On the road again!

 

The South Texas layover is over.  We’ve resumed our wandering ways.  We’re heading north to Colorado to greet baby Arie Paige when she arrives.

 

We got a late start today.  First we popped over to the U.T. Pan American campus in Edinburg to look for the Painted Redstart that has been reported there.  He’s an unusual bird in the United States, and when he is here he’s usually in Southern Arizona.  We started by looking for other birders to see if anyone had found him, but we couldn’t find any other birders.  There *were* lots of students who didn’t know about the bird, but each one we asked was kind enough to give us directions to different buildings and courtyards on campus where we had heard he had been seen before.  He’s a little warbler sized bird that flits rapidly through the trees in pursuit of bugs.  We had to cast about and find him ourselves, but ultimately we did!

 

 

I don’t know how that works.  This is a huge campus and we covered a lot of ground.  How did we ever just stumble right onto the bird?

 

We still had a lot of packing to do for the trip, so we didn’t get away until well after lunch.  We drove about 150 miles to Choke Canyon State Park.

 

We had homemade chicken noodle soup for dinner.  All we had to do is heat it up.  Thank you Alma!

 

Tomorrow, we drive through San Antonio and head west on Interstate 10.  At some point we’ll be directly under our target and turn north again, but that won’t happen for a while.  We’re in Texas, afterall.

 

Lifer!

 

We heard about a Fork-tailed Flycatcher in the area.  That’s a South American bird that sometimes wanders way far north.  This time he wandered so far north he crossed the Rio Grande.  That doesn’t happen very often; and not so often that we’ve ever seen him before.

 

A 70 mile drive to get east of Brownsville, an hour of scouring, and we found him.  He had been reported in the same area for several days in a row.  Lucky for us there were other people looking and we ultimately found him by spotting a gathering of the other bird hunters.  By the time we got there, they already had him in the scope.

 

Here he is in a field of prickly pear on the mudflats near the mouth of the Rio Grande.  (In the center of the photo.)  He was hanging out with Scissor-tailed Flycatchers.  There is one in the background to the left.

 

He doesn’t really show up very well, but we got a good enough look to identify him for sure.  Black cap.  Forked tail.  (His wings are extended.)

 

These photos are compliments of John, a nice guy from the U.K. who was kind enough to share his photos with me when I discovered that I had left the battery for my camera in the charger at home.  Thank you John.

 

 

I bird about the same amount every year

 

A lot of people use eBird online to track their sightings.  eBird also serves as a global database of bird population data, so it seems like a pretty good idea.  I record my birds there, usually getting something in the neighborhood of 400 species a year.  There is a feature in eBird to rank your number of sightings against everyone else’s to see how you’re doing.  In 2010, I recorded 397 birds which almost got me into the top 100 for the entire U.S.  I finished at number 106.

 

It seems more and more birders are recording their sightings in eBird though.  Last year I recorded a record number of sightings for me, 407.  That was only good enough for 190^th in the country.  I’m falling fast.  This year, so far, I’m in 453^rd place.  I’d better step up my game…

 

 

Along the way

 

Coyote tracks

It’s about the same size as a bobcat track, but the claws show.

 

Greater White-fronted Geese

 

Sandhill Cranes

 

 

Gourds

 

 

 

 

November 1st

 

Our ninth anniversary of leaving our house in Louisville and living our life on the road.  Packed up and ready to go, we slept in the motorhome the night before.  The next morning we stood outside the fence, looked back at the house, and gave the sadness a few moments to pass.  Nothing happened.  The sadness wasn’t there.  It never came or went.  We were already looking ahead, not back.  With no regrets, we fired up the rig and headed off on our adventure.

 

It’s nice to have a home base now in South Texas, but we still consider our lives to be fluid.  We can float with the seasons (or the mood).

 

 

CPE

 

Continuing Professional Education.

 

As Certified Public Accountants, we have an obligation to complete at least 80 hours of CPE over the course of every two year reporting period.  40 hours per year; that’s not much to ask.  A little over 3 hours per month.  Less than an hour per week.

 

The current two year reporting period ends December 31, 2013.  All over the country, CPAs are counting the days remaining in the year and comparing that to how many hours of CPE they have to complete each day or week between now and the end of the year to be in compliance with the CPE requirement.

 

Some of us are even studying on Saturdays…

 

 

Evening light

 

After the storm.