As far as good conditions for the watchers, it doesn’t look like that’s going to happen this year.   There will still be migrants to see on the coast, but probably not any massive fallouts with migrants landing in overwhelming numbers.