March 11
Biked 5.5 miles
A beautiful and quiet day. And not a million bird pics! Well, a few.
All over Texas, people impale oranges on trees and shrubs for birds, so I tried it this morning. And, within a very few minutes, this Mockingbird showed up:
So, after breakfast, we continued our birding passion.
First stop, a dance between David and a Greater Roadrunner (by the way, I try to use the “correct” name, not to impress, just to learn). We flushed it out and he (I assume) showed David his feathers (and butt), gave quite a squawk, then came within three feet. Amazing:
Near the Rec Centre, a woman feeds birds, either for herself or for the park, and there are chairs and sun protection and, when she’s not doing the jigsaw puzzle inside, the woman herself.
Well, we sat there for two hours and enjoyed quite a display. We were joined by an Ontario couple who were quite serious birders (and sort of let us know, especially him) and the woman had an amazing lens (yes, almost confirmed there’s one in our future!). However, we did learn some new things and saw some sweet birds. See if you can recognize these (you’ve seen them before):
Couch’s Kingbird, Ladder-backed Woodpecker, Curve-billed Thrasher Northern Harrier and Orange-crowned Warbler).
AND a bunny:
AND two new Life birds for us (this is getting crazy!):
…a Pyrrhuloxia
…a Scaled Quail:
…along with a bunny:
After lunch, we rode our bikes on the nature trail. This lake (huge, we found out, more than 40 miles) is famous for Bass fishing (the best in Texas according to our Texan informants). Because the Texas-Mexico border lies within the lake, it’s also famous for a lot of crime, including the Jet Ski murder of 2010 that some of you may remember:
The bike ride got only more interesting as I had yet another flat tire (thanks to a puncture from some desert thorny bush). David NEVER gets a flat!
Back home to the “orange watch”, and we were rewarded with our third Life Bird of the day, a Verdin (we saw a Verdin nest yesterday). Thus…
…the view from my chair:
great bird pics Lynda. This winter, we also saw a N.Harrier at Anza-Borrego Desert State Park in California and a flock(?) of Gambel's Quail at Rockhound State Park in New Mexico. We also saw a few people who put out orange halves like that; my sister also does it here in the summer (she lives on the shores of Lake Erie) and she gets Baltimore Orioles at them.
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