More new birds

We made the long haul into Mission Texas to visit the World Birding Center, and we were glad we did! New birds galore! The World Birding Center is located in Bentsen Rio Grande Valley State Park right along the Rio Grande and the Mexican border. Our first new bird was the Golden-Fronted Woodpecker. It looked a great deal like the Ladder-back Woodpeckers we would see in Port Aransas, but are a fair bit smaller.

Next, we spotted a Long-billed Thrasher. They look a great deal like a sparrow only are bigger and have a very long tail. We ended up seeing several of them before the day was up.

We ended up seeing a couple of Orioles that were new to us, but only managed to get a shot of one of them. This Altamira Oriole was striking deep orange. His black face couple with the black and white striping on his wings was a great combination. We also spotted a Hooded Oriole. They are virtually identical, except that the body of the Hooded Oriole is a lighter orange, almost yellow tinted a bit.

We spotted a Pyrrhuloxia. At first, we thought we were looking at the female Cardinal, but looking it up in our Sibley’s bible it was clear that Cardinal females did not have the crest like the males. After searching a lot, it became apparent that what we had seen was a Pyrrhuloxia, which generallyinhabits Mexico but in the winter, hits the very Southern tip of Texas. 

We were reminded how the US/Mexico border changes as frequently as the route of the Rio Grande River flows. Over our trips we have seen missions that were originally built North of the Rio Grande, but are now South, or vice versa. Inside the World Birding Center grounds, we discovered a 1925 official border marking, that today is perhaps a mile North of the current border.

Before heading out of McAllen we visited the National Butterfly Center. We went here for two reasons – the Woman loves butterflies, and the current plans of the Trump administration call for the border wall to go right through the center of this 100-acre park. We wanted to see it before it was gone. The docent there warned us that as the winds had kicked up a bit, the resident butterflies were likely spooked. But we managed to find quite a few and were please we came.

Talk to you soon!

North end of the island

We decided to try to reach the North end of South Padre Island. Development and roads only reach about 10 miles from the Southern tip. From then on – no roads – you can only drive on the beach. It turns out that it is just under 25 miles more before you get to the Port Mansfield Channel, shipping channel that allows freighters to get to coastal towns.

When we reached the Port Mansfield Channel we allowed Kona a romp on the beach. He, of course, rolled in dead fish and seagull droppings – glad he won’t be sitting on my lap on the way back. We didn’t let him anywhere near this Kemps Ripley Turtle that was sunning itself on the beach. We were pretty sure the turtle would have no idea what Kona’s signals meant when he wants to play.

The 25 or so miles of beach drive were wonderful, as the sun was out this day. On the way back to Colectiva we stopped at our favorite haunt, the SPI Birding Center. We were rewarded for the stop by sighting a Peregrine Falcon sitting on the board walk railing. Although we had seen sightings of this magnificent bird listed pretty much every day we visited, we had yet to see one. Bonus!

Talk to you soon!

Mexican American War

About 20 years before the Civil War broke out, Texas and the US were embroiled in the Mexican American War. We visited the Palo Alto Battlefield where on May 8 1846, Major General Zachary Taylor engaged Mexican General Arista who had 5 days earlier overrun Fort Brown handing the new Republic of Texas its first defeat. Despite being outnumbered in troops 3,700 to 2,300, Taylor had far superior artillery and shredded the Mexican Army forces. Mexican dead totaled 102 to Texan losses of 4. Arista, in order to stop the carnage, retreated 6 miles South and took a new stand in dense foliage hoping to avoid Taylor’s superior artillery. That's a Mockingbird checking out the cannon BTW.

We also visited the Resaca de la Palma Battlefield. The dense foliage provided the respite from the artillery that General Arista had hoped for. Unfortunately, the Mexican forces fared little better in hand to hand combat with the more experienced forces of Major General Taylor. This meeting resulted 154 Mexicans killed to 33 Texans. After this humbling defeat, Arista crossed the Rio Grande back to Matamoros with Taylor in pursuit. These two early battles set the tone for what ultimately led to the US seizing nearly half of Mexico’s claimed territory.

We discovered that Palo Alto Battlefield was one end of the Brownsville rails-to-trails bike path, which runs about 10 miles to the Gladys Porter Zoo. We brought out bikes along to check this out, and made a great day of it. Picnic lunch at the battlefield, scoring a cache along the way, we biked about half the trail, leaving the rest for another day.

Talk to you soon!

Miscellaneous Gulf stuff

When we picked up Karen at the airport in Harlingen, we learned that there is a Marine Military Academy located there. As with all Texan’s, folks from Harlingen have a very strong respect for the military. Their respect and pride has expressed itself in a full-size replica of the Iwo Jima Monument in Arlington Virginia.

We learned that not only is Clayton’s the largest beach bar in Texas, and not only can you witness a hundred people plunge into the 60-degree waters of the Gulf in the midst of gale force winds with air temperatures of 41 degrees, you can also see an all-out crab fight. As far as we could tell, the yellow guy was pretty much going to pull a claw off the orange guy.

Looking out the windshield of Colectiva we saw this gathering of what had to be more than 50 White Ibis. White Ibis have a distinctive curved orange beak, look to be pure white when on the ground, but have a crisp black stripe on the edge of their wings when they fly. Impressive.

Talk to you soon!

Turtle Rescue Center

We visited the Turtle Rescue Center, which is right next door to the South Padre Island Birding Center. The Center was founded by Ila Fox Loetscher, otherwise known as “The Turtle Lady of South Padre Island.” In the 1960’s, Ila began rehabilitating injured sea turtles in her home. Most had been injured by power boat strikes, getting tangled in abandoned fishing line, or ingesting trash. By 1977 she was receiving so many interested guests at her home that she established Sea Turtle Inc. and opened the center.

The Center’s mission is to rehabilitate injured sea turtles for release back into the wild, as well as to educate the public in the process. Many of the turtles they care for are able to be rehabilitated and released, however, some are so badly injured that they could not survive if released, so they live the rest of their natural life at the Center. One such turtle we met was Allison, named for the young girl who found her and reported her to the Center. Allison lost 3 of her 4 flippers to a predator attack, and for the first 4 years could only swim in a tight circle, and had to be kept in a shallow pool so she could surface and breath. In 2009 the doctors at the Center began attaching prosthetic devices that allowed Allison swim in somewhat of a straight line. Now she is the center of attention at the Center, and we were no exceptions.

Talk to you soon!

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!