Author: Steve

(The King’s salt.)

The lake was very white today.  It’s an evaporative lake.  It has been very dry here lately.  Several intermittent inlets.  No outlet.  It sits on top of a giant salt dome.  Hypersaline at least.  Solid salt on occasions like this.

I like how water blows into the animal tracks along the shore, then evaporates to white.

Deer, nilgai (deerlike exotics), javelina, wild boar.

This is breeding territory for snowy plovers.

They nest in the sand along the shore.  No closeups today.  A couple very distant shots with a long lens.  Don’t want to disturb them.

This is the plover crouched down in a sandy depression.  It might be the nest, it might be diversionary behavior.  We’ll let that question remain unanswered.

And a raccoon track in the center of this frame.

They have hands on their feet.

It wasn’t the same.  It has always been so easy, so friendly, but crossing on the weekend was different.  It was militarized.  We walked across the bridge from the U.S. like we normally do, no problem.  But there was a long pedestrian line to get past a point in Mexico we always just cruise through.  Package scanners.  Body scans.  Cars next to us in the vehicle lane being held up and searched.  Town was normal after that.

To get back to the U.S. there was a vehicle line that is not normally there.  Usually, cars drive right out of Mexico to the U.S. checkpoint.  That’s a careful examination there.  Suspicious cars get pulled over for a more intensive search.  This time cars were being stopped on the Mexican side of the bridge, drivers removed, while each car got a cavity search.  Surviving that, each car got to proceed on to the U.S. process that they were going to get anyway.  The traffic backup in Mexico went all the way through town.  The line barely moved.  There was a pedestrian hold up on the Mexico side of the bridge too.  Never figured out what that was about, but then they let us through.  The last part of the crossing at U.S. security included an extra scanning.

Why the change?  The Mexican government committed to an additional 10,000 troops at the border, and they are making their presence felt.  Maybe our little crossing at Progresso is now intercepting more drugs headed for the U.S. and more U.S. weapons headed for Mexico, both serious problems.  Couldn’t tell any difference from our vantage point.  What we could tell though is, it’s certainly different now.

There are about 1,000 bird species known to live in or visit the United States.  Worldwide, the count is more like 10,000.  For this most recent 4-day count, 8 out of every 10 known bird species worldwide was observed and counted.  That’s amazing!

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Explore another year record-breaking results.

Dear Steve,  Final numbers for the 2025 Great Backyard Bird Count are in! Together we smashed records, found more birds than ever before, and had a lot of fun. Thank you for being a part of it!  What we accomplished, in the numbers:8,078 species of birds identified217 countries or eBird subregions387,652 eBird checklists611,066 Merlin Bird IDs (step-by-step, sound, or photo)189,741 photos, videos, and sounds added to Macaulay Library838,113 estimated global participants409 reported community events We summed up the full event on our website—click the button to enjoy the full recap of the weekend’s highlights, featured photos, stats, and other details that made the event one to remember and celebrate. See More Results from the GBBC 2025 Again, a sincere Thank You for being a part of the 2025 GBBC and making it another incredible event! Mark your calendars! Next year’s GBBC is February 13–16, 2026.  – From all of us at the Cornell Lab, Audubon, and Birds Canada  Hooded Crow by Andreas Stadler / Macaulay Library.Many thanks to GBBC founding sponsor Wild Birds Unlimited. They’re ready to help you with all your backyard bird needs via their stores and podcast.  The Cornell Lab of Ornithology is a membership institution dedicated to interpreting and conserving the earth’s biological diversity through research, education, and citizen science focused on birds. You received this email because you are subscribed to Lab Project Participation, Discounts, and Promotions from Cornell Lab of Ornithology. Cornell Lab of Ornithology, 159 Sapsucker Woods Rd., Ithaca, NY 14850Unsubscribe Manage preferences

Not a fan.

Just as the days start to get longer, what do we do?  We try to make them longer still.  Of course, we don’t make them any longer, we just cut a piece off the front, stuck it on the back and pretend we did something.  We should just stop it.  End daylight saving time.

Some people like daylight (saving) so much, though, they want to make it permanent.  How terrible an idea is that?  Time is a thing.  When the sun is at its highest point in the sky, it’s noon.  It’s not one.  It’s not eleven.  It’s noon.  I know let’s call it something else!  How about Howard?

With my last note, I might have given the impression that I’ve been falling down, that I’ve lost my sense of proprioception.  Didn’t mean to do that.  It’s more that it’s just a developing awareness for me; that the sense of balance that we’ve always had is not something that just lasts forever.