Baltimore Oriole

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

A Green Heron

 

 

 

Practicing patience.

 

 

Television weather reports

 

 

These South Texas guys crack me up.

 

When we were kids in Southern California, we knew about the desert.  We learned to be wary of flash floods.  Dry arroyos.  They’re dangerous, even if it not raining.  The rain can be miles away in the mountains.  The water builds up in the mountains and consolidates down to the dry arroyos, rising quickly, flooding within minutes.  That’s a flash flood.

 

When we get rain here, and there is a danger of flooding, the weatherman refers to the situation as “flash flooding”.  There isn’t a hill within a hundred miles, and we’re going to get a surprise flash flood?  The ground is flat.  It rains.  The rain has nowhere to go, so the water slowly rises.  I think that’s actually just called flooding.

 

Rose-breasted Grosbeak

 

 

 

Males and females.

 

 

 

A Northeastern bird.  Judy and I are Westerners.  We never heard of these birds before we came to Texas.  They pass through here on their way from wintering grounds in South and Central America.

 

A wild kingdom moment

 

 

A strangely behaving curve-billed thrasher alerted me to an issue.  Seeing him jumping around squawking and flapping, I went back inside and grabbed the camera.  Once I walked back out, the thrasher perched on the blue heron statue to watch the conclusion of the drama unfold from there.

 

The bird had already harassed the 5-foot-long indigo snake enough that he had begun leaving by the time I got there.  Here is a shot of his front end, but the head was obscured.  You can see the rest of the snake still curled up in the garden.

 

And here is the back half disappearing into a hole underneath the side of our shed.

 

Indigo snakes are beautiful and they’re beneficial too, eating rats and mice.  We’re very glad to have an indigo snake at our house, looking glorious and reducing the rat and mouse population (as well as having the neighborhood roadrunner bird who helps keep down the population of house sparrows).

 

It’s migration

 

 

We get to see birds we don’t normally see the rest of the year.

 

Like hooded warblers.

 

In the bushes.

 

In the grass.

 

Sometimes almost underfoot.

 

Or right out next to a sidewalk.

 

And sometimes female.

 

 

From: Steve Taylor
Sent: Saturday, April 25, 2026 3:16 PM
To: Judy Taylor <judy@taylorroth.com>
Subject: It’s migration

 

 

We get to see birds we don’t normally see the rest of the year.

 

Like hooded warblers.

 

Sometimes almost underfoot.

 

Or right out next to a sidewalk.

 

A different garden

 

 

This one a patch of grass in a park.

 

With shaggy mane mushrooms popping up.

 

Welcome mat garden update

 

 

Still looking fine.

 

But no secondary leaves yet to I.D.

 

For years

 

 

Maybe decades.  I’ve been joking with the kids that as we get older, and it’s time to take away the car keys, we totally understand.  But caution them that, at the same time, they need to understand that it will be our job to provide a moving target.

 

Well, we’ve just added a layer of complexity to that exchange.  Now we have a car that doesn’t require a key.  No key.  No fob.  Nothing but a cellphone.  The car is linked to Judy’s cellphone and mine.  When we get close to the car, it recognizes us, and wakes up, assuming the driver configuration for whoever is closest.  Now, when the kids do track us down, there is no key to take away.  And would you take away a smartphone from an old person and deprive them of that powerful digital link to the outside world?  And not only that, what safer option for an ageing driver but to take a robotaxi everywhere they go!  Oh yeah, I like the way this is going…

 

Remember when?

 

 

When you would reach for a slice of bread from the opened loaf and find green or gray mold?  Have you noticed that hasn’t happened lately?  It hasn’t for us in years.  The bread is just always good.  We can open a loaf of supermarket bread, use some of it, go on a trip for a week, and when we come home, the bread in that ten-day-old opened loaf is still good.

 

That’s not how it used to be. 

 

 

Robotaxi

 

 

For years I’ve been wanting to take a ride in a robotaxi.  Fully autonomous.  That would be so cool.  I had an opportunity a couple years ago in Phoenix when I needed to take an uber from where I was, back to Matt’s house.  I got all the way to push the “go” button (on the phone app), and it refused the ride.  Matt’s house was just a little out of the test zone for robotaxis in the Phoenix area.  Soo close.

 

Fast forward to last weekend.  We downloaded Full Self Driving (Supervised) for the Tesla.  (Supervised means that the driver has to pay attention.).  We told it where we wanted to go and turned it loose.  It’s not fully autonomous driving, but stops, starts, turns, complicated intersections and traffic; it drove us door to door.  We navigated to another place.  Nice.  We told it to take us home.  It drove to the freeway onramp, merged, kept up with traffic, changed lanes whenever it needed to.  Not a left lane driver, always got back into the middle lane when it could.  That was amazing.  It wasn’t flawless.  It twitched and slowed down once when it didn’t really need to (or I wouldn’t have).  Minor.  Nothing dangerous.  And overall, a very smooth ride.

 

There are headlines any time there is a failure of autonomous driving, but there are also statistics demonstrating that a supervised self-driving car is right now less likely to get in an accident than a regular car with a human driver.  With that as a starting point, and me behind the wheel in case we need to override anything, I’ll take that.  Our own private Robotaxi.  (And it’s as easy to turn off as it is to turn on.  Any time we want to drive, we can.  And any time we want a robotaxi ride, it’s one click away.)

 

Quote of the day

 

 

"I know a morning cup of coffee on the porch with your best friend is a simple and universally small thing. But it is also everything."   Christina Koch, astronaut.

 

 

 

 

 

A walk in the park

 

 

 

This time a people park.

 

 

Esperanza.

 

Pride of Barbados.

 

 

Texas sage bursting forth.

 

A day at the park

 

 

 

The dog park.

 

 

A budding garden

 

 

It looks like an ordinary welcome mat.

 

But there is something else going on.  Zoom in close.

 

It’s a tiny volunteer garden that popped up after we got rain a week ago and the mat got wet.  The mat is in front of the deck stairs, in the shade of the driveway cover.  These are just the primary “first leaves” so we can’t I.D. them.  We could give the mat a good brushing and dry it out in the sun to save it, but at the risk of sacrificing the mat, we’d rather watch for secondary leaves to appear and figure out who these hardy pioneers are.

 

We’ll call it a science experiment.

 

 

FW: Madison River Outfitters Fishing Report 4/10/2026

 

 

It’s that time of year again.

 

We’re getting weekly updates from Madison River Outfitters, thinking they can tempt us with flyfishing opportunities in Montana.

 

 

 

From: Madison River Outfitters <trout@madisonriveroutfitters.com>
Sent: Friday, April 10, 2026 8:30 AM
To: Steve Taylor <spt@thetaylorcompany.net>
Subject: Madison River Outfitters Fishing Report 4/10/2026

 

Madison River Fishing Report                     Weather View this email in your browser We're Starting to get Rolling Here in West Yellowstone! ............................................................................................................................... Connor roped this beautiful brown on the Upper Madison this weekend .with Guide Tyler ............................................................................................................................... Montana Hebgen & Quake Lakes: Not surprisingly, the ice is starting to come off pretty early this year. Both arms of Hebgen are now clear of the hard stuff, and the good majority of the main lake is open too! Quake is on the same page as Hebgen, with a good chunk of it being open, mostly centralized towards the outflow side. Get out there and strip some leeches and chironomids before the lakes flip! Flies We're Fishing: #14 Black & Red Nugget, #14 O.S. Buzzer, #16 Lake Prince, #8 Black or Olive Simi-Seal Leech, #8 Black Hot Bead Leech, #8 Vegas Booby Leech, #6 Black/Olive Wooly Bugger.  Madison Flows: Hebgen Lake Inflow: 778 CFS Hebgen Lake Outflow: 665 CFS Kirby Flows: 770 CFS Cameron Flows: 960 CFS  Water Temp @ Kirby: High 49F                                     Low 37F  Flows as of 12PM April 9th 2026 ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- .................................................................................................................................. A bottlenosed brute out of the Upper Madison this Weekend for Connnor's Dad Al .................................................................................................................................. Upper Madison: The 50 Mile Riffle is fishing great right now. its getting some mid-day green tea color from our early warm days but nothing too bad. Nymphing has been super solid as always, with plenty of fish coming to hand on stoneflies, small mayfly imitations, and smaller midges. The risers are there on days with no wind sipping midges ranging in sizes from 22 all the way to 18. Streamers have been getting them both stripped and swung as well.  Flies We're Fishing: #16 & #18 TBH Red Neck, #18 Olive SH Hare's Ear, #12 & #14 Black Rubberleg Stone, #16 Firestarter, #16 Sunburst Perdigon, #20 JJ Midge, #16 Bucky's Midge Cluster, #20 Griffith's Gnat, #20 Parachute Adams, #8 Black Hot Bead Leech, #10 Black Jig Leech, #6 Mini Sex Dungeon Black or Olive, #8 Kreelex, #6 Copper Zonker ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- ............................................................................................................................. BENT! ............................................................................................................................. YNP Madison, Firehole, Gibbon: The Madison from the Wyoming/Montana border to its entrance into Hebgen Lake is open to fishing year round, and beginning this year, the Firehole and Gibbon will be open upon the park's opening to wheeled vehicles - Friday April 17th. Expect water to be a bit higher and more off color than in years past with the Memorial Day opener, but there should be plenty of early hatches in there! Gallatin: The YNP section of the Gallatin will open as usual with the rest of the parks general fishing season on the Saturday of memorial day, May 23rd. The Montana stretch to big sky is fishing OK but is going to be pretty chalky and opaque downstream of the Taylor Fork. The river is still very cold but we are turning some fish almost exclusively on small nymphs.  NE Corner: Everything up in the NE Corner is going to be too high & muddy to bother fishing until June or July. YNP Flows Firehole: 286 CFS  Gibbon: 147 CFS Madison: 479 CFS Yellowstone Outlet: 591 CFS Gallatin: 466 CFS  Lamar: 1390 CFS Soda Butte: gage is gone! ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Get out there!   ~Product of the Week~ Patagonia Torrentshell Rain Jacket     Get prepared early for nasty spring weather with this bulletproof rain shell from Patagonia. Simple and unpretentious, Patagonia's trusted Torrentshell 3L Jacket uses 3-layer H2No® Performance Standard technology for exceptional waterproof/breathable performance, all-day comfort and long-lasting waterproof durability. Fair Trade Certified™ sewn.   We are now booking trips for the 2026 season and still have some openings for this spring, summer, and fall season.  Be sure to make your reservations early to ensure you can book the guide you want.   Book Now   Madison River Outfitters Gift Card     Free shipping on all domestic orders over $200 Orders typically ship the next business day!       MRO Logo Wear - Hats, Fishing Shirts & Gear     Read the MRO fishing blog here   If you have a fishing buddy that may enjoy our newsletters please feel free to forward this email to them.   Subscribe To Our Newsletter!   Be sure to follow us below on Instagram and Facebook to see our daily picture posts.   Facebook Instagram Website Email   Give us a ring at 1.406.646.9644 for the most updated reports Current Shop Hours After 4/15/2026 8:00am-5pm On-line Fly Shop Open 24/7 Our shop address is: 125 Canyon Street West Yellowstone, MT 59758 Our mailing address is: PO Box 398 West Yellowstone, MT 59758   unsubscribe from this list    update subscription preferences  Copyright © 2018 Madison River Outfitters, All rights reserved.