26 April 2018 - More about Texas

I am sure many of you who travel in America have this same moment, when all of a sudden it becomes clear you are not in your home state. I had several of these. Sometimes it was seeing something I would never see at home, but often was the signage. 

On our first day in Texas, we were stopped on the side of a road looking at a bird when a bobcat stepped out of the woods, looked at us and unconcernedly crossed the road and disappeared into the underbrush. That was pretty cool. That same day I saw this lizard on a fence post. 

I'll tell you, all the memories of having anoles for pets (25 cents at the five and dime store) came rushing back.  Non sequitur: ever wonder why the keyboard doesn't have a cent sign anymore?

One day we were birding a wildlife refuge, walking on a creek embankment. First the sign:

Then the critter:

He was well hidden in the marsh below us. Gave us all a start. He was only about six feet long but that's when you really know you aren't in Kansas anymore. 

We ran into several iterations of the alligator sign. I liked this one. "Live alligators!"

Another evening just after dusk we were looking for nightjars such as nighthawks, chuck-wills-widows and pauraque, and we stumbled across a javalina. Not sure if it was a loner or part of a herd, we made a lot of noise back to our car. 

There were no signs warning us of possible peccary attacks, but this one at the beginning of a trail didn't seem to attract much notice at all. 

We spent a day at the King Ranch, the second largest ranch in America. While we were there looking for birds, we also learned a lot about the history of the ranch. There wasn't any signage, but the critters we encountered here were awful! Chiggers and ticks. We stuffed our pant legs into our socks, sprayed the union with deet. We still got bit. I'm here to tell you that those are nasty bites!  We brought home many bites as souvenirs. 

Later in our trip we ventured into places where there were big signs saying Hunters and Fisherman Beware! Fever tick eradication zone.  Oh boy. We didn't get any ticks in those spots, for which we were all grateful. 

I always enjoy seeing the lizards. 

We were tickled to find a Texas Tortoise--one of only six tortoises that are native to North America. 

Of all the signs, this was the most disappointing. In ten days we didn't see a single snake.

Texas signs also made me laugh. In  Utah, our signs announce BUMP. In Texas they do something else. 



 The beaches were lovely with fine white sand, and the rolling sand dunes were gorgeous. 

We followed the Rio Grande in our travels. In several places you could see across to Mexico. 

We passed through several Border Patrol stations as well. I found it hard to see this wall. It just seems wrong. 

Another odd to me thing was that Texas has imported two deer/antelope species from India for hunters. The King Ranch started importing Nilgai Antelope in the 1930s. Now many ranches have both Nilgai and Blackbuck for hunting. 

The Blackbuck antelope apparently is a sought after game animal. People like to hunt these from helicopters, which I don't find very sporting. Blackbucks have spiral twisting antlers which apparently look nice on a wall. Not for me! 

And insects. Can't forget them! Especially copulating damsel flies. 

I also stumbled across two interesting caterpillars, and as of now I haven't figured out what butterflies they will become. 

23 April 2018 - Texas birding and more

I am back from ten days in Texas with three friends. Goal? Migrant birding. This is the time of year when the warblers and other birds make their journey from Central and South America to get to their northern breeding grounds. Some of these birds are on their way to the boreal forests of Alaska. We were hoping to catch sight of many birds that don't occur in our area.  And we did!

Texas. I didn't realize how flat it is. Huge expanses barely punctuated by trees. It immediately made Greg Brown's song Flat Stuff play in my head. You probably need to hear it, so search on google or youtube. 

Not only was it a surprise how flat the land is, but the wildflowers were spectacular! The fields and sides of the roads were covered in flowers. It was gorgeous. I'm not sure if this is due to Lady Bird Johnson's efforts or is natural in the areas we were, either way, I loved it. 

We had many target birds to find while on this trip. The most wanted was the Whooping Crane. There are less than 300 of them left. It took us three days, but the third day was the charm. We were stunned and thrilled to see these elegant and magnificent birds. They stand almost 5 feet tall and have a 9 foot wingspan. Impressive!

When they took off we heard their loud bugling calls. Amazing! 

We saw 228 species in a week, including 45 lifers for me. It was a fabulous trip with dawn to dusk birding. I admit by the time we got home I was pretty exhausted, but happily so. 

If any of you have ever seen the movie, The Big Year, you might remember them talking about a fallout on the Texas coast after a storm. We experienced one of these. A storm came in from the south bringing many migrating birds over the gulf into Texas. The next day we had a north wind which kept them grounded. It was a birder's dream. In a single tree there would be two kinds of orioles, painted buntings, tropical parulas, scarlet tanagers. . . it was hard to do anything but stand there with your mouth hanging open.  Here are a few of my favorites from the trip, in no particular order.  

Painted bunting

Green jay

Least bittern

Summer tanager

Indigo bunting

Hooded warbler

Scarlet tanager

This Altamira oriole is only found in Texas along the Rio Grande.

I loved the Reddish Egret. It also has a white morph, but both of them dance in the water while looking for food. Great fun to watch!

This bird is not about to take off, it is doing part of it's feeding dance. 

Due to the storms we had several very windy days. Many gulls, skimmers and the like would line up on the shore facing into the wind. On one beach we counted 172 skimmers all lined up in a row. 

I should mention Whistling ducks. These are not ordinary ducks, in fact I'm not sure they really are ducks. They are so darned cute and have beautiful coloration.  I'd love to have some in my backyard. They perch in trees, on telephone wires, on top of fences and other weird places you would not expect to see a duck. They don't quack, they whistle. Here they are walking down a rope. So odd!

A crowd is always better.

It is hard to know when to quit, but so many birds!

Next is an Aplomado Falcon. It has been on the endangered species list since 1986 and rarely comes into Texas from Mexico. We were so lucky to see one of these. Beautiful. 

The scissor-tailed flycatcher is always a treat to see, no matter how many you see each day. 

One of the birds that was on our list at the King Ranch was the Ferruginous Pygmy Owl. In the US it is only found in a few spots in Texas and Arizona. 

Last June, a white ibis found it's way to Farmington Bay in Utah. It stayed a month, but in that time hundreds of people came in to see it. It was a treat to see quite a few in Texas. 

Great Kisskadee. 

Least tern. 

Ruddy turnstone--in breeding plumage. 

Should also introduce you to three weird bird(er)s. Here are my traveling companions--from left to right: Barb, Vivian and Bryant. 

This is what we look like most of the time. Hats, binos and cameras. At this moment they were looking at both a worm-eating warbler and a Louisiana waterthrush. A good time was had by all. 

25 February 2018 - Playing Tourist in Arizona

I recently spent a week in Apache Junction with some friends. Carolyn and Joe own a beautiful home down there, a wonderful place to flee from the winters of Northern Michigan. Kathy, also from Michigan and I spent a week with her. It was so much fun to catch up with friends I haven't seen for two years. 

We took a trip to Oracle, Arizona and toured the Biosphere. It was absolutely incredible. I was bowled over by the infrastructure. Part of the tour took us through all the guts in the basement. The planning, engineering and details that went into the construction was even more astounding to me than the actual building. I can't even imagine what it took to figure out how to build a dome covering three acres, seal it up and have it sustain seven different ecosystems, as well as provide food for the crew. What a testament to human ingenuity. 

Inside we found a desert, rainforest, ocean with coral reef, savannah, grasslands, mangrove swamp and fog desert. I highly recommend this tour to anyone passing through Arizona. 

Here is our intrepid group of explorers. 

We also visited the Musical Instrument Museum in Phoenix. Another huge WOW!  We were there for five hours and maybe got through a third of it. The building was gorgeous. Two floors were divided into rooms labeled by continent. Inside each room were instruments from 200 countries. Over 6800 instruments were on display. Each display had a monitor.  Wearing a headset, as you got close to the monitor you could watch clips of how the different instruments were played. For example, here is a nyckelharpa with the video where you hear and see it in action.  

One large room was filled with mechanical music machines. Music boxes, player pianos, horns and other instruments all played through mechanical means.  My favorite was the Apollina which took up an entire wall. It was beautiful and complicated, with a piano, two accordians, two saxophones, drum set and other instruments inside. 

This three foot high piece reminds me of a snowdome. In addition to playing music, the windmill turns, the train moves on the track and the watermill and ship move. Pretty fancy! 

 
Another exhibit showed how they made piano player rolls. Fascinating. 

These examples don't come close to the amazing scope of this museum. 

One of the artist exhibits had a clip of Dolly Parton singing Apple Jack, a favorite of our dear friend Charlie Gilbert. Carolyn and Kathy (pictured here with Dolly) still perform that song. 

 

We were able to help Joe celebrate his 70th birthday while we were in town. That was great fun, and the cake was not only pretty, but delicious! 


We had a gorgeous day to walk several miles through the Boyce Thompson Arboretum--one of my favorite places. 

Look at the size of this tree trunk!

Just a lovely week with friends in gorgeous surroundings.