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Trip15

Boring, boring, boring. We didn’t plan to stay here long. Every day we agree we want to move on. Every evening, we agree that moving on the next morning is too soon. Every day we decide to stay another day. I know I talk a lot about birding, but we spend about half of every day birding, so I have a lot of birding on my mind. Today was completely different again. A local publication about birding suggested two roads to drive up and down. These two sections of road probably accounted for four miles, one direction. It was an out and back, so we drove eight miles. It took us four hours. We’re always on the lookout for clapper rails. They are such shy and secretive marsh birds that we’ve only seen them twice before, and only one bird each time. The publication said the marshes along these roads were loaded with rails and seaside sparrows. They were right about the rails! We probably saw fifteen and got to watch each one as long as we wanted. In these marshes, the rails were not secretive at all. We saw so many clapper rails, we’re considering penicillin shots. The sparrows. They’re a different story. Completely. No sparrows. Most herons and egrets fish by standing motionless in the water until an unsuspecting minnow, frog, or crayfish wanders past, then they strike and gulp it down. Reddish egrets don’t follow those rules. They have a dance. They dash about in the shallows stirring everything up, then raise their wings up over their heads forming a cloak which casts a shadow across the water, right under their stiletto beaks. Minnows, distracted by the sudden shelter of the shadow, suddenly become meals. For reluctant prey, the egret will hold the cloaking pose as long as necessary. He will even balance on one leg while he scratches about with the other to dislodge the morsel while maintaining the pose. We got the best look ever at reddish egrets. We got the best look ever at rails. We saw more spoonbills than ever before. One of the nice things about solitary birding is you get to talk to so many nice people. If you’re standing out somewhere looking at grass, trees, or bushes with your binoculars, and someone else with binoculars pulls up, the conversation is automatic. In fact, it is not uncommon, as you’re cruising slowly in the car on back roads, to have someone driving the other direction stop and ask you how you’re doing. They can be other birders exploring the area. It is often a local person stopping to ask: “have you seen anything good?” or “Looking for anything in particular?” Yesterday we were birding from our car in a neighborhood and a lady stopped as she came by the other direction. She ended up recommending a pond that we couldn’t see from the road, but we could get to by parking the car and walking through her yard. Today, we met the guy with the deer. We were creeping along the recommended back road, and he stopped his truck and rolled down the window. “Find anything interesting?” He had his arm around a deer head. He was a nice old guy. Friendly. He wasn’t a birder, but his wife was. The deer beside him had an impressive rack. It was dead. We talked about rails and sandhill cranes. He told us the sparrows were around a few weeks ago but he hadn’t seen any since. He recommended a wildlife refuge we hadn’t been to yet. We were stunned by the deer. It appeared to be a complete deer. We did appreciate all his advice about the birds. Our bird count for this area is up to fifty-six. But it gets better. After we were through birding this afternoon, we were walking on the beach. Even though we name off every bird we see, walking down the beach, it isn’t really birding, because we’re not carrying binoculars. We’re not carrying binoculars, because we recognize every bird we see on the beach now. Except for the one we saw today. It looked like a willet, but it was smaller. It was a Red Knot. That is not a common bird here. It is a very unusual bird for here, so we were not expecting to see it. It is a bird we have never seen before, so add one more to the life-list. Tomorrow, the boardwalk in the nature preserve.
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Trip14

A warm foggy morning. It stayed that way all day. When Judy and I were in the British Virgin Islands, they told us they never had fog there because it didn’t get cold enough. I don’t know how cold it has to be for fog, but apparently 65 degrees is cold enough. Got some new neighbors today. They pulled up with a 40 foot Hitchhiker fifth wheel trailer, with four slides! Four! It is the Champagne Edition. They quit their jobs in Colorado, sold everything, and are headed for Florida. Rags the cat had a bad experience. We moved the motorhome to dump the tanks. Rags had gotten out and we didn’t know it. Judy was outside when I started it up and began to roll. She said Rags came bounding back to the motorhome and was running alongside it, on the wrong side, trying to get back in. She stopped me, picked him up, and put him inside. He didn’t want to get left. Good news for us, but traumatic for him. Jim came back and finished the motorhome fix today. There is a wire that runs all the way from the batteries in back, to the tank indicator switch panel in front. He identified the wire. It had a continuity problem. He hooked up a meter to both ends of the wire to see if they were talking to each other, and they weren’t. Rather than trace every inch of wire, he just ran a new power wire to the panel. Now that the indicator panel in front has power, we have propane as well. We talked with him about motorhomes while he was here. He likes Bounders a lot. He says he hardly ever gets calls to work on them. We like that. We birded the marsh. We saw the seaside sparrow! And we saw the marsh wren too! Maybe. We saw a dark gray little sparrow, but didn’t get a good look at him. We heard the call we had been listening for, but we couldn’t see who was making it. We spotted another little bird in the reeds that looked like a wren, but never got a good look at him. Not good enough. Oh well. Maybe next year. Drove around and stumbled into a great bird wetlands sanctuary in the middle of a bayside residential development. Walked for miles in another marshy preserve. Quiet day. Warm weather. Nighttime walk on the beach. Tonight was an iridescence night. I had forgotten about iridescence. I forget what it’s caused by. Microorganisms in the water, I think. The right disturbance of the water causes it to light up. If you were rowing a boat through calm water, the oars would leave smears of light in the water. A flashing pearly turquoise iridescence. A very eerie light. Tonight, it was best on the waves breaking farthest out. Waves we couldn’t even see in the dark except for the luminescence. It only happens for a few moments, just as the wave breaks. From shore we could see spots and dashes of light. Sometimes just a flash from the middle of wave as it first begins to break. Sometimes, as the wave breaks left or right, the light would shoot across for fifty feet, following the path of the break. Sometimes it would flash in the middle, then run out both directions. It is very good.
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Houses03

There are houses on the bay side with canals and docks with boats hanging in slings under dock houses that have balconies and second floor walkways back to the house.