February 27, 2020

Zooming – February 2020

February 27, 2020/ Gwen Morrison

Yes – there are a lot of bird pictures in the February zooming slide show. That’s what happens with my photography in the winter when the plants are not competing for my attention…and I go to a birding festival. The birds that I was most surprised to photograph were the Audubon’s oriole and the Great Horned Owl. Bird behavior pictures require being ready to take a picture when it happens; there are 2 this month: 1) the egret scratching its neck and head and 2) the male finch providing a snack (seed) for the female. There are some ‘artsy shots as well: a feather in the grass, the Rio Grande at sunrise, a silhouette of a crested caracara, a partial dandelion puff. The pictures are from two places in Texas (Carrollton and Laredo) and at home in Maryland. Overall – it was a good month for photography (but note there is no snow in any of them…I am a little disappointed).

February 26, 2020

Ten Little Celebrations – February 2020

February 26, 2020/ Gwen Morrison

So many things to celebrate in February…I’ve picked my top 10 that are in roughly chronological order during the month.

I started out the month in Carrollton, Texas.

2020 02 IMG_7856 (10).jpg — **Red Yucca.** The seed pods always look interesting to me. I like their curves and points. The warm brown and burnt black colors.

Fried catfish and okra. Sometimes a high-fat splurge is OK….delicious.

A sunny and warm day. In February, the days are often gray and cold….so when the weather bucks the trend…it’s time to get outdoors to celebrate.

The Laredo Birding Festival was not that long…but there was something to celebrate every day.

2020 02 IMG_7905 (3).jpg — **Roadrunner.** What a way to start a birding trip…seeing an iconic bird of the area at a rest stop before we even got to Laredo!

2020 02 IMG_4880 (2).jpg — **Great Horned Owls**. We saw these owls on two days! What a thrill.

Sunrise on the Rio Grande. Celebrating the start of another day….the beauty of a river that draws life to a dry area.

2020 02 IMG_3928 (5).jpg — **American White Pelicans ballet.** I had never witnessed pelicans feeding together in a coordinated way. They were synchronized and graceful…the joy of watching the natural world in action.

Audubon’s Oriole. Celebrating a colorful bird that just appeared while we were relaxing on a veranda after lunch.

And then we were home again.

A Day at home. I always celebrate being at home after I’ve been away. The view from my office window…fixing my own favorite foods…relaxing.

NISE Training. Robinson Nature Center provided a class on some kits they’ve purchased from the National Informal STEM Education Network. I enjoyed the gravity well (Exploring Universe Orbiting Objects) activity and hope there are opportunities to share it with visitors to the nature center. I also passed the information (here) along to my daughter since it had potential for physics related outreach activities her university does. So multiple reasons to celebrate this training!

February 23, 2020

A Pretty Table

February 23, 2020/ Gwen Morrison

The banquet/keynote on the last evening of the Laredo Birding Festival started with beautiful tables. The normal neutral shades of hotel linens had a Mexican flair instead – full of pattern and color from south of border…nothing so bland as an unadorned white tablecloth! We were celebrating the days we’d spent in Laredo already…but this was a great finale.

The buffet was Mexican all the way as well…entrees, salads, and desserts. I appreciated being able to load up on fresh veggies a bit more than I had during the earlier days of the conference…and desserts other than cookies (even though the cookies in our box lunches were delicious).

Everyone seemed to enjoy the last official items of the conference too – the thank yous handed out to the people that made sure everything ran smoothly and then the keynote.

And then it was over and we headed back to our room for a good night’s sleep before our travel day.

February 21, 2020

Laredo Birding Festival – Day 5

February 21, 2020/ Gwen Morrison

Day 5 of our Laredo Birding Festival experience was reserved for traveling home – not birding. We drove from Laredo to San Antonio in the morning to catch an early afternoon flight. We stopped at all three of the rest stops along that stretch of I35 and it was a very pleasant 3 hour ‘road trip.’

The first stop was the Laredo Travel Center – outside the city, well past the border checkpoint. It’s a welcome center with interesting architecture, colorful tiles, landscaping. I managed one bird photo with my cell phone: some grackles.

The second stop of the morning was at the Lasalle County Rest Stop – across the highway from the rest stop we had made on the way down to Laredo and very similar on the inside. I photographed another of the informational signs outside.

I also noticed one of the trees that I had seen on one of our birding trips – blooming this time of year: Mexican Olive or Texas Wild Olive! It is hardy enough to be used in highway plantings but only in south Texas!

The last stop was close to San Antonio – the Medina County Rest Area. We had decided to rearrange some things in the suitcases because we thought mine might be too heavy; it was sprinkling so we did everything quickly. The rest area is smaller than then other two – more like the Texas rest areas were years ago.

They had a mosaic of the Alamo; many of the older rest stops had mosaics of some local place; I wonder what happened to the mosaics as the new, larger rest stops have been built. This one had some topiary type trees; the grounds people making the place special with what is growing there!

February 20, 2020

Laredo Birding Festival – Day 4

February 20, 2020/ Gwen Morrison

The last day of birding at the Laredo Birding Festival started with the van leaving the hotel at 6 AM! It was the earliest start of the festival, but we were accustomed to it by that time. The front of the hotel was alive with activity in the darkness.

Our destination was the La Perla Ranch, prized for its habitat and plentiful birds that thrive near its sensational water features. They had the name of the place on the chairs at the hunting lodge!

The first bird of the morning was a Great Horned Owl on an antennae. What a great start to the day of birding! The bird seemed to be very scrutinizing our van breaking the calm of the morning.

The sun was not quite above the horizon yet…I got a silhouette of a Crested Caracara through a fence. The bird has a very distinctive profile.

2020 02 IMG_4880 (4).jpg — And then we arrived at the hunting lodge the ranch provides…the sun came up. I liked the ‘barn’ birdfeeder in one of the trees.

A Turkey Vulture sat hunched in the top of a palm. Others were soring overhead. Some wild turkey moved rapidly our of my camera range…I missed photographing them entirely.

There were quite a few Meadowlarks although almost out of range of my camera’s zoom. This is an area where the Eastern and Western Meadowlarks overlap. They have such minor distinguishing characteristics; I’m just saying the bird in this photo is a Meadowlark.

We did some walking around ponds. Most of the birds were far away. Pied-billed Grebe are easy to distinguish from the Least Grebe (we saw both). My photo is of a Pied-Billed Grebe because it has dark eyes.

Just barely within the range of my zoom: a Green Kingfisher. The area south Texas along the Rio Grand is the only place to see this bird in the US. This one is female.

Cinnamon Teal were also on the ponds. The coloring of the male is indeed ‘cinnamon’!

I didn’t get a great picture – but was thrilled to see and get a photo of Peregrine Falcon. All the other ones I’ve photographed were on man-made structures (like bridges).

Sometimes I just paused and looked around at the ranch – glistening water surrounded by dry areas… wildflowers. It was a wonderful place to spend the day.

A Belted Kingfisher (female) surveyed the water from a dock on one of the ponds. We had seen a Ringed Kingfisher earlier on one of the larger ponds but I didn’t get a picture; I was surprised at how large it was.

How many birds can you identify in this picture?

The largest white bird is a Great Egret The smaller ones are Snowy Egrets. There are two types of cormorants: the Neotropic Cormorants are the smaller and darker ones; the larger and lighter ones are the Double-crested Cormorants. In the foreground are Ruddy Ducks with their tails pointing upward.

For the last picture of the day – a parade of Egrets (the Great Egret bringing up the rear)!

February 19, 2020

Laredo Birding Festival – Day 3

February 19, 2020/ Gwen Morrison

Our next day at the Laredo Birding Festival had us boarding the van at 6:40 AM for the Max Mandel Municipal Golf Course for its stunning views of the Rio Grande River waterfront with over 270 acres of old growth mesquite tree and vast arroyos. We road around in golf carts (part of the adventure) staying out of the way of a morning tournament between two schools. The golf course structures were newish, but the course had been laid out to maintain much of the native vegetation along the river. We were there just after the sun came up. The morning was cold, and strands of moisture rose from the river. We had good river views all through the morning.

My first bird picture for the day was a Pyrrhuloxia. There is just barely enough light to distinguish the coloring…definitely not a cardinal.

As we headed over to where the golf carts were parked, I photographed some mistletoe….I liked its shape and density compared with the branches of the winter tree.

We paired up for the golf carts; I let my husband drive; it was a new experience for both of us since we are not golfers. The Red-billed Pigeon is just barely a US bird….and the golf course is known in the area as a good place to spot them.

The Eurasian Collared Dove was also around. The birds were introduced in the Bahamas in the 1970s…were in Florida by the 1990s…and rapidly colonized most of North America.

We saw Great Kiskadees across the river…and finally saw one on the US side so we could include it in our count of birds seen at the golf course.

The couple in the golf cart in front us spotted some American Pipit foraging in a grassy area. I was glad we were directly behind them and stopped to get some pictures.

The Yellow-fronted Woodpecker is not one that we see in Maryland. We saw several at the golf course and the sunny day made them easy to photograph.

We had lunch and a walk at the 180 Ranch – a little ways from the golf course along the Rio Grande. We did see some cows near a pond we stopped at on our way into the property.

Lunch was at the hunting lodge; they had left some snacks for us; I enjoyed the only banana for the trip (they didn’t have any in the breakfast buffet which is my usual source of fresh fruit when I’m traveling). After the hike, we sat in the shade around the hunting large and observed birds coming to feeder and the brush surrounding a very lush (obviously watered) patch of grass. There were small flocks of Northern Cardinals foraging…similar to what we had seen the previous day.

A Black Vulture posed for a portrait before taking off again to soar. The area also has Turkey Vultures as we do in Maryland.

There were several Pyrrhuloxia around as well. They were more cautious than the Cardinals.

The Green Jays can be raucous. They are a challenge to photograph because their eyes disappear in to the black around their eyes.

The Audubon’s Oriole flew in as our group lounged in our comfortable chairs. Getting a photograph of it was the high point of the day!

February 18, 2020

Laredo Birding Festival Day 2

February 18, 2020/ Gwen Morrison

We were up at 4:30 AM to prepare for our day of birding at the Laredo Birding Festival. After a delicious breakfast buffet we boarded the van shortly after 6:15 AM and headed to the Yugo Ranch - currently owned and operated by 6th generation descendants of Ygnacio Benavides, who live by the same conservationist philosophy as their ancestor – where we would spend the morning and early afternoon. We parked the van near the ranch buildings, and everyone bundled up since it was a cold morning.

2020 02 IMG_3395 (1).jpg — There was a Texas Ebony tree near where we parked. There were a lot of seed pods on the ground around the tree. The birds and other wildlife had already finished off the seeds.

All during the morning we saw Vermilion Flycatchers – the bright red attracting attention.

Crested Caracara flew overhead and there were a pair in a tree just barely within the range of my camera.

When we made a loop back to the ranch buildings, I managed to photograph a wren which was easily identified later from the picture as a Cactus Wren. It seemed to be very interested in the chimney.

We drove out to look at some ponds on the ranch…and spotted a familiar bird: a Killdeer.

There were also Great Kiskadees like we saw several years ago during the Rio Grande Valley Birding Festival.

There were groups of Northern Cardinals…a small flock. In our area of Maryland they are usually only seen in pairs or males contesting turf…the small flock was new to us.

The high point of the morning was a Great Horned Owl. It was surveying the area from a tree growing on an island of the pond. It sometimes looked our way….decided our group was no threat at all.

Looking closely at the picture I took of a cormorant – I realize that it is a Neotropic Cormorant (rather than a Double-crested Cormorant) because the eye is surrounded by feathers rather than a bare patch of skin.

There was an American Wigeon just barely within the range of my camera zoom.

As we headed down the road in our van, there was a Curve-billed Thrasher in the road. I was ideally positioned to take pictures through the windshield of the van!

Also on along the road, a Pyrrhuloxia was spotted. For this picture I had to contort a bit to get the picture through a side window.

We had been seeing Harris’s Hawks and I finally got a picture of two that were near each other on a telephone pole. This species hunts as a team!

The next stop was Ranchito Road Lagoons. The high point of the afternoon happened at this location: American White Pelicans feeding in unison. I had not seen this behavior before. It was like a ballet and they did it for the whole time we were at the location.

A Black-necked Stilt and

Lesser Yellowlegs were feeding in the shallows.

On the way back to hotel we stopped at the Laredo Landfill. It was very windy (dust and some trash flying everywhere) so we didn’t stay long. There were quite a few Cattle Egrets huddled together near the entrance. And lots of Chihuahuan Ravens that were closer to where we stopped. I later wished that I had walked over to get a picture of the Cattle Egrets since we didn’t see them in any other festival location.

What a productive day of birding around Laredo!

February 17, 2020

Laredo Birding Festival – Day 1

February 17, 2020/ Gwen Morrison

My husband and I flew to San Antonio (me from Dallas, he from Baltimore) and drove down to the Laredo Birding Festival from there. We made a rest stop at the Lasalle County Rest Stop (southbound) and

Immediately saw our first stunning bird of the trip: A Greater Roadrunner. It was in the picnic area of the rest stop and then moved out into the parking area. It was a cold day, so the feathers were fluffed making it look plumper than usual.

The rest stop had well maintained plantings – some were blooming in the cold.

2020 02 IMG_7905 (10).jpg — The signage and windmill outside the building started the historical story of the county.

Inside the building were displays about the county: ranching, railroad, mining and farming. On the back of the hanging signs were metal sculptures that I enjoyed.

As I got ready to write this blog post, I checked Google maps for the rest stop and discovered that there is a short hiking trail to the south of the rest stop. I’ll walk around it next time I am make that stop (maybe next year).

We got to Laredo and checked into the La Posada Hotel which would be the hub for departures on the trips for the festival. It’s very close to the Rio Grande….in the older part of Laredo. A hour or so later we walked to the Laredo Center of the Arts for the 2020 Birds of the Brush exhibit – bird themed art from local schools. I liked the paintings on paper shopping bags and birds I recognized. The backgrounds were often what made the work memorable beyond the bird itself.