birding – The Hermits' Rest

October Big Day

Today was the October Big Day for birders. Cornell Ornithology Lab was encouraging everyone to report all their bird sightings today on eBird or Merlin Bird ID. Of course, I was up for that, and because I had an upset tummy thing, I stayed close to home, making it a good day to observe.

Since its calving season, it was easy to spot Black Vultures, Turkey Vultures, and Crested Caracaras.

There was a mama cow glaring at this Caracara who was enjoying a placenta snack (hey, it’s Nature’s cleaning service).

And House Sparrows were east to find, since they dominate the stump feeder.

Mostly, I enjoyed listening to birds. Mockingbirds are back to singing long and complicated songs, as are Carolina Wrens. (Bewick’s Wrens are still just buzzing.)

This Mockingbird was singing away on a high branch.

My favorite sight came late in the afternoon, when I went on a walk. Eastern Bluebirds were all over the pastures singing and diving for insects. They were pretty blue streaks against the brown grass.

All in all, I recorded 40 species today. That’s about average for this time of year. Below is the list, as checked off in the book Lee went to a lot of trouble to make me, only to find he forgot October. He’s making another one, and I’ll transfer these to the new book.

The list is birds I have seen before in November. It works for October. I just write in new species, and he will add them for next year. He likes to make books!

Good news: I’m feeling better mentally since coming home from New Mexico. I even had energy today to do all the chores and not feel exhausted. That made all the animals happy, because I hung out and played with them.

We were a little offended that you didn’t count us in the Big Day count, but we appreciated the romaine lettuce

I need to lose my post-horse-lesson depression weight, so my goal is to get back to my daily walks and horse stuff. It’s now cool enough in mornings and around sunset to walk without suffering, so I’m taking advantage of it. Besides, I get to enjoy flowers and sunsets!

The only hiccup in the day was putting the red border around September in my temperature blanket only to realize I’d omitted a row of blank squares. Oops. I should be able to show it tomorrow, though.

PS: more good news. I confirmed today that all three goldfish are still alive and swimming. There are still lots of the other fish, too, so Alfred is forgiven.

So many birds, so tired

Today Pamela and I drove from Corpus Christi to port Aransas and back before returning home. For that reason I’m tired as heck so I’m hitting the highlights.

Hello, I’m a highlight, Tricolored Heron.

First we drove down Shoreline Blvd in Corpus, where I’d never been. Whoa. There were beautiful old and newer homes to see! Corpus is t as ugly as it appears from the highway. We then went to a small and kind of rundown bird sanctuary, the Hans and Pat Suter Wildlife Sanctuary. We saw many interesting birds, plants and hundreds of Great Southern White butterflies. Enchanting.

After than visit we drove all across Mustang Island, which was new to my native Texan friend. It’s my dream marshland. Eventually we got to the Leonabelle Turner Birding Center.

As this photo shows, the wind was not kind to Pamela’s hair.

Nor was it kind to mine. It got stuck in trees.

There weren’t zillions of birds like the time I came during migration, but there were some good ones.

The best, most wonderful, and the most amazing sight we saw did not come through in photos, but was very clear through my binoculars. At first I thought it was Mississippi Kites, but they weren’t marked quite right, and their tails were forked, but very long. So when I got home I looked to see if kites were likely birds in Port Aransas this time of year. They were not.

What was large, flocking, black-and-white, and likely? The Magnificent Frigatebird! A bucket list bird of mine!

This is one cool seabird. I didn’t realize they’d come this close to the shore. They can fly for hours and hours and steal food from shorebirds (I guess that was today’s plan).

Otoño this picture to document where the birds were. She’s looking at them, I swear!

I immediately had to text Pamela about the ID. This was a memorable trip, even though the drive home was long!

Apologies for not sharing the plants I saw. Too tired!

Pleased with simple progress for all of us

While today wasn’t exciting, it was satisfying. The family got things done that they’d been wanting to do for a while.

As a result, our surroundings are more pleasant and will be even more so soon!

Yesterday my giant tree stump was sculpted into a multi-level bird feeding platform. It was fun watching the little chainsaw making all the cuts.

With the yard all weed-eated and mowed, things looked pretty spiffy. Thanks, men. It’s spiffier now, because Lee and I went to Lowe’s and got a few plants, a suet feeder and some bird seed. I moved my solar birdbath to where I can see it, and set up the suet feeder this afternoon. It looks very nice. Perhaps birds will even find and use it. I hope to get photos.

I haven’t fed birds before, since we have plenty of natural bird food here and I don’t want to attract unwanted diners. So I’ll only put out a little food each day to try and get pictures.

It’s nice that Lee has taken up gardening since we built the porch. The houseplants are cheerful. What’s not cheerful are all the plants growing on the pool deck and flower beds. There are some, like nut grass and fall asters that I can’t pull up. Plus the Bermuda grass from when our yard was a pasture won’t go away by pulling. So, reluctantly, I will have to make use of herbicide. All precautions will be followed. Once the poolside bed only has the plants we want, we have some native plants to add in. That’s my plan, anyway.

This will look much better tomorrow. It has to perk up. My favorite portulaca and Lee’s favorite, wandering dude (yes, that’s what it’s called now).

Work is also starting up again on the pool house project behind our house. I love discussing all the creative plans for building it out to look good and do creative re-use of materials.

Carlton and Benny were inspecting the work—you can see Carlton coming out.

I’m looking forward to my plans for tomorrow, which I hope will include more horse time than today. Kathleen’s keeping up with her Dusty work. I do a lot of petting and grooming. But I did see Vicki and her horse, Malone, today. It’s fun having a visitor on horseback!

Texas Rain

Not much excitement is going on here, because we’ve been getting nice, steady, light rain for two days. That’s atypical, because usually we go directly from severe drought to severe flooding, which means most of the rain runs off. This time the water has had a chance to soak in.

It is flooding down at the other family property in Yorktown, though, and in many places south of us. We just lucked out. The rain will continue this week, but I hope it stops in time for us to travel to our final camping destination for a while.

We’re going to leave Seneca at a motor home repair place when camping is over to get all fixed up for more adventures. The lack of hot water, a kitchen faucet, and a bedroom slide-out has all become tiresome.

The RV carport will be empty while Seneca is gone.

But if it rains, it rains. I’m just glad I haven’t had to drive a lot in it, like all the rest of the family have. I go out and obsessively check the rain gauge to get my steps in. And of course, the one time I forgot to put on rain boots is when I had to go in the muddy chicken house to fetch a turkey egg.

Dramatization. Yeah, I know…just wanted to try this.

I was surprised to get over 50 bird species on Merlin today, even with the rain off and on. It’s very convenient that my birding phone can sit on the back porch and not get wet. That enabled me to confirm to Lee that he truly did hear a flock of seagulls fly over. Franklin’s Gulls are on the move, heading to central Canada.

Note that this is the only week in the year that these gulls are likely to!

Let’s see what tomorrow brings! Woo hoo! Maybe more rain.

The Good, the Bad, and the Stinky

We had some little adventures getting out of the campsite, but all was not lost, because I did get an hour of birding in this morning and got photos of birds I wanted to see.

And plants! The heart leaf hibiscus opened up and I got photos!

I also found out from the birding volunteer that there used to be a roller skating rink at the park during the years between when the Rectory was built and when the land became a State Park. There are no signs of it now, but a 92-year-old visitor described it to the Lake Corpus Christi State Park folks. It turns out the water tower was from when the land was a farm. So many changes!

And now the park has the nicest bathrooms ever.

Anyway, I was very happy to capture the elusive White-eyed Vireo and Great Kiskadee today, even though the lighting wasn’t perfect. At least the sun came out!

That was one of the good things for the day. The worst thing I have no photographs of. Be glad I can’t transfer smells through the blog, though. I’d broken the kitchen faucet on the way down (improper bungee cording) and we’d used our “nice” (from Target) rug to mop up the mess that happened when the water was turned on. So, I set it outside to dry, but every morning the fog would wet it again, then I’d forget to bring it in when it dried back off.

Allow me to interrupt with a picture of one of those lightweight flying things I saw yesterday.

The upshot was that the rug was still outside last night. When I went to put it in the storage area to take it home to clean it, I thought it smelled bad, but put it in, anyway. When Lee opened the bin later he nearly gagged. It didn’t smell a little; it smelled a lot. Like some virile woodland creature had decided to mark it as his territory with extra-musky urine. Not good. We will replace the rug, because there’s no way we’d take it home. The dogs would have gone crazy. I felt bad putting the odiferous parcel in the dumpster, knowing people would be opening it to add refuse.

The next stinker came when we went to leave and Lee had forgotten to release the hand brake. That also was very loud. But we quickly fixed that!

The other good thing that happened was that I finally found my previous phone. It had been hiding in, of all things, my phone holder I use when riding in the motorhome. Well, now that it’s charged up, I have a better phone camera again.

We made it home just fine, and of course I immediately went to check on my livestock. The horses were quite insistent that they were starving, as were the fowl. I fed the birds, and discovered that Darryl had done his manly duty so well that Connie started laying eggs again! No one has told her or the hens that they are supposed to wait until spring.

It was good to be back home with all the buddies. I was happy to see my gift from my son—it’s a new door for my tack room. It’s too heavy for him to lift it by himself to install it, though! It looks good where it is, though.

Happy Kwanzaa to all who celebrate!

My Weird Way to Cut Down on Social Media

It’s only kind of weird, but it works for me the problem is that my phone thinks I look hours and hours at it, when, in fact, I’m not even near the phone. It’s hard to doomscroll if your phone is nowhere nearby and the computer you’re using is only connected to LinkedIn (and honestly, ten minutes is plenty to determine who’s been laid off lately).

I still enjoy social media, but do a quick Facebook check in the morning, play with my Finch self-care app for 20 minutes, see if I got any personal email, then walk away.

Also doing my nails creates at least an hour of phone-free time.

That’s because I leave the phone outside listening to birds once I have to stop birding with my own eyes and ears. The phone may think I’m staring at Merlin Bird ID, but no, I just check in periodically. Any texts or other messages just have to wait.

Today’s bird was this Ruby-crowned Kinglet, as photographed on the phone. blurry.

I can work undisturbed by my online social life except in breaks. That’s helped me from going down rabbit holes and letting myself get upset.

In the evenings, I read other people’s blogs and news sources that don’t try to get me all upset. This all works for me. I can still stay informed and keep up with friends without it consuming my day. This gives me time for horses, birds, domestic fowl, and wildflowers, not to mention friends and family!

She’s talking about us. We are domestic fowl.

So, my social media trick is to get your phone all busy doing something for you and ignore it for a good chunk of your day. It makes checking for messages and updates a fun interlude, not the whole day.

Morning fog on the window screen. It got very foggy this evening, too.

Today I enjoyed many things while the phone was ignored. I took some autumn photos, for one thing.

Pretty day! The yellow is a willow trees.

I watched a new run for the chickens and Connie get worked on. Connie was not impressed and tried to scare away the noisy dudes by gobbling and displaying her magnificent feathers. I didn’t even know hen turkeys could do that!

I also ended up with time to work with horses a bit longer than usual, so I picked out all the burs in Drew’s mane and tail. He was a true gentleman during the process. I think he’s feeling better.

In the evening Lee and I got a new coffeemaker, which is exactly like our previous one, only not worn out. We look forward to coffee tomorrow. I also got a slightly better toaster that should be less likely to burn my thick bread. These are our holiday gifts to each other.

We treated ourselves to dinner in a “real” restaurant and made our server very happy by forgiving him for not realizing we were his table. I had a magnificent beer and some salmon, which means I had a great Saturday with little phone time…until now, when I’m writing this.

Despite Unusual Weather, I Learned

This morning was just gorgeous. I went out to do my morning birding and discovered I was overdressed. It was sunny and comfortable the whole time I was out, and I was greatly entertained by Yellow-rumped Warblers flitting around.

I went inside to eat and do some office stuff. When I went back to pick up my phone, the wind had completely shifted and it was cloudy and at least ten degrees cooler. I added my puffy vest and an overshirt, which enabled me to feed horses and groom Apache comfortably. He is so hairy this time of year. He was nice and warm.

We made it to Tarrin’s and while it was very brisk and breezy, we still had a good lesson. Both Apache and I are learning a lot, slowly but surely. I appreciate that he’s willing to put in the effort to learn with me. It’s been such a long road of figuring out how to make him comfortable and as healthy as possible while working with my confidence issues. If we are never going to be fancy and sophisticated, I’m okay, because we have developed such a comfortable horse/human relationship. That was my goal. The relationship. The rest is just fun and refinement. My horse is such a comfort end encouraging presence for me.

Clint and Connie would like to interject that they also provide joy and comfort.

I was talking to Lee and my horse friend Jo after I got Apache back to the trailer (he was unnerved by their giant, shiny trailer, but we coped). We said how chilly it has gotten, and I said it’s lots better on horseback. Lee chimed in that it was like having a living radiator. That’s fluffy ole Apache, for sure.

The Jeep has an ancient wreath on it. The scary trailer is in the background.

For sure, I’m glad I was able to stay indoors the rest of the day and out of the wind. At least I got enough exercise today and had the energy to cook some warm food.

This is baked sweet potatoes and onions. My weird idea of dinner.

And the dogs are calmer. Harvey hurts, though. Carlton has been overly friendly.

I’m another white and hairy animal providing warmth.

That Windblown Look Isn’t Fun to Get

Last night the wind blew so hard that I felt like I was on a boat again, but this time the boat was in a major squall—not a typhoon but pretty bad.

Nonetheless, I got up early so I could go on a birding walk with a man named Kelly, who’s recently moved here in Rockport, who really knows his stuff. I was glad that Bernice, who works at the park office, mentioned it to me. But whoa, the temperature in the 50s, combined with cloudy skies and biting winds, made for mighty unpleasant circumstances.

I’m as cold as I look, and glad for the borrowed hat.

We started out on the big pier near our site, where nothing blocked the wind. I was glad for the railings and that I didn’t bring the big camera! We did see some interesting birds, though it was hard to see them well due to shaking hands holding the binoculars.

Mercifully, Kelly took us away and we went to the jetty I visited yesterday, when it was balmy at just slightly cloudy. There were some gorgeous Roseate Spoonbills flying around, and I have to tell you all that pinkness flying around with the dark gray background was striking, even in the wind. I was too cold to take pictures, so use your imagination.

We then caravanned back over to the Whooping Cranes, where Bernice and I got to see some flying overhead and whooping! We were like two little kids in our excitement! We no longer cared about the cold and were very happy to share our joy with others who were there. The birders here are very collegial.

While that was all fun, I had gotten a chill and didn’t get myself warm, despite tea and a warm meal, until I’d had a little nap in bed. Yow. Still, I dragged myself back outside in the afternoon, and went on a walk around the trail in the other part of Goose Island State Park.

Ooh, they have nice, large campsites with large trees in that part of the park. I enjoyed a relatively wind-free stroll through a coastal oak woodland full of beautiful understory plants like sweet bay, wax myrtle, and beautyberry. I felt a lot better when I got back to the motorhome.

I didn’t get to do everything I wanted to on this trip, so we will be back. I really like it here. At least there are birders in enough numbers to balance out the air boaters and duck hunters. And seafood!

We waited to leave until tomorrow to avoid traffic today. I’ll figure out how get some work in tomorrow. There will be lots of time before we leave.

Pivot! Or Making the Best of Things

There was a plan for today, but it didn’t work out very well. One part of the plan was to get more work done on the porch. That didn’t happen because the lead guy had a sick child to take care of. Family always has to come first! The wood isn’t going anywhere and will be here next week.

I did find a young garden spider. They look so different at this stage.

The other part of the plan was to go to Goliad State Park in the RV so we could both camp and attend a family wedding. We got ready in time but of course the Seneca decided it didn’t want to go. The rear slide wouldn’t go in. Again. These are finicky machines.

I was not thrilled since I’d run around all morning getting everything fed and watered, loaded things up…and boom. Not moving. Time to pivot.

I quickly canceled the camping reservation and at least got some money back, then booked hotel rooms in Victoria, much closer to the wedding venue anyway. This ends up costing less thanks to points. We loaded our bags in the car and headed out, down the familiar roads to southern Texas. Tempers did not flare and panic did not occur.

We passed mounds and mounds of McCartney roses on the sides of the highway.

Tonight was the rehearsal and we were kindly invited to it along with the wedding party and other family. I got to help a little bit with decorating while Lee went back to the car because he didn’t like the music. Oh, Lee. He pivoted in his own way.

We did have a nice time exploring Tin Spur Ranch, which is a tasteful and rustic place with ponds and a nice setting for an outdoor or indoor wedding. The bride made a good choice!

In addition to attractiveness, the setting was perfect for many birds, including Bobwhite Quail and two kinds of whistling ducks (as if one kind isn’t plenty, but the Fulvous one has blue legs!). There were also many unusual flycatchers, including the Brown Crested, which is migrating still.

There were 40 birds heard and seen in the late afternoon. I bet mornings there are spectacular!

So everything turned out fine. Lee even ate dinner and talked to some of his family! (You didn’t think it was my relatives getting married, did you? The only relative whose wedding I was ever invited to was my dad and Flo. so any family weddings I attend have been on the spousal side. I digress, in a self-pitying manner.

We will probably see a sight before the actual wedding tomorrow and maybe see Goliad on Sunday. Yes. We know there will be Memorial Day traffic. We aren’t going down any interstates.

No matter what, we’ll be flexible, because we’re learning to pivot without panic.

Farewell to the Migrants

Get your mind off politics, I’m talking about avian migrants! For a few days my bird species counts here at the Hermits’ Rest were incredibly high, much higher than I’d ever seen before. One day I observed (with Merlin Bird ID, sight, or my own ears) 74 species, as I mentioned earlier I think. I’d rarely hit 50 before.

It was the migrating warblers and friends who added so much to my totals. It seemed like there were many more kinds of warblers this year, along with vireos I hadn’t seen, nuthatches, and the seagulls I wrote about last time. I know there were a lot of birds coming through here on the central migration corridor, because there were news articles about them showing up on radar. That’s impressive, isn’t it? You can even see the migration live on the excellent BirdCast website. What fun!

The moon has been full for the past few days, and I think that may have been a big incentive for the warblers to head to more pleasant climes. Or maybe they knew that the temperature forecast for this week was grim – we’re in for our first near-100-degree days of the year this week, after a very pleasant spring so far.

This is the Weather Underground forecast for the next ten days. I miss last week already.

I was really enjoying the bird variety since I got back from Hilton Head. Here’s a list of all the warblers and vireos I’ve identified here in Texas in the past week:

American Redstart
Bay-breasted Warber
Chestnut-sided Warbler
Common Yellowthroat
Hooded Warbler
Pine Warbler
Tennessee Warbler
Red-eyed Vireo
Warbling Vireo (both warbles and is a vireo!)
White-eyed Vireo
Wilson’s Warbler
Yellow Warbler (lots)
Yellow-rumped Warbler

I saw many more warblers in South Carolina, but this is a lot! Even without warblers, though, there are still a lot of birds here now. A Green Heron family is living in the tree in our back pond/tank, there are buntings and grosbeaks popping in and out (Painted Buntings are omnipresent, and I even saw a pair mating yesterday).

I was too entertained to reach for my phone, so enjoy my new portulaca.

I wonder if the heat will affect my observations. I know the heat affected me yesterday. I was trying to work with Apache and my legs turned all wobbly and I had to hose myself off and drink a lot of water to keep going. He’s probably thinking he’ll get out of all the riding and exercise we’ve been doing, but no such luck. I’ll stick it out!

By the way, I’m moving a lot of my content that’s philosophical or personal musings over to my Substack site, so feel free to go over there and read or subscribe. You’ll get the posts via email if you subscribe. I even have special content for my paid subscribers (yes, there are a few, and it really helps now that I have a tiny Social Security income).