Bird Sightings – Page 7 – The Hermits' Rest

Spontaining All Over Texas

Today didn’t go as planned. That’s okay. If you can’t spontain on a relaxing weekend at a state park, when else can you? I did get to spend the morning doing what I intended, which is record birds for the Big Day on Merlin/eBird and record pollinators for the Texas Pollinator Bioblitz on iNaturalist. I do so love doing competitions where I can compete with myself.

Lee had wanted to take pictures with me at the bird blind, but realized the camera batteries were not charged. So he decided to go to Corpus Christi (1.5 hours or so) to get some at a camera shop. I was promised visits to parks on the trip. So, I spontaneously agreed.

I hoped to see more butterflies, like this Buckeye

Off we went, but soon realized people need to eat. We lucked out and there was a very authentic Texas-Czech barbecue/kolache place at our first exit in Mathis. We went through many small towns today, some more decrepit than others. The restaurant had a great collection of antiques and extra friendly waitresses. The fried okra was fresh, too. A winner.

Yes, we did stop next at another state park, Lake Corpus Christi. We decided to come back and stay there for a longer trip. They have full hookups and lots of trails, plus the nicest state park restroom building I ever saw. Indeed, I took pictures. We just drove around and didn’t get out, so I only got two plant photos.

After that I saw many fascinating slums and defunct shopping centers in Corpus Christi. I saw parts of that town I’d never seen before and would have been okay not seeing, but it was like an adventure/scavenger hunt trying to locate the camera stores Lee had looked up. For future reference, there is no camera store in Corpus Christi. There are many small houses, giant empty churches, and weird downtown streets, though.

It was a relief to get on that nice wide road that takes you over some bays index onto Mustang Island, a place I used to hang out at during my early years in Texas. I’d never been to the state park there, but I can no longer say that. We did get to Mustang Island State Park (got our money’s worth on the parks pass).

I got many observations of Beachy pollinators as well as plenty of birds to record, so I was satisfied. We both enjoyed watching the ghost crabs and were astonished at how many jellyfish were washed up. There are super high tides right now, so they were almost to the dunes.

On our way home we drove the back way with no interstates. Wow. There are some desolate areas in this part of Texas. We passed many large ranches with dirt instead of grass (drought) and many others that were obviously being managed for game. The scrub is very good for hunting birds in addition to larger animals.

We also passed through Orange Grove (no oranges seen) which is where some of Lee’s family settled. It was in pretty sad shape but had some nice housing tracts outbox town. It was the last town before all the nothingness.

It’s good to be back at Choke Canyon after a nice meal of H-E-B sushi. I got 45 bird species today!

Heading South Like a Bird

Not that I want it to be warmer; it’s plenty warm still where I live. Nonetheless The plan for today was to head down south for a repeat visit to Choke Canyon State Park. I accidentally rebooked this park, perhaps I had a subconscious plan.

This very anxious cow had both me and the dogs concerned during birding time.

But first we had to get there. The farrier came early, which messed up my careful plans for getting both my work and my travel preparation done (and photography of pollinators for Texas Pollinator Week). Then, of course, work needed me and that got me more out of sync. I kept up my planned work/prep until I went to feed the chickens and give them water.

Of course I stopped for pollinators. This clouded skipper was diving into a flower.

As I turned the water flow on, I saw a brown lump in the grass. Was it something else Vlassic had dragged in from the pasture?

Oh my gosh, no! It was a newborn calf! On our side of the fence! It was doing the classic baby calf thing of laying low and not moving. I knew it was just born, because Tyler V tags new ones as soon as he finds them and he’s looking at least twice a day right now.

No wonder that cow had been mooing so hard this morning! And her milk bag was very full. I got in touch with Tyler then finished working and getting ready. Just as we were finally leaving, Tyler arrived and I showed him where the calf was. The poor thing was getting hot and breathing hard, so I’m glad it got rescued. All it took was for Tyler to walk up to it and it scooted back through the fence. I hope there was a family reunion and the baby got tagged.

That made me as happy as I assume these bee flies were when I took this shot.

Four hours later, we arrived to the familiar sight of Choke Canyon’s scrubby beauty. I quickly realized why I subconsciously rebooked a place we had already been—this time we are just two spots away from the bird blind! The really good one! And there’s javelina poop on our site! Yes! This place has its own beauty and excitement.

Bonus: the leveling system worked and my bedroom slide went out. I can get to my pajamas and art supplies! It’s like we have our motorhome back, though the generator still won’t start.

I did get to walk around just a little bit, and found a lot of climbing milkweed, lantana, and cow pen daisies. I hope these will convince some of the beautiful butterflies I’ve been seeing to stop and pollinate. So far I have a dead queen butterfly and a brown moth. I must do better!

I figure I’ll enjoy a few more birding hikes this weekend as well as take a lot of insect and plant photos! Enjoy scenes from my sunset walk.

Hard Goals

What was the hardest personal goal you’ve set for yourself?

As tired as I am, I can answer this one (I don’t answer blog prompts lately because I’ve answered most of them). That’s good, because it was another day of barely getting through work and not being able to do much more.

I finished coloring this. It took a week or so in small doses.

So, I’ve probably mentioned this before and will again. But for years I had a hard time being the person I felt I could be, and it turns out I had a lot to do with it. Thanks to some issues in my birth family and an inherently sensitive nature, I was always very hard on myself.

I never met my own expectations. Any mistake I made lingered in my mind for a long time. I’d replay “dumb” things I said over and over. And I would constantly talk to myself in ways no one would talk to someone they cared about. I was ugly, fat, stupid, and so on. I was not nice to me.

Since I AM actually pretty smart and intuitive, I figured out that I was not helping myself with the negative self talk. So I had some therapy, talked things out with a group of safe and understanding women, meditated (a lot, still do), and read.

I’m very pleased to have come across the writing of Brené Brown. I’m also pleased someone made me read a self-help book. I find most of them really simplistic or not right for me. Her first few books opened my eyes to how much I was affecting my own self worth, and by that, encouraging others to pick at me or devalue me. Figuring out that I wasn’t the only one doing this to myself was a huge revelation. I got a much better outlook and began to heal.

I got tested a lot in this healing phase. Since I came to Cameron, a couple of people (who of course are suffering from their own internal battles) tried their best to break me down, give the community a bad impression of me, and hurt others I cared about. I’ve had some very hard times here in rural Texas, where even in a good day I’m a square peg not even trying to fit into a round hole.

But, one day, right after a very mean person was mean to me, something snapped in my brain. I told my patterns I was sick and tired of them and vowed to reframe the situation every time I started to berate myself.

Get this. It worked. After a while, weird thoughts like how good I felt, or how peaceful life was began to replace sadness. My negativity patterns have gone into background mode, and I feel so much better. Sure, that stuff is still down there and today’s trying times make feeling good about anything difficult. Yet, I honestly feel good about myself, like myself, and don’t beat myself up when I screw up (much). And of course, the horse riding lessons helped me practice gaining self confidence.

I kept telling myself I was fine just as I was and that it’s perfectly okay that not everybody likes me until it became true. I’ve even learned a bit about how to perform the once-mysterious act of “letting other people’s negativity slide right off my back.”

Maybe that’s why these bluebirds of happiness keep following me.

I try to cut others some slack, and accept those around me who confuse me just as they are. I just hope they find peace and joy on their path.

Who IS THIS version of Suna? She’s different. Not perfect, not better than anyone else, but at a good place in her spiritual journey.

So, blog prompt readers, loving myself and treating myself kindly were my hardest goals.

Now I’ll move on towards being less judgmental (making good progress), and being so afraid to speak up about what I see as wrong. There’s always room for improvement!

Mortality Blues

I’ve been re-watching the television series Lucifer, in which the Devil comes to earth to figure out what being mortal is like, among other things. He’s all excited to get to actually feel pain.

Well, I’m glad it gives Mr. Morningstar some giggles. It’s not the case with me these days, nor with so many of my friends in the 75+ age group. They seem pretty baffled at how their previously well behaved bodies are randomly (it seems) failing. Why is my knee giving way? How did I get this heart issue? What the heck!

Carlton is concerned about his mortality though he need not be

I remember how weird it seemed when my indestructible Dad started to show signs of age. Maybe it was good he passed at 80, before his body stopped being so robust. That would have been hard on him.

I’m musing about this because my digestive system, the one inextricably linked to my anxiety and stress, has not been cooperating with me. I was pretty much out of commission today, and I don’t know which of many possibilities caused it. I ended up taking a nap in the cool motorhome after work.

No doubt the horses were relieved I didn’t make anyone work today, but they got fed.

It’s just so frustrating to have your body not doing its job properly when you have plans. That’s my least favorite part of aging, the unreliability of the physical part of myself.

Nonetheless there were highlights today, the biggest of which was seeing a big Wood Stork by the creek. I thought it was a hawk at first, but the head shape gave it away. I hope we see more, and some cranes.

That will make up for how quiet birding has been lately. I hear plenty of birds, but not in large numbers and not very enthusiastically. Maybe they’re all molting like Connie and the chickens.

The Great Egret was another non-Hawk that was in the usual lookout trees.

I will now see if I can sleep. I’ve avoided the news and have not read any depressing books.

A Little More Dullness

My inspiration for writing about what interests me is at an all-time low. Maybe it’s that lack of air conditioning in our upstairs. Inspiration and sweating have never gone together well for me. Sweating puts me into survival mode, which may explain my reluctance to canter on Apache at the end of a hot lesson.

It’s probably cooler up in a tree with the Great Egret.

Speaking of my spotted gelding companion, he may keep acting all stiff when we exercise, but I see him cantering away quite gloriously when the herd decides to move and he doesn’t realize I’m looking. HA! I also think Drew leans to the left when cantering like a wild horse. Hmm. Things to discuss on Saturday, I guess.

No horse photos, but look at the cuteness of this tiny Hentz jumping spider. It soon jumped off my eraser.

Let’s see what dull events happened today, and I’ll try to be more interesting tomorrow.

I did my nails an interesting orange ombré that looks better on my short nails. Yes, it’s Orange October, but I’m keeping my hair Dusty blue. (Spell check capitalized Dusty because it knows about the horse, I guess)
Another calf must have been born, because the Black Vultures were back following cows. I didn’t see it.
Air conditioning repair guy came with a new controller only to discover the motor had burned out. Back to waiting on another part.
An electrician came to install the porch ceiling fans. He left a long wire on the porch, returned later in the day but turned around in the driveway and left. That was weird. Maybe he forgot something? It shall remain a mystery.
Work was sorta fun, with a lot of collaboration and problem solving. That’s always my favorite part. I like when team members each bring different skills that enable better outcomes to be accomplished.

Remember people around you are struggling and may not be at their best. Let’s try to be supportive and put aside little gripes. That message was for me, too.

Connie looking naked from all that molting

Geeking Out Over Sound Patterns

Bear in mind that I have been looking at waveforms most of my adult life, so this stuff interests me. I still edit myself talking a lot (yep, it’s my job), so I know when I’m gasping or clicking from saliva before I even listen. It’s interesting, not that fun.

But it’s only in the past couple of years, since I e had Merlin Bird ID that I’ve been able to identify bird calls by how they look on a spectrogram.

Loggerhead Shrike – you can just tell it’s loud and harsh, not melodic.

This kind of knowledge is helpful in winter when there are so many sparrows around. Their spectrograms look different. Here’s one I also like.

Songbird recordings look very different. Some are more horizontal lines going up or down with the pitch. Others have a mix of tones, but you can see the melody. These two I got from Merlin, of birds I’ve heard.

As I’ve been enjoying the sounds birds, there have been other sounds Merlin catches, like loud trucks, airplanes, and wind. And, of course there are insects. I was being deafened by the sounds of late-summer cicadas when I looked down at the waveforms. Wow!

You can practically feel the pulsing by looking at those fascinating shapes. On the other hand, crickets just stick to one note.

So if anyone ever asks me how I know a sound is a cricket versus a cicada, I can turn on Merlin. It may not ID it, but I can know from the shape.

Here’s a sound I’m glad Merlin heard: a Yellow-headed Blackbird. They only show up here a few days a year during migration. Photo by Dorian Anderson.

I used to have some frog images but I can’t find them. I’ll be paying attention and when I hear something interesting, I’ll stop the recording, since Merlin doesn’t save recordings over about 20 minutes long, due to storage constraints. My phone would be FULL.

Another Sunday

I managed to not interact with the news all day. I enjoyed birds, especially Eastern Meadowlarks over at my son’s house while I was feeding his pets. The birds were singing and merrily grabbing insects in a true autumn poem.

I also enjoyed watching the cattle in the pasture I walked through. I’m very glad the neighbors have very tame bulls. This very muscular fellow just looked at me in a peaceful way.

The horses were wandering around as a herd, diligently trying to find the last few cockleburs to get in their manes and tails. Drew got some in his tail, but the pesky plants got mowed this evening, so he will have fewer opportunities.

Other than wandering around the property, I spent my day peacefully doing crafts and reading. It sure keeps me centered.

Obviously I was desperate for something to color. I think I left my other books in the motorhome.

A Quick Thanks

The whole day today was spent recording myself talking, so there’s not much news from around here.

Okay, there was lots of bird drama, but just imaging “caw, caw, hoot, hoot, screech” and you’ll get the idea.

The arch enemy, Great Horned Owl. You can see the branches it’s perched on in the above photo. Not shown: murder of crows.

The drama has me so on edge that when I heard the sound of dozens of starlings flying right over my head, I was kind of creeped out.

Zoom in and you can see the last wave of starlings

My point today is that I want all of you to remember there are kind, good, and caring people in this world. You are among them. I am so touched by the sweet things some of you say to me after reading one of my rants or about moments of sadness. My gratitude for you, friends, both known and unknown, is immense. You matter. Very much.

Of My Two Keys: Turkey and Donkey

Hey, not too much broke today, and though we have to wait for an air conditioning part, a convenient “cold” front came through, so sleeping won’t be too bad tonight. This leaves me with my observation for today.

First, I have an admission. As much as I like birds, I rarely get attached to them. I was fond of Bertie Lee, my old chicken, but I try not to get too attached after living through a couple of grisly chicken massacres. Nonetheless, I find myself feeling as much love for Connie Gobbler, my sweet turkey lady. I love her happy greeting chirps and the way she stretches her turkey neck out to be rubbed. She’s just so friendly and funny. It’s hard not to love her.

Anyway, she has a new habit. When I’m in the pen feeding them and filling the water dishes, she silently sneaks up on me. I feel a presence and turn around to see her beak, less than an inch from my leg, as she stands as closely as she can get. I think she’s figured out she gets extra love and petting when she does that. It’s a weird feeling realizing your fowl is stalking you.

Today I thought to myself that she reminded me of someone. Hmm. Oh yes, Fiona. I’ve lost count of the number of times I’ve been in the horse pens or out in the pasture doing a chore or working with a horse when I move slightly and realize Fiona’s nose is next to my leg. She’s completely silent and just shadows me until I pay her some attention.

If asked my preference, I’d say I prefer the silently patient requests for attention I get from Connie and Fiona to some of the dogs’ and horses’ rowdier techniques or the standoffishness of Mabel and Spice (they are fine with little physical attention). I can’t argue with Dusty, either. He never fails to amble up and politely present his head for some good rubbing. He’s such a gentleman.

I’m not going to discourage the donkey and turkey from their silent stalking, for sure. I just know not to make any sudden moves or I’ll run into a pink nose or a beak attached to a pink featherless neck. I’ll take affection wherever it comes from, however it’s expressed.

Gobble gobble. (Clint is too happy with his fresh water to pose)

Anything Good to Say Today?

Let’s see, autumnal equinox or Mabon occurred today. At least in the wheel of the year there is balance between dark and light twice a year, which is more than you can say about other forces at work in the world.

Um, and it’s New Year’s in the Hebrew calendar. I ate some honey and wished my many Jewish friends a good new year. We could all use one.

That’s what I’ve got for today…wait a sec, I did enjoy a very pleasant hike on the Lakeside Trail along Bob Sandlin Lake. I saw a Brown Thrasher and enjoyed many pretty views.

In honor of the season I tried to find a sampling of autumn leaves. There were a few. It’s still a while before Texas Autumn.

Back at home I was reminded that daily annoyances do not ever disappear (and are normal). I couldn’t get the tack room door to open all the way, so I called my son to the rescue, only to find out the door is a mess. He says maybe he can lower the steps. In the meantime, it’s hard to get the horse dishes through the opening.

I also nearly broke the freezer shelf that’s already partly broken. So much is broken that I can’t fix! My bathroom sink in the motorhome no longer works, my bedroom slide out is dead again, the generator won’t start, yadda yadda. Recreational vehicles are not very sturdy. Nor are houses. They all fall apart and you need to find people to fix them. As we get older, there’s more we can’t do ourselves. No wonder people move into those senior care places. They have maintenance staff.

Just whining. All will be well. I just realized this afternoon that I hit a limit on broken things not bothering me. I must do a reset or fix something!

I’ll think back on cool sights, like this blue-tipped dancer.

Obviously there was not all that much great today, but I treasure the good parts!