Chasing a little bird

I'm always on the look out for interesting photo ops and I thought this one was good, I even made Ken turn the car around so I could take the pic.

They are cleaning out the canal, which is a common sight, but this time the Cattle Egrets were taking this opportunity for some easy meals. Today we stayed at the park as it was windy, a cool north wind. When the sun did come out this afternoon I went for a short walk and heard this little peep and looked up and there was this little Yellow Throat Warbler so I followed it around and tried to get pics. It then flew away and I went back to the RV and told Ken about it and he wanted to know where I saw it so we walked down to the spot. I walked over to where I thought it had flown, and there it was and Ken didn't have his camera. So off he went to get the camera but by the time he came back with it, it had flown off again. Then I spotted it by our RV and off we went chasing it until Ken finally was able to get a few photos of it too.

(This photo I turned upside down so the bird looked upright if it looks a little funny to you.)
Tonight, we're off to play Pegs and Jokers.

Getting caught up

We joined the little birding group at Ramsey this morning they meet every Wed. am, the wind was blowing some and the birds seemed to be hiding we heard them but didn't see many.

On our way home we spotted these Roseate Spoonbills and Black-neck Stilts on the canal bank so we did get to see some birds. We also saw some hawks but the birds were keeping low out of the wind.
I did take a couple pics of flowers starting to bloom again at Ramsey park.
This is a Heart leaf Hibiscus

and this is Purple Sage. The guide today said it blooms when it is supposed to rain, I'll start watching to see if that is true, he tends to tell some tall tales.

I finally got the RV vacuumed and some laundry done still have another load to do when I change the sheets maybe two with the towels.

I put up the books I bought at the thrift store, I bought 6, I'm still working on Trinity by Leon Uris but did keep out what I thought will be the next book I will read Two Texas Birders: Cameos and Capers by Fred and Marie Webster.

A little birding

We've been out birding the last couple of days, enjoying the sunshine before the next front comes in. We finally saw our American Pipets we were looking for, I didn't get much of a pic they are small birds the size of a sparrow. On our drive thru the Wildlife Refuge today I noticed something stuck on the ends of the Spanish Dagger plants. They were little crabs, the Loggerhead Shrike does this.
This is a pic of a Loggerhead Shrike, pretty little birds.
We saw our first Robins in Texas today, we didn't see any last year so I thought maybe they didn't come here.
I kept track of the number of species we saw today that we could ID, we saw 44 different birds.
I think we saw at least 300 Mockingbirds today, it seemed every other bush had a Mockingbird in it.

A weekend of flea markets

It has been a nice weekend and we enjoyed visiting and shopping with the Carlows.

Ken did go help out Saturday morning at Ramsey Park clean up, I went along with the Carlows to the Brownsville flea market. Shirley found several things, I spent a whole $1.50 on 4 grapefruit and 6 oranges. Sunday, we went to Donna's flea market, Ken and Bob are watching ice cream being made in this pic.

Carlows are leaving early tomorrow, we will miss them.

Ride on the beach

Today we went with the Carlows to Brownsville to shop the Goodwill store, then over to South Padre Island. We drove on the beach, watched people fish, relax, collect shells and just enjoying the beautiful day. We enjoyed a delicious lunch of seafood, except for Ken who had a hamburger at Daddy's Seafood and Cajun Restaurant.On the way back we stopped in San Benito at Freddy Fender's memorial.
Bob is looking at the Curlew's we spotted in the field next to the cemetery.
More fun with the Carlow's tomorrow.

Visitors

On our way in to meet the Carlows for breakfast this morning, we saw this group of Whistling Ducks landing on this standing water, usually there is nothing on this water.It has been warm the last few days, the mornings have been foggy and the mosquitoes are so thick here in the RV park they will carry you away.

Carlows arrived yesterday afternoon and are here til Monday when they then head to CA to go on their cruise so we will be spending some time with them. Today we shopped at the Thrift store and the 99 cent store.

Ken and I braved the mosquitoes this evening and walked down to the dock, and checked to see if the Screech Owl was in his home and yes, there he was, cute little thing. Lighting was bad so no pics, maybe next time.

Brid Banding

We were excited to see the wildlife area and the banding this morning, the nice thing was it was at a decent hour too, 9 am.

We were going to park at the gate but the agent saw us and opened the gate and we drove in til we saw the birding nets. They had about 12 nets up to catch the birds, you can see one of the net to the right of this photo.The group watching the banding today were students from a college in Dubuque, IA, 9 students and 2 professors came to the valley for a 2 week nature workshop. The students were really enjoying the valley, had the birds they wanted to see were excited that we had seen the Grooved-billed Ani and Ken still had it pic in his camera to show them.
This area is a regular spot that Mark Conway bands birds and he said they get to know where the nets are and avoid them so we only had 7 birds banded, a Curved billed Thrasher, White-eyed Vireo, 2 Cardinals, 2 Ruby-crowned Kinglets and a Common Yellow throat.

This is the Common Yellow-throat.

Here why they named the kinglet the ruby-crowned, you normally wouldn't see it as the red feathers are hidden by the grey feathers unless it is irritated.

We learned that the Cardinal has a nasty temper and has a nasty bite.

We felt privileged today by being invited to join the group, Sam Patton the Wildlife agent is very nice and has invited us to join on other banding projects in this spot. The area has 900 acres which he manages, keeping poachers, wild pigs, dogs and invading plants out. It was a cotton plantation in the 70's and the state bought it with plans for a refuge with trails etc but the money ran out so it is a quiet spot for nature to be free of human intrusion, most of the time. They do have controlled deer and javelina hunts.

Tonight we will probably join the games and play Mexican train, we've missed a whole week or more of games with our colds which we learned today could be Juniper Fever an allergy the people get here, the agent is fighting it too.