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West Texas – the photos

 Our camp at Chisos Basin. What we climbed to get the Colima Warbler. The view. The Boot. The attack-squirrel at Boot Spring. Common Black Hawk.  Gray Hawk.   Lucifer Hummingbird.   The Fort Davis State Park camp. A Montezuma Quail. A female Montezuma Quail cleverly disguised as a rock. A sign on the way to Lake Balmoreah.How much would it suck to be this Lake Property Manager?  They have to post a reward to stop people from vandalizing him?  
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West Texas continued again

 Early one morning, before it got hot, we climbed the demanding Pinnacles Trail for the Colima Warbler.  We saw Townsend’s Solitaire near the bottom; White-throated Swifts and Violet-green Swallows working the cliffs.  The Mexican Jays at the summit wanted handouts.  We continued on to Boot Springs for the Dusky-capped Flycatcher.  We missed the Painted Redstart but got the Hepatic Tanager. The entire trip went like that.  Designated hikes though ever different terrain and habitat.  Different target birds every time, but with almost unlimited success in finding them.  Jon’s skills got us almost every possible bird.  A very well planned trip.  A walk down the Windows trail and we saw Scott’s Oriole.  A visit to the Sam Nail Ranch for Varied Bunting.  The Blue Creek Trail:  Gray Vireo.  We saw Chihuahuan Raven, Pine Siskin, Black-headed Grosbeak, Cordilleran Flycatcher, Canyon Wren, Hammond’s Flycatcher, Rufous-crowned Sparrow, Common Blackhawk, Gray Hawk.  On to Carolyn’s house and wildlife refuge in the Christmas Mountains.  Scaled Quail, Gray Vireo, Lucifer Hummingbird, Yellow-throated Vireo, MacGillivray’s Warbler, Dusky Flycatcher.  Fort Davis State Park and Davis Mountains:  Acorn Woodpecker, Montezuma Quail, Gray Flycatcher, Blue Grosbeak, Bushtit, Plumbeous Vireo, Phainopepla.  Lake Balmorhea:  Clark’s Grebe, Western Grebe, Wilson’s Phalarope, Yellow-headed Blackbird. We cleaned up.  So many birds.  Altogether we saw 164 species.  44 of them were new year-birds for me.  I went from 300 birds at the start of the trip, to 344 on my year-list now.  5 lifers, even though one of them, the Rufous-capped Warbler in Uvalde, was a “heard-only”.  That’s good enough.  That counts.  I can always look for him again on another trip now that I know where he hangs out when he’s here (even though he’s not here very often). An uneventful and long drive home.  It was a very good trip.  
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Home again

 Home again, safe and sound.  Today’s assignment was to do the cardiac echocardiogram and the nuclear stress-test.  The echo was easy; just lie in bed while they use an ultrasound wand to take pictures of the structure and flow of your heart.  The stress-test was more of a challenge.  The way it works is to inject a radioactive isotope into the blood stream, run you through the chest scanner for a baseline resting image, then exercise you, inject more isotope, and run you through the scanner again.  How hard could that be? Well, the chest scanner is somewhat confining.  Over a fifteen minute period it rotates by steps all around your head and chest, within an inch or so of your face.  Judy warned them ahead of time that she was “somewhat” claustrophobic.  They put her in there unmedicated anyway.  Luckily they got her back out again in time to save the machine.  Back in her room they introduced her to her soon-to-be best friend, Ativan.  One milligram in her bloodstream and things quieted down considerably.  Another trip downstairs to the scanning room, and the process went smoothly.  They got the pictures they needed.  That success however, created the next problem.  They need Judy to exercise, inject more isotope, and take another round of pictures.  Judy is stoned.  Not likely she’s going to run on the treadmill in that condition. So they let her lie on the bed, administered a vasodilator to simulate the effects of exercise, injected the isotope again while her heart was racing, then let her rest and settle back down to normal pulse and blood pressure.  With the help of one more milligram of her friend, she snoozed her way through the remaining scans.  The cardiac doc said everything, the echo and the stress test, came back clean and clear.  No indication of any cardiac issues. When I’ve had my heart problems, we’ve tended to eliminate the least-fatal possible causes (like indigestion, smog, stress, etc.) first, saving the trip to the cardiologist until we’ve exhausted all other possibilities.  At least in this instance we approached the problem in a more logical sequence.  Judy’s heart does not seem to be involved as the source of her symptoms.  We can explore other possible causes at a more leisurely pace, and maybe in the meantime they’ll just get better.  Sometimes that happens. Before we left the hospital, a thunderstorm hit it hard and they had to switch to backup power.  That storm hit Gulf Waters afterward, but before we got back.  The lightning didn’t hit our spot, but we can’t say as much for Pam and Dan’s palm tree.  The strike hit the tree mid-trunk right in front of their windshield and splattered it (the tree not the windshield).  The charge continued through the tree into the ground and found the underground wires for the irrigation system.  It followed that path back to the irrigation box and blew it to pieces.  Impressive. But back to my original theme; we’re home safe and sound.  It’s good to be here.  Judy is kind of watching television tonight.  It will be interesting to see how much of today she remembers tomorrow.