Steve and Judy's Travels!

 

0, 0, 0, 115

 

Zero miles to go to get to Fairbanks.  Done that!

 

No birds remaining to get to 500 for the year!  Just made it.

 

No continuing education hours to go.  Made that too.

 

And still 115 counties in which to report a bird to have all 254 counties in Texas and fill in the map completely.

 

It wasn’t a goal to get all the counties recorded in Texas in 2019, we just highlighted it to track our progress.  Maybe we should set that as a goal for 2020; record at least one bird in every county in Texas, or at least get all the edge pieces.  Or we could do Colorado; that would be much easier; not nearly as many counties; only 64.

 

Arizona was so easy we’ve already done it!  Only 15 counties.

 

An interesting thing happened to our bird life-list while we were working on our year-list.  Our life-list got bigger.  In normal years, we add five or ten new life-birds to our list each year.  In 2019, by going after every bird we could get to make it to 500 for the year, we added 27 life-birds!

 

Here are the December lifers:

 

 

Home from all my trips.  That was a great adventure, but I don’t see traveling by myself again any time soon.  Judy is doing well; mostly over her shingles bumps and pain.  It’s back to Advil level.

 

 

Happy New Year!  We stayed up as late as we could!

 

 

A side-benefit to birding.

 

It draws us to places like this!

 

 

 

 

Maybe a year ago, how to segregate restrooms was a big deal.  There was lots of talk about how to identify which gender was using which restroom, and who should be accommodated.  Here is how they resolved the issue at the San Diego airport in California.

 

There are all the normal men or women restrooms, then there are these scattered about.  I love it.  Why make anything harder than it needs to be?

 

The sign for this restroom reads:  Anyone can use this restroom regardless of gender identity or expression.

 

 

He birds South Texas every day, so he knows where some of the birds I need are.  We met up in Corpus way before dawn and drove to the Guadalupe River Delta.  We missed the American Woodcock and the Short-eared Owl, but scored on the Sedge Wren, and a total surprise to me, a Winter Wren; all before sunrise.  This is easy.  497.

 

Drove farther north, on Jon’s hunch, to Powderhorn Lake.  Now in the morning light, we played call notes for sparrows and up popped Nelson’s Sparrow and Seaside Sparrow.  499 and it’s not even 9 O’Clock!  We’ve got lots of options to get one more bird.

 

Drove to the LeConte’s Sparrow spot.  Nothing.  Grasshopper Sparrow spot.  Nada.  Drove to a Barn Owl spot out by Austwell.  An empty barn.  Drove back to Aransas Pass, across the ferry to Port Aransas and back to the Birding Center for another try at the American Bittern.  Nope.  Not there.

 

Uh oh.  It’s starting to get a little desperate.  I’m running alternative scenarios through my head to get that last bird if we don’t get another today.  I could drive north tomorrow two hundred fifty more miles to Houston for one of three birds there: Red Vented Bulbul, Brown-headed Nuthatch, Red-cockaded Woodpecker.  I could drive home and catch a plane to Orlando for:  Snail Kite, Limpkin, or Florida Scrub-Jay.  I could catch a plane to Sacramento for Yellow-billed Magpie or California Condor.  Any one of those options are a lot of travel, but doable before the end of the year.

 

Three more possible birds to find here, Barn Owl, Ferruginous Hawk, and Cassin’s Vireo.  Drove to Chapman Ranch for the Barn Owl.  Barn Owls roost in abandoned barns during the day.  Again, an empty barn.  Down to two chances.  Picked the Cassin’s Vireo at Rose Hill Cemetery.  It is an unusual bird for here but has been seen with a mixed flock of little birds; sparrows and warblers.  Scoured the Cemetery.  Found the flock!  Scoured the flock.  Bingo!  Cassin’s Vireo!  Bird number 500 for the year!  Yeaaaa.  I predicted I was going to see 500 species in 2019!  It wasn’t a slam-dunk; it required a concentrated effort in December, and welcome assistance from Jon at the end.  Jon is a good birding friend though, so it felt good to finish with him too.

 

South Texas part of the trip map

 

Zero birds to go.  (And six Continuing Education hours.)