It's time

It’s time for the annual “Can you find the sleeping Pauraque in this picture?” moment.

Here it is. Not too hard. Not too far away.

…and it’s Annie’s birthday today. She’s eleven. Happy Birthday Annie!

This sucks!

 

We’re in way South Texas, picking off all the way South Texas bird specialties.  That part doesn’t suck.  What does, is that a Yellow-faced Grassquit was just reported at Goose Island State Park.  We have never heard of a Yellow-faced Grassquit in the United States before.  It’s not in any of our bird books.  We had to look him up on the internet to see what he looks like.  Definitely a lifer for us.  The problem is, we’re down south and Goose Island is north.  If we were back at Gulf Waters right now, we’d be within half an hour of it.  We could have popped over this afternoon to see if we could find the rare bird too.  We’ll have to see if there are more reports of him on subsequent days.  If he gets to be a reliable sighting, we might have to day-trip up to Rockport to get him.

 

Meanwhile, we walked a good deal of Santa Ana National Wildlife Refuge today.  They’ve got the biggest trees in South Texas there; a huge old moss draped forest.  There is a giant hawk tower that lets you stand above it all and look out across the canopy and pick out the birds below.  It’s way cool.

 

We got three new birds for the year: Great Horned Owl, Ringed Kingfisher, and Green Heron.  That gets us to 158 species so far.  It’s not like that’s a lot of birds.  Our friend Jon is at 277.  That’s a lot.

 

The big Ringed Kingfisher was good to get.  It’s a kingfisher that’s about the size of a crow!  The find of the day, however, was an extended look at a bobcat.  He was on the grassy trail ahead of us.  We were far enough away that he paid us no mind, but close enough that he filled up the field of view in the binoculars.  We watched him hunt the edges and pounce on little critters and eat them.  We spent 10 minutes in the life of a bobcat!

 

80 degrees.  The air-conditioning got a good workout this afternoon after we got home.

 

 

Last Sunday

We took an all-day drive to Falcon State Park and Salineno. Falcon State Park is right on the border with Mexico (as is most everything else down here). It hit the news last year when there was some violence against a jetskier who ventured to the other side of the lake. Scary stuff, but there haven’t been any birding fatalities, so we went anyway.

We stayed on our side of the river and got some good birds for the year. Mallard, Western Meadowlark, Hermit Thrush, Lark Sparrow, Scaled Quail, and Cactus Wren at the State Park, then Clay–colored Sparrow, Hooded Oriole, Eastern Screech-Owl, and Audubon’s Oriole at Salineno.

Three orioles for the day. Here’s the Altamira oriole:

We took an all-day drive to Falcon State Park and Salineno. Falcon State Park is right on the border with Mexico (as is most everything else down here). It hit the news last year when there was some violence against a jetskier who ventured to the other side of the lake. Scary stuff, but there haven’t been any birding fatalities, so we went anyway.

We stayed on our side of the river and got some good birds for the year. Mallard, Western Meadowlark, Hermit Thrush, Lark Sparrow, Scaled Quail, and Cactus Wren at the State Park, then Clay–colored Sparrow, Hooded Oriole, Eastern Screech-Owl, and Audubon’s Oriole at Salineno.

Three orioles for the day. Here’s the Altamira oriole.

If

If jackets get thrown on a chair, some of us pile into the middle of them and take a nap.


On the other hand….

Some of us are more attracted to dust pans.

This is a nice place to be

A big park right out our windshield. Dogs can run free there.

The afternoon view:

One more Annie picture

Just because.

Saturday

A quiet day. Nothing to write about. Sunny. Calm. Warm. Didn’t go anywhere. Sat outside. Watched some Australian Open Tennis. Took a walk. The dogs kicked the pillows off the couch and took a nap.