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Gulf waters

The beach is a mess. It is warm, but windy. We only have a one foot high tide, but after three days of the wind blowing twenty knots out of the east, across the gulf, the tide has been pushed clear up to the dunes. The driving lanes are gone. The spring breakers are gone. Somebody’s buoy broke loose and ended up on our beach.
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Port aransas

Paradise Pond after work: Mottled duckBlue winged tealGreen winged tealGreat blue heronBlack crowned night heronYellow crowned night heronWhite ibisMississippi kiteEastern phoebeNorthern parulaYellow rumped warblerBlack and white warblerLouisiana waterthrush (life bird for us)Lincoln’s sparrowSwamp sparrow Good pond. Dinner at Juan’s.
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Port aransas

The coach hasn’t moved in three months. Just because we don’t move the coach doesn’t mean we don’t use diesel fuel though. Diesel fuels our furnace and hot water. So after three months it was time to take the coach out, get a new inspection sticker for the one that expired in January, and get a fresh tank of fuel. It took seventy-five gallons. When we stop for fuel, we never pay at the pump. If you pay at the pump, the pump will shut off at some predetermined amount established by the gas station; sometimes as low as $50. That can make for a tedious fill-up of a big tank. Judy always goes inside and gives the attendant our credit card which eliminates the gas station’s predetermined limit. After this last fill-up though, we had to call the credit card company and ask them to raise our predetermined gas station limit on the card. We just can’t get a full tank when it cuts off at $300.
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Warblers

All winter we see yellow rumped warblers and the occasional orange crowned, black and white, and pine warbler. But today, right in our yard, we got a northern parula and a yellow throated warbler. This is the first time we’ve ever been here for the start of the warbler migration. It has begun. This morning we saw several crested caracara and a white tailed hawk from our patio. We went over to Paradise Pond in town this evening to see what was there and got another northern parula, plus black crowned and yellow crowned night herons, more yellow rumps, an orange crowned warbler, and a blue-gray gnatcatcher. Tonight in the dark, I got a flyover by an owl, probably a short-eared owl. The yellow throated warbler loved the camera. The parula refused to pose.