Posted on

It’s a noisy affair

 ….watching parrots. red crowned parrots And I suspect you’ll feel a little seasick if you watch the video scanning the trees. It’s also brief; watching the parrots.  The birds spread out all day long, who knows where, to forage.  They come in to the park to socialize and roost just at dusk.  There is about a fifteen minute window to spot and photograph them before it’s too dark to see.  We get the best concentration of birds, but it comes with crummy lighting for photographs. Having seen the parrots yesterday, we moved north to Mustang Island State Park this morning. November 2015 trip Here in time for a walk on the beach, and all settled in for the sunset.  
Posted on

We’re on our way to Corpus Christi in the bus

 …by way of Brownsville.  Can’t get much farther south than this. In Corpus on Monday, we’ll do the last round of pre-surgery appointments; three in all.  In the meantime, we hung out at Oliviera Park in Brownsville to watch the parrots come in to roost at dusk.  Red-crowned parrots.There are a lot of parrots here, maybe fifty or a hundred.  That’s what most of them are, red-crowned. But then, we spot a red-lored parrot.You can tell by the yellow on his cheeks.  Year-bird!  Number 400.  We were on a mission to get to 400 before surgery, so I wouldn’t be so tempted to go back out to finish after.  Made it. And after that, yellow-headed parrot.You can tell by the yellow head.  Number 401.  A cushion. And then, and thenWe think this might be two lilac-crowned parrots with a red-crowned parrot in the middle.  See the difference in the red pattern on their heads?  The red-crowned has more red across the top.  If these do turn out to be lilac-crowned, that will be 402.  Not only that, but lilac-crowned would be a lifer as well.  Way cool. Birding rewards aren’t always immediate.  Sometimes it takes a while to figure out what you’ve seen and haven’t seen. 
Posted on

Bre’r Bear Smith

 ..sent us this link: 
https://www.youtube.com/embed/Y16ObVRvgOE This is a Car Guy kind of You Tube segment called Jason Drives.  It’s like Top Gear, only different.  The worst car in the world to drive, a 1951 Hoffmann.  It was a difficult day today.  I had ribs in the smoker when it started to rain in the afternoon.  The smoker is located in a bunker that protects it from wind, but there is no protection from overhead, which makes sense because the smoke from the smoker has to escape.  Whatever was over it would get turned black from the smoke.  No protection from rain.  We rigged a temporary plywood shelter over it at a safe distance above, so the electronics wouldn’t get wet, and the day was saved. We used one of the several 2 by 4 sheets of plywood we have on hand, in preparation for parking the motorhome in the very same spot we parked it last winter.  As you will recall, the motorhome sunk and ran aground last year.  In preparation for the possibility that there might again be extended rain this winter, we’ve had a nice ¾ inch sheet of plywood cut down into four sections so we can position each section under a motorhome wheel, or set of wheels.  There will mud boards, eight square feet of plywood under every wheel.  We don’t want to see the motorhome listing like that again.
Well, the rain let up.  The temperature is still in the low eighties.  The humidity is still up.  Just like we like it.  I got eight hours smarter yesterday digitally attending an all-day continuing education seminar in California about how to commit fraud in a government organization.  It was nice to be in San Francisco without having to deal with any of the traffic.  And the food was excellent, by the way.