Steve and Judy's Travels!

  The turtles have taken to wandering.  All winter long the turtles stay in their ponds.  They might pull out on the bank to bask during the day, or come up to our house to get fed, but they always end up back in the water.  We were surprised, then, to see them leaving.  One crawled out of the water, headed up the bank into an empty RV site, and kept on going.  It went across the gravel, the cement pad, down the road, and out into the dunes.   We googled red eared sliders.  We haven’t stayed here this late into the year before, so we hadn’t seen this annual cycle.  It’s time to lay eggs.  The eggs will take about two or three months to hatch, depending on conditions.  After that, the babies have to stay out of the water for three weeks until they’ve absorbed their egg sacks, then they too can occupy the ponds.    

  The leg hole episode is over.  The infection is gone.  The wound has healed.  The whole process took a little over two months.   Now I can send out a picture that is not disgusting.  The healed leg with a patch of fresh skin where the problem once was.    

  A quiet day for us.  Judy got calls from the kids.  Matt scored big-time with a jewelry surprise.  I was nice to Judy the entire day.   We saw a black whiskered vireo at Paradise Pond.  Didn’t expect that.   Summer weather mode.  It only gets down into the seventies at night.  The breeze from off the water helps keep the highs down during the day.  We were going to leave about June 1st.  It doesn’t feel like time to leave yet.   Happy Mother’s Day.    

  We made it to 500 birds on our life-list the first of May.  We’ve added a couple cool little owls, ferruginous pygmy owl and elf owl, and a mourning warbler.  Now we’re left with only three birds we expect (hope) to see this season in Texas:  the golden winged warbler, white rumped sandpiper, and hudsonian godwit.  Today, we went after the hudsonian godwit.  They only pass through the Texas Gulf Coast during spring migration.  There has been a flock of them in some flooded rice fields about a hundred miles north of us, so off we went this morning to Indianola, outside Port Lavaca.  We saw lots of birds, including five purple gallinules, but no hudsonian godwits.  So we headed a hundred miles south to the sod farm west of Corpus Christi where a couple have been seen recently.  Lots of meadowlarks and sandpipers, but no godwits, so we checked out Hazel Bazemore Park close by.  We got wilson’s phalaropes and stilt sandpipers, but no godwits.  On to Packery Channel Park.  Long billed curlews, American oystercatchers, but godwits; none.  That was enough for today.  We gave it a good effort.  We still have three birds we need for the season.    

  A few more pictures from Sandfest.  One from Sunday afternoon, the final day of the event.  One from Monday, the day after; still holding up well.  And one from Tuesday; totally gone.  They bulldozed it.   Gone until next year.  The dates have been set:  http://www.texassandfest.com/home.  April 9th, 10th, and 11th.       Dad would have been 99 years old today.