Happy 2018!

After a great Christmas with the kids, the temperatures finally plummeted. The temps in the low 40’s were supposed to arrive on Christmas, but luckily held off until they left. However, this dude loved the gale force winds as well as the boiling seas. Waves crashing on the Gulf Coast shore today are immense.

We headed to Clayton’s, the self-proclaimed biggest beach bar in all Texas. Despite the light drizzle, the strong winds and the 41-degree temperature, the place was packed with people, all abuzz about what was about to happen. After the New Year costume competition, the annual Polar Bear Plunge was scheduled.

It was sooooooooooo cold, windy and wet that my teeth were chattering, despite having a winter stocking hat and Thinsulate gloves. But despite the elements, 10's of dozens of people wearing only swim suits were just itching for the starting horn. When the horn sounded at Noon, well over 100 nutcases ran into the frigid mid-60-degree waters of the Gulf of Mexico – sheeeeeeesh! While I was impressed, I immediately headed for the Equinox and cranked up the heat!

Talk to you soon!

Christmas with the kids

We spent a great Christmas week with Nick and Karen, Valerie and Albert, Moose and Kona. Kona was beside himself with joy, having missed the kids and their significant others terribly. However, his favorite was his day long play sessions with Moose. Up til now, Kona has roused in the 5:30 to 6:00 AM range. With Moose here, he has had days when he slept in until nearly 8! Yeah Moose!

Our days with the kids routinely include hitting the beach, and taking in a different local haunt for lunch. Kona and Moose loved the beach as much as we, and reveled with each other. Fresh fish selections, along with views of the water and all the people and boat traffic, made each lunch a new experience.

We took a day and headed down to the mouth of the Rio Grande. Even though where the Rio Grande hits the Atlantic is less than a 5-mile Pelican flight from our coach, to drive there we needed to head West to Brownsville and then back East to the mouth. Along the route we stumbled on Elan Musk’s new launch facility under construction for Spacex. While not open, it was still fun to see where commercial space flight will soon be centered.

We also stumbled upon the last battlefield of the American Civil War.  At Palmito Hill, Confederate forces defeated Union forces, resulting in upwards of 30 Union soldiers killed, 20 of both forces wounded, and over 100, primarily Union forces, captured. The sad thing was that this battle took place over a month after Lee and the Confederacy surrendered. Apparently neither the Union or Confederate forces got the email. Allegedly, in this remote area of Texas, communications were so slow that those in charge of the forces did not know the conflict was over.

Pretty much the only folk at the mouth were Mexicans who were fishing. The Rio Grande was too deep for us to cross, either on foot or by car, but we were literally yards from those folk, and the Mexican homeland. Even though there was not much going on, we enjoyed our visit.

We did get a bit of a bonus. This Reddish Egret was prancing along the Rio Grande just inside the waters of the Gulf. We had seen one at the South Padre Island Birding Center, but not one that decided to perform for us.

Talk to you soon!

More Padre Island

The weather has been better than we expected. Our first day had all the snow and we questioned our decision to come here.  But since then we have been blessed with much sun, and some reasonably warm days. We’re in heaven!

We keep trying to add to our list of new birds we’ve never seen before. This Night Heron blessed us with a brief visit at the South Padre Island Birding Center. We enjoyed him thoroughly!

Kona still loves the beach every day that we visit. His favorite trick when we go is to find something really, really stinky, then he revels in it!

One last new bird graced our path. This looked like several other birds we had seen before, but it was just a bit different. After watching it for a while and pouring over our Audubon bible for a while, we figured out that this was a Reddish Egret. Apparently, these birds are at home here in South Texas, but there are not a lot of them. Lucky us!

Talk to you soon!

New birds

We’ve continued to bird at least every other day.  And nearly every visit to the South Padre Island Birding Center results in us finding some new bird we had not seen before. Today, we started by checking out this Redhead. The Woman, however, would consider this more of a Rusthead than a Redhead.

We see these guys all the time, but before now, we never really paid that much attention. The Least Tern is all over the shores in Texas. They are striking in their coloration, and even their reflections in the bay are stunning.

This Tricolored Heron was eyeing us incessantly. I guess that we were interesting – at least to him at the time.

Oops. I think that somebody might be getting their paycheck docked a bit. Or maybe a bunch of kids hijacked a golf cart – who knows!

Talk to you soon!

South Pardre Island Birding Center

Today we checked out the South Padre Island Birding and Nature Center. We were stunned by the variety of birds we experienced here. Remembering our time in Port Aransas we were automatically drawn to the Roseate Spoonbills – so pretty!

We got to gawk at many Great Blue Herons. These are such majestic birds. They almost all look like stately old men with majestic birds.

The Heron clan continued. This guy we had never seen before, but when we got to our Sibley Field Guide we realized he was a Tricolored Heron. Impressive!

Our next Heron was not only a first for us, but was also rare in this area. This Black-Crowned Night Heron made our day. Both a new species for us as well as a rare sighting – bonus!

This Belted Kingfisher decided to make an appearance for our visit. These guys are allegedly uncommon, but are widespread around any sheltered open water area. Since that is essentially the definition of the SPI Birding Center, we weren’t surprised to encounter him. 

Every step was a new visual smorgasbord. Just before we got to the end of the boardwalks this trio serenaded us with a special performance. Outstanding!

Talk to you soon!

Another blog - I just can't stop!

We’re on the coast. We have a deck. The sun sets every night around 5:37 PM. We sit on the deck and watch it. Every night is similar in the timing, but the look is totally different. We hope sometime in the next 3 months we will experience a second green flash – second for me but third for the Woman, according to her.

Talk to you soon!

Another blog - good days just keep on coming!

We headed to McAllen for a fun filled day now that the sun has returned to the Texas Gulf Coast. Our main focus was Quinta Mazatlán, part of the World Birding Center. A Spanish Revival Style mansion built in 1935, this 10,000 square-foot residence is one of the largest adobe structures in Texas.

While much of the original estate has been developed, about 15 acres of the original grounds serve as an urban birding habitat literally 2 miles from the center of downtown McAllen. Since we missed our usual birding haunts in Port Aransas, we were eager to get here to maybe get a gander at something new. This Great Kiskadee greeted us first, a bird that we had not seen before today – bonus!

The second bird we spotted was a Chachalaca. The docent told us that the Chachalaca is related to the Road Runner. A large chicken-like bird of Mexico and Central America, the Plain Chachalaca is the only of its species to reach American soil, and only in far southern Texas. The name of this bird comes from its loud, raucous calls which early inhabitants thought sounded like chattering.

We were told that a bunch of birders were hanging around the grounds to catch a glimpse of the Green-breasted Mango, an apparently elusive variety of hummingbird. It had been spotted on December 6 here, and a platoon has arrived daily to score a sighting, with no luck since then. We did however get a great look at several Green Jays. When we let the docent know what we had spotted, she let us know that the Green Jay was the official bird of the City of McAllen.

As another bonus, we got treated to a bit of Vegas. It turns out that one of the traveling Cirque du Soliel shows, Varekai, was playing at the State Farm Arena in Hidalgo Texas. Luckily, the arena was only a 10-minute drive from Quinta Mazatlán, so we coupled the visits together and made a day of it. Taking in a very authentic lunch in downtown McAllen at Maria’s, this outstanding Cirque performance brought a fitting end to a special day.

Talk to you soon!