Big Bend birding, Days 2 and 3

It's been tough to find the time to catch up on posting here, so I'll do my best to get the highlights of what was a magical trip!

Day 2 found us waking up super early... because I woke up, looked at my still-on-eastern-time clock and woke Mary up at like 4 in the morning. Oops! We went for a walk under the stars and then went back to the room for a nap!

Later, we went walking down the road trying to find Montezuma Quail -- when I realized I'd forgotten to put the SD card into my camera. My sweet sister went back to the lodge to get it for me and OF COURSE that is when I heard the sound: I heard the Montezuma Quail! He called two times, and that was it. I only heard him, but it was DEFINITELY him! Lifer #4 sort-of!

By the time Mary got back, no more sounds. Still, we decided to walk the actual Montezuma Quail Trail, hoping to see or hear more. No go. We did, get another lifer for me, however:

It's a terrible photo, but it was the best one I got of this Black-chinned Hummingbird! I'd never been to Texas late enough to see that many hummers, so it took me this long to get to see this fairly common western hummer. Lifer 5!

The view from the trail:

I also got a better picture (for my Lifebird Photos collection) of a Bushtit:

So that was nice.
Still, no MOQU. Oh well. We also saw some nice cactus and agave plants:

The agave floral stem grows about one FOOT per day! Sadly, we didn't get to see it in full flower. But just think: in a few days, this bud will be about fifteen feet tall, covered with yellow flowers, and buzzing with hummingbirds. And then the whole plant will die. It lives about 25-50 years, sends up its flowering part, and dies. Wow.

Claret cup hedgehog cactus in flower:

A very sweet little Oregon Junco:

A Common Raven that I kept trying to make into a Chihuahuan Raven for Mary because she's never seen one:

After hiking around for a while, we had lunch and decided to check out the Mount Davis Observatory. Here's the view from Mount Locke, on which the observatory can be found:

Here's Mary in front of the building that houses the smallest scope:

And here's an unfortunate piece of signage:

Mary looked at it and said, "That's one very special employee."

Here she is with the big scope behind her:

It was cool to be up there, but it was sooooo windy and we were sooooo tired (thanks to my 4 a.m. wake-up call) that we called it a day.

The sunset from Skyline Drive in the park (there was so much dust in the air from the wind that it wasn't much of a sunset).

Day 3 took us from Fort Davis down through Alpine and into Big Bend State Park! Along the way we caught this awesome Golden-crowned Kinglet:

Not a lifer but check out that crown!

And in my quest to secure possible splits to the official AOU bird checklist, here's a Myrtle's Yellow-rumped Warbler:

Check out this crazy cactus; it's more thorns than cactus!

As you enter BBNP, you drive through a Badlands-like area:

Although the creosote bushes give it away as NOT being in South Dakota.

We got closer to the Chisos Basin and saw the "ghosts" after which the mountains are named:

It was a beautiful place, all creosote and ocotillo and cactus, mountain peaks and mesas.

We checked into our room, got our stuff settled, and went out for more birds! As soon as we walked out of our room, we saw this cooperative (and obviously used to people) Cactus Wren:

Not a lifer, but I'd never seen one so close up! Creepy red eyes!

Then, not two seconds later, this guy shows up:

LIFER 6! Phainopepla, baby! More creepy red eyes and crazy crest. Sooooo sweet. We hadn't even left the parking lot yet.

We hiked the Window Trail and got lucky again!

A terrible photo but it's a Black-chinned Sparrow! We got good looks at him.

The whole time on the trail, the giant Casa Grande rock formation loomed overhead and behind us:

After a long hike with several frustrating mystery sparrows that are probably just Chipping and other common sparrows, we watched the sun set in The Window, this gap between two mountains:

It had been a long day, but I had a date with my first Chicken-fried Steak in about fifteen years so we birded until dark, went to the restaurant, and went to bed!

This was the closest we got to a Mountain Lion:

Dangit.

Birding in the Big Bend, Day 1, en route to the Davis Mountains

scenic view north of Fort Davis

I've just returned from a week and a couple of days in Texas: my annual Texas birding trip! This time, however, I chose not to go to the Rio Grande Valley, but I did stay close to that river. My sister Mary and I spent five days in the Big Bend of Texas! Life-location!

We started out in Davis Mountains State Park near Fort Davis and the McDonald Observatory (where, by the way, the sexy-voiced Sandy Wood of Stardate fame does NOT hang out).

Heading west on I-10 out of San Antonio and away from my sweet mommy and daddy's house, we first hit Lake Balmorhea near Balmorhea and just west-southwest of Fort Stockton, Texas. I'd read that the Clark's Grebe makes regular appearances at the lake, so we hit it and struck lifer gold!

We saw three CLGRs on the lake, along with an Osprey, several generic gulls, and this mystery gull:

Not a great photo, but note that he has no white on his tail -- no white on his wing feathers folded back. What kind of gull is he? He had a yellow bill with a black tip, like a Ring-billed Gull, but no white on the rear portion. Am I over-thinking it? The only commonly occurring gulls there are the Ring-billed and (less often) the Bonaparte's Gull. Must just be a RBGU.


Also present was this cooperative Pyrrhuloxia:

Anyway, on we went to the Indian Lodge in the Davis Mountains, and on the road we saw my second lifer, a Prairie Falcon. Sadly, I did not get a photo, but it was unmistakeable: the accipiter shape, the size (like a giant American Kestrel), the brown barring on the wings, belly, and tail. I wish I'd gotten a photo, but we were driving and by the time we pulled over, he'd flown.

Also seen on the road, on a rock in front of that beautiful view from the top of this post, was this interesting lizard:

I couldn't find anything online that matched him. Any guesses?

The Indian Lodge was nice, a cool adobe building constructed in the 1940s by the Civilian Conservation Corps:

In the parking lot and green (I should've used air quotes on that) areas around the lodge were several Canyon Towhees, another lifer!

 

So that made three lifers so far. My goal for the trip was 24, based on repeated sightings of potential lifers at various spots in the park over the previous days. I had a long way to go, but I was happy to be in a place I'd never been.

Aurora Borealis

After wanting to see the northern lights ever since I was a child, I finally saw them (it?) last night!

I was awakened by Cornelius (of course, the pig wanted food), and when I came back up the stairs after feeding him and the other babies I glanced out my office window. Even without my contacts or glasses, I saw a bright flashing outside to the north. I ran and grabbed my specs and looked out to see a strange glowing in the sky, vertical stripes of brightness, one of them pulsating brighter every couple of seconds or so.

Thanks to night mode and a tripod, I was able to capture it:

Here, you can see the whole scene; the brighter part to the right was flashing.

Off to the left was one single shaft of light, barely visible here:

And here is the main part, flashing again:

What a thrill! I watched for about a half hour, awestruck by the spectacle.

Today, we're having to wait for Nemo, the big storm that's supposed to dump a couple of feet of snow on us tonight. The weather people have been hyping this up for the last couple of days, so I hope we see some real snow. Of course, it's easy for me to wish for this, as I'm still out on medical leave from my concussion, suffered last Monday. I mentioned it on Facebook; I just slipped on some ice and fell, bouncing my head on the ground. I am slowly recovering my ability to focus, after doing NOTHING for about a week. I was not allowed (by my doctor) to watch TV, play online, or even read a book. And of course, watching TV was completely overwhelming and headache-inducing anyway. I posted on Facebook after it happened, and then I was out after like five minutes.

I'm now able to watch TV, but I can't multi-task yet. Normally, I would be writing this post while watching TV and maybe having a conversation with AB. Not anymore, at least for a while. I am only able to do one thing at a time. No watching TV while playing Spider Solitaire on the iPad; no reading a book while mapping stuff on the computer and taking some notes on a notepad. I've only been allowed back on the computer (and online) for the last couple of days, though I get tired pretty easily.

Like now.