It’s one of those days when there is a lot to process. I’m not sure that I’m ready to say anything yet, other than I’m feeling really irrelevant due to my age, ethnicity, gender, and views. It’s probably good that I figured that out before I did or said something I shouldn’t. I need to keep processing for a bit.
We did make it home. The animals are quite pleased. The people seemed to be, too. I’ll talk to y’all, one-sidedly, tomorrow. I’ll be quiet now.
Sorry. All I have is more bird pictures. I spent most of the day relaxing, but hit all my exercise goals walking around looking at stuff.
I didn’t enjoy the Super Bowl much since we had to try to stream it on bad connectivity. I missed most of the good commercials and the game was too embarrassing to enjoy. Ugh.
I did encounter 53 species of birds today, which is impressive. I especially enjoyed sitting at a shady picnic table next to a big oak tree and some scrub, and just watching bird behavior.
This tiny Downy Woodpecker must have pecked this entire sapling.
The most fun part of the interlude was when I heard a new sound and there was the bird I’d been looking for here at Choke Canyon the most, the Audubon’s Oriole. It’s so striking. And it proceeded to put on a little show of cuteness for me. What a joy.
Not wanting me to forget that it’s also cute and colorful, a Green Jay popped in for a puffing and preening session. Yep, it was indeed cute.
I wandered around the lake a while, too, seeing ducks, a pair of Anhingas, Least Sandpipers, Coots, a Cooper’s Hawk, and Ospreys.
Of course, while chatting with neighbors, I did other observations. Enjoy. I enjoyed the neighbors. Many seem as starved for friendly conversation as I am.
Heading home tomorrow.
Here’s what I learned today. This morning, a fellow birder and I watched the Red-winged Blackbirds in a feeding frenzy at the bird blind.
We also watched two beautiful Long-billed Thrashers as they stayed above the hubbub and got their food and drink. These are interesting, because they have a limited range and are sort of in between Brown Thrashers and Curved-bill Thrashers.
They weren’t as flashy as the Green Jays or Great Kiskadees, but it was fun to watch them pop in and out of view.
As you can imagine, all these birds were loud. Very loud.
The thrashers never made a sound.
Later in the day, I walked the bird trails that led to the unimaginably named 75-Acre Lake. There weren’t many birds to be found most of the way, one exception were Ling-billed Thrashers. They were always rustling in the leaves and hopping up and down in the trees.
I enjoyed the lake which had recently been cleared of cattails, and did hear a White-eyed Vireo pair singing, and lucked out to hear a Roadrunner making its eerie song. All was not lost.
My learning about the thrashers concluded around sunset. I began hearing what I thought was a Mockingbird going through its repertoire, but it didn’t seem right. I fired up Merlin Bird ID and was quite surprised to see an ID of Ling-billed Thrasher. All the thrashers got together at sunset and sang their hearts out for about a half hour. It was beautiful! Who knew? They only sing at dusk.
I’m glad I paid attention to the behavior of these birds. I learned something!
Observation and re-evaluation led me to a new life bird today, too. In the bird blind we noticed the size difference between the little Inca Doves and the others at the feeders.
I assumed the large dove at left was a Mourning Dove. However, Merlin listed a different option first, the White-tipped Dove. I’d never heard of it, but looked at the description. Sure enough, this dove had white wing and tail tips and no other patterning. Not a Mourning Dove at all. I just had to look carefully.
Whew. My head is full from all that observing and learning. Still I found time to see more fun plants, animals and birds today. And I can’t forget learning from fellow campers, most of whom seem to be from Canada or Minnesota. They’re so friendly! The birder guy was local, from San Antonio, and he had great advice on Canon cameras and lenses. I’m glad I found him and that Lee was able to talk to him, too.
Knowledge is power. Well, for the moment. Being smart is not popular among the powerful these days.
I’m in a funny place in some ways. The scenery isn’t much to write home about, lots of late winter brown, dead downed trees from past storms, and a lake that’s way down from drought so you see a lot of dead tree tops. It’s classic Texas bramble or whatever they call it.
However, the Choke Canyon area is teeming with wildlife. This part of the state is really wild. All the scary creatures in the state roam here. I haven’t seen a mountain lion or coyote, but it seems like I’ve seen the rest, along with a big portion of the birds of south Texas, which are both beautiful and loud.
The peccaries were all over the place. You just don’t get too close to them and all is well. For example, I came up to a group as I rounded a corner on my hike today, and just crossed to the other side of the road. They glared at me as if to underscore that I was on their turf.
I saw evidence (poop) of raccoons and coyotes, who also got to howling earlier this evening. And if I’m good at judging holes, there are armadillos digging up the dirt as well as the javelinas. I haven’t seen any armadillos, but squirrels are around. I have photos of one, but we’re having issues downloading pictures from the fancy camera so I will share later. I will spare you my picture of a very large alligator way across the lake. I will tell you this lake has huge gators!
The most fun I had today was looking at birds. I also had wonderful conversations with campers at the bird blind. It’s conveniently located near our campsite, but not too, near, because the morning blackbirds are almost deafening.
Also loud were Green Jays. Somehow I managed not to get any good views of them when I was in McAllen in 2023, but I’ve made up for it this time. These are pretty spectacular birds and I got good images on the camera, but they won’t download.
The bird blind had other visitors, too, like Cardinals, Lesser Goldfinches, Yellow-rumped Warblers, and of course a lot of doves. I really enjoyed the small flock of Inca Doves that were at the blind.
We found more birds at the recreation area, which has a fish-cleaning area herons and egrets love. I also heard a new bird, the Olive Sparrow, but only briefly glimpsed it. These guys posed, though.
Later in the day I walked down most of the trails, which didn’t have many birds, other than one Great Kiskadee that shouted at me but mostly hid behind branches. Here’s what they look like.
I did see many deer, who stay out of the javelinas’ ways. A few deer were very thin. Most looked fine, though.
It was a good day for birds (50 species in total) and beasts, though rather warm for February. The evening was pleasant, however, and I enjoyed the sunset.
I’ll try to share more thoughts tomorrow. The heat has wiped me out!
I think I’m in south Texas, anyway. It’s far from our house, anyway, and getting here was a slog. There was much construction and extra bumpy roads. Yah, we were roughing it, ha ha.
Once we finally found Choke Canyon State Park, I was excited, because it would have interesting birds, and I hoped some interesting animals, too. But first we had to get Seneca the motorhome set up. I guess all the bumps jostled the battery cables, plus there’s a water problem caused by our recent freeze (our prep work wasn’t quite good enough), and… the generator still isn’t working. Verdict: going in for repairs next week.
While poor Lee was trying to finish setting up, I ran around trying to see what the place was like before it got too dark. Merlin found a Great Kiskadee, which I hope to see while I’m here, along with green jays and other southern birds.
I did spot five bunnies, many deer, and three roaming javelinas. The most fun, I think, were all the bats swooping around at dusk. I love watching them!
Other campers reported alligators, so I have things to look forward to at this park, which is next to a very large lake surrounded by…I’m not sure what, but I’ll find out tomorrow. Though it was a hectic day (lots went on at work, too), I can’t complain about getting some nature time in!
I had things to do today, important things like hard boil some eggs. Instead, I proposed that we hop in the car and take our cameras to Granger Lake, and see if we could find any birds. As long as I could get home in time to ride Apache, we were free. Time to spontain!
As you can see, I’d already been playing with the zoom lens. I got the best White-crowned Sparrow I’ve ever taken!
The weather was even better than yesterday, so why not tote that giant lens around? it was good practice.
We went to two of the many parks around Granger Lake. It was too loud to listen at the first park, but I found big birds and yaupon berries.
We left that place and went to the other side of the lake, down beautiful country roads to the park with equestrian trails. It also had prettier campsites. We enjoyed exploring this area alone, and it was great fun in the swampy areas and trails (will be better in spring).
We eventually meandered over to the lake, where I finally found some different birds to photograph. I was mostly just trying to figure out what the white birds were, then realized there were even more cormorants than white birds.
When I got home and downloaded the pictures to my phone, I realized that my photos of gulls were filled with cormorants. They aren’t very clear, but if you click to enlarge you will see them in trees, swimming, and sticking their heads out of the water!
As if this wasn’t enough fun, we went home on the back roads (Lee is familiar with them from once living in Granger). We noticed more places to hike in the nature preserves, which made us want to bring the RV down one weekend.
I felt so good when I got home, even after listening to unbearable political analysis all the way to the lake (it made my stomach hurt). I’m glad I felt good, so that I could do my important chores of boiling eggs and riding a horse who was not interested in side passing.
I’m glad Lee and I have a shared hobby. I wish his macro photos had loaded into our shared library, but synching is slow. I’ll share another time!
Rather than doing the usual Saturday chores, Lee suggested we go to Austin and do something different. We call that spontaining. Being spontaneous, but more active.
So we drove to Austin (a thing we usually avoid), visited the wonderful camera store there and chatted with the friendly staff, bought Girl Scout cookies because I support them and could enjoy a few cookies, looked in the comic book store, which is really a gaming store, and enjoyed some memories of my past life.
With my weird attachments to places, I find returning to my old stomping grounds rather difficult. I get very sad, nostalgic, or something. But, I powered through it and checked out all the changes in greater north Austin. I still miss everything about the place except high property taxes and awful traffic.
We ended the day with a nice visit and dinner at my favorite small sushi restaurant (which is still fantastic and patronized my mainly Japanese people), with our friends and former business partners, Carol and Russell.
We had great conversation, supported each other, and enjoyed the food. I’m so glad we are making the effort to see people. Even they aren’t going out as much these days, and they used to be so social.
Consider hanging out with a friend or two. It’s a privilege to be free to do so. And do some spontaining!
Today seemed really long, probably because I twisted my back at some point when getting the RV ready to head home. I’ll take some pain medicine when I go to bed, for sure.
I’m surprised I got any other exercise today, because we spent the morning inside. First, we chatted with Mike, who’d been working in his RV all weekend. But at least we had a quiet neighbor! Then I took minutes for a board meeting of the Master Naturalist chapter. Visions of COVID times danced I my head trying to do a meeting on FaceTime. But I did it!
I enjoyed a small walk, listened to birds, and hugged a cypress tree, typical Suna things.
The ride home seemed extra long since my back was still spasmodic and my stupid eye twitch was back making me irritated. The good news is I found my temperature book, so I got caught up to today in the 2025 temperature blanket. I even sewed the first two rows of January together. It vaguely resembles a calendar now.
The moon rose and sun set as we approached Cameron, which was a good distraction!
The dogs were so happy to see us when we got home! Alfred was prancing around like a giant puppy, Goldie was managing to jump up and down, and the others were running into each other with glee. Before I could head to relieve myself, they all had to be petted. I sure feel welcome.
It’s all good today. The space heaters did their job and the temperature ended up perfect for sleeping last night. It also wasn’t quite so cold, which I did not complain about.
After a nice morning, I ended up walking on every trail in Blanco State Park, enjoying the beautiful sky and the reflections in the river. I especially enjoyed crossing the river on the dams and watching the water flowing.
I even have a dam video for your enjoyment!
Birds were a bit more numerous today, and I got to have fun with them. First, I talked to a family who were feeding the family of Egyptian Geese and sleepy Muscovy Ducks at the park. I decided that I’d not mention the rule about not feeding Cheetos to the wildlife, since the birds weren’t natives. I did tell them about the birds, though.
I kept going and went back to the bird blind, hoping to see something more than Cardinals, which I did. There was apparently a Mountain Bluebird, which I did not see. I did get to watch exciting House Sparrows, Black-crested Titmice, and White-winged Doves fussing with each other. Then, suddenly something swooped in, a hawk that I guess was a Coopers, but am not sure. Every single one of the dozens of birds at those feeders took off at once, in a flurry of feathers and dove noises. The hawk sat in a tree for a minute, hoping for a meal, but soon left without a morsel.
I also saw a Kestrel fly up to a tree, then before I could photograph it, swoop down and get some kind of morsel. It must have been an insect, because it finished quickly and went to a telephone pole to look for more prey.
After some football and reading I went back out a couple more times. I got to see the Kingfisher fly by at sunset, which was a lovely highlight. The weather was so nice, I just had to keep wandering around. I tried sneaking up on some deer but failed. Deer sure are the color of the woods.
I’m so glad we’re able to hang out in nature like this. We are lucky to have my son to care for the animals, people, and mail back at the ranch. It’s really important right now to grab every bit of fun and relaxation that you can. Great memories are made that way to comfort us as time goes on.
It got very cold last night and once again, the non-propane heater stopped heating. It was 44° in the bedroom this morning! Luckily I had lots of warm blankets, but getting dressed made me wonder how people who live in igloos do it. Brr.
I went out in late morning and it was sunny, which helped. I took lots of pictures of things with ice crystals on them, and was relieved to finally hear a few birds here at Blanco State Park.
After my walk, Lee and I went out into the Texas Hill Country (the middle of it this time), ostensibly to get some space heaters. We first stopped at Lyndon B. Johnson State Park (also a National Park, to get our park passport stamped and a magnet for our collection, though we’d both been there before. I still really like this place, even in winter with no wildflowers. You could see birds, though, and I was delighted to observe a flock of Eastern Bluebirds in a nice leafless tree.
We also saw a lot of Longhorn cattle, but no real bison. That was fine.
Since we were already nearby, we kept going and visited Fredericksburg, where I enjoyed my free glass of wine at the Becker Vineyards store and got a couple of bottles of types I’m out of.
Lee was hungry, so next we ate at the small German restaurant I enjoy the most in Fredericksburg, a town teeming with German restaurants. The food there is just perfect.
Finally, we did get the heaters, the kind that look like a radiator. I like those better than ones with visible heating elements. Of course, it won’t be so cold tonight.
We got back to Blanco in time for me to take a short hike along the river to an old pump house. I like my photos of it.
There was also a very nice bird blind, but it only had Cardinals. I took their pictures anyway.
By the way, I thought it was sweet that Lee introduced a young couple camping near us to Merlin Bird ID. I then talked to them, and hooked them up with iNaturalist to help identify mushrooms, which is their hobby. I did my community outreach! And now, more pretty photos.
The Hermits' Rest 