Author: Steve

 

We’re still in a league of our own and charting our own course. 

 

Early on I made a worst-case scenario prediction that the total deaths for the United States could reach 250,000.  I didn’t really think it would get that bad, that’s just what a quick extrapolation suggested could happen if we didn’t take this pandemic seriously.  For months, that looked like an overestimate.  Then summertime, holidays, and get-togethers happened.  Now we’re approaching 400,000 dead and I’m not making projections anymore.  This graph suggests that the other two countries even on the same scale as us, India and Brazil, are more capable of dealing with the problem as a united nation than we are.

 

On a personal note, if all goes as planned, Judy and I will get our first dose of the vaccine tomorrow.  We don’t even know which of the vaccines it is, we’ll take it and follow their guidance about how and when to get the second dose.

 

 

 

Working the trailside brush.

 

Birds don’t always just pop out into the open.

 

 

Sometimes a look through the branches is the best we get.

 

 

 

Goose Island to Sandpipers.

 

Goose Island to Sandpipers map

 

More birding sites.

 

Birding sites map

 

Along the way, while we were still north, Sunset Lake Park.

 

Riverside Park in Victoria

 

 

Togetherness at the birding center in Port Aransas.

 

And Henry meets the gator.

 

 

Jesse takes a look too.

 

And now we’re home.  Judy reads on Facebook that Covid has made it to our little park.  While we were gone, one couple here tested positive.  Anybody is expected to self-quarantine after they travel, and we certainly will.  We’ll be particularly non-social and distanced.

 

Happy to see our jigsaw puzzle waiting for us.

 

I had completely forgotten about it!

 

 

 

 

It’s a big bird; the size of a crow.

 

 

 

 

 

Countdown.  229 to go.

 

 

 

He can be really hard to spot.  But then he steps out into the open.

 

What a bird!

 

He can stand motionless in the reeds with his head sticking straight up and be essentially invisible.  There are always a few American Bitterns around in the winter, but I rarely have any luck finding one.  There are more years without bittern sightings for us than with.  Feeling lucky to have spotted this one.

 

Current species count, 156.

 

Still need, 244.