First Blog
My wife has been encouraging me to start a blog of my birding adventures. I can assume two reasons for this: 1. She thinks my adventures are really good and need to be shared with the world.
2. She is tired of me talking to her about warblers 24/7.
So I will start my first blog with my latest adventure to the valley.
Tamaulipas crow sightings at the Brownsville dump started this adventure. My friend Bob has been birding since the 1960's and has most of the birds of Texas already on his life list, but Tamaulipas crow was not one of them so Bob invited me to go drive 5 hours south to go visit a landfill. Who could resist such an offer? The dump was closed on Sunday so we decided to leave Monday morning and get there by 10:30. Most of the trip was rainy and when we finally got to the dump it was still raining and a man came out and told us the dump was closed due to the muddy roads. We tried to convince him to let us in because we had a 4x4 Jeep but it was not going to happen today he said. It kind of reminded me of National Lampoons Vacation when they drove across country to Wally World and when they got there it was closed for cleaning and repairs. Funny watching that on tv but when it happens to you...
We were determined to find that crow so we drove around looking for a good view of the landfill where we could set up a scope. We saw lots of Great-tailed Grackles and Chihuahuan Ravens but not the crow which is somewhere in between those birds size wise. It was pretty cold and rainy for south Texas standards and our eyes were getting fatigued so we decided to call it and go look for other valley specialities like Aplomado Falcon. We dipped on finding that bird too so we went back to the dump just in case the crow showed up but nope. We called it a night and returned to the dump at 7:00 the next morning. The morning was beautiful and our hopes were high but after hours of scanning through grackles and other blackbirds it was not looking good. We chose to drive down to the Sabal Palm nursery on the border and I did manage to pick up a few lifers there so I figured the trip was not a complete loss. We then discussed our next move, either go back to the dump for more of the same or try another place not to far out of the way and head home from there. We chose the dump. We got there around 1:00pm and figured we need to hit the road at 2:00 if I was going to drive all the way home south of Houston and be able to get up at 5:00am for work the next day. Around 2:00 I was back at the jeep ready to call it quits when Bob called me and said he thinks he has the crow this time!(he called me another time thinking he had it but it was a false alarm). So I grabbed my bins and camera that I had already packed up and ran to where he was. Got it! Life bird for me and for Bob. He told me it was some of the workers nearby that told him where the crows were. He was a bit skeptical at first but them landfill workers know the difference even without binoculars. Awesome! We ended up finding 6 Tamaulipas Crows. Great trip!
2. She is tired of me talking to her about warblers 24/7.
So I will start my first blog with my latest adventure to the valley.
Tamaulipas crow sightings at the Brownsville dump started this adventure. My friend Bob has been birding since the 1960's and has most of the birds of Texas already on his life list, but Tamaulipas crow was not one of them so Bob invited me to go drive 5 hours south to go visit a landfill. Who could resist such an offer? The dump was closed on Sunday so we decided to leave Monday morning and get there by 10:30. Most of the trip was rainy and when we finally got to the dump it was still raining and a man came out and told us the dump was closed due to the muddy roads. We tried to convince him to let us in because we had a 4x4 Jeep but it was not going to happen today he said. It kind of reminded me of National Lampoons Vacation when they drove across country to Wally World and when they got there it was closed for cleaning and repairs. Funny watching that on tv but when it happens to you...
We were determined to find that crow so we drove around looking for a good view of the landfill where we could set up a scope. We saw lots of Great-tailed Grackles and Chihuahuan Ravens but not the crow which is somewhere in between those birds size wise. It was pretty cold and rainy for south Texas standards and our eyes were getting fatigued so we decided to call it and go look for other valley specialities like Aplomado Falcon. We dipped on finding that bird too so we went back to the dump just in case the crow showed up but nope. We called it a night and returned to the dump at 7:00 the next morning. The morning was beautiful and our hopes were high but after hours of scanning through grackles and other blackbirds it was not looking good. We chose to drive down to the Sabal Palm nursery on the border and I did manage to pick up a few lifers there so I figured the trip was not a complete loss. We then discussed our next move, either go back to the dump for more of the same or try another place not to far out of the way and head home from there. We chose the dump. We got there around 1:00pm and figured we need to hit the road at 2:00 if I was going to drive all the way home south of Houston and be able to get up at 5:00am for work the next day. Around 2:00 I was back at the jeep ready to call it quits when Bob called me and said he thinks he has the crow this time!(he called me another time thinking he had it but it was a false alarm). So I grabbed my bins and camera that I had already packed up and ran to where he was. Got it! Life bird for me and for Bob. He told me it was some of the workers nearby that told him where the crows were. He was a bit skeptical at first but them landfill workers know the difference even without binoculars. Awesome! We ended up finding 6 Tamaulipas Crows. Great trip!
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