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It’s not unusual to see red-winged blackbirds

 It *is* unusual to see this many red-winged blackbirds all together. It’s a winter thing.  They move here to the south and bunch up. The swarm is like a school of fish on a tropical reef.  They ebb, flow, and swirl in unison. They make the impression that if you could stick your arm out into the flock, they would open up a space, and when you withdrew your arm, the space would close behind. Perfectly fluid. 
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The great mountain plover hunt

 Mountain plovers aren’t always in the mountains.  In fact, I don’t know if they ever go in the mountains.  In the summer we see them at Pawnee National Grasslands out on the plains.  In the winter, they’re on the South Texas plains.  They’re brown and like to stand around on plowed furrowed fields looking like dirt clods. There is a spot they congregate about fifty miles from our house, north of Harlingen and east of Highway 77.  We decided today would be a good day to have a drive-about and see if we could find some.  We invested a few hours in the effort, and scanned farm fields with binoculars and the scope.  We saw a lot of stuff, but never spotted a mountain plover. We did run across a sugar cane harvesting operation though, and stopped to watch. Off in the cane field Heavy equipment lumbers about, just out of sight, mowing down the cane, chopping it up, and depositing it into bins hauled by tractors. The tractors pull their loads out to semi-trucks by the road.  They lift themselves up and dump into the truck until it gets full and heads off to the sugar house for processing, and another truck takes its place.  It’s a steady stream.There are lights set up so work can continue through the night. The fields, wires, and poles around the harvesting operation were populated by white-tailed hawks.  We saw about twenty of them altogether.  There must be lots of little critters stirred up by the harvesting that the hawks like to feast on.  Either that, or they just get off on the exhaust fumes…. Saw a ringed kingfisher on a wire next to the road.That’s our largest kingfisher. Spotted some far-off snow geese and zoomed in on them. We could see them just well enough to pick out some smaller Ross’s geese.  #415. So we missed on the mountain plovers.  No problem; we’ve already got them for the year.  We’ll need them again as soon as the year rolls over to 2017 though! It has been cold here the last couple days.  It was good for us all to get out of the house together, Henry included.  Tomorrow it is supposed to be back in the eighties.  Happy Sunday.  Football.  Go Broncos! 
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Happy Birthday Judy!

 She decided what she wanted for her birthday was to redo the front garden. Back in 2011, it was just grass. The first garden effort used bark chips as mulch.  After the first flooding rain though, all the bark chips floated away.  So she re-did it with rocks. That worked well, except when we left on trips.  We tried to get people to keep it weeded while we were gone, but that never worked out.  So we got it all scooped out again, Poured,  Then the painting process. Surface prepped. Textured. Painted, Taped. Sprayed. Tape removed.  And finished. The new front patio.    Patio done and decorated for Christmas, Judy can have anything she wants for dinner. We picked up a take-and-bake-at-home pizza.  We’ll have that and Thursday night football. Happy Birthday Judy! 
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I CAN’T GET THE TASTE OUT OF MY MOUTH!

 I mentioned that Judy and I were test-driving Airbnb.  We’re considering a trip somewhere south this winter; somewhere Caribbean.  When we go, if we go, we don’t really want to be enclosed in an expensive Americanized resort, we’d rather something more local, hence the Airbnb check-out in Corpus Christi.  We want to see how the process works in case we use it later. With Airbnb, you can find a shared room, private room, or private home to rent, pretty much anywhere in the world.  What we found was a charming little apartment in an old home in an established neighborhood.  It was everything promised… plus some.  It must have been designed on a nautical theme, because the whole thing listed to starboard.  If we’d been in the motorhome, Judy would have insisted I relevel the whole thing.  No problem.  Mostly it was fine.  The deal-breaker was when we showered and went to bed.  The towels and sheets reeked of fragrance; way overdone fragrance.  It was awful.  It was hard to breathe.  We made it through the night, but that was plenty.  We checked in for two nights, but left after one.  We’ll be fine as soon as we can get home to shower and burn our clothes… I guess if we use Airbnb again, in another country, we’re going to have to ask what kind of laundry detergent and fabric softener they use, or be ready to avoid towels and sheets for a week. We went on with the doctors’ appointments for today.  Judy thought she might have torn the meniscus in her left knee again, but the orthopedist said no, it’s just arthritis and wear and tear.  He gave her a cortisone injection and sent her on her way.  After lunch with Carolyn and Rich, we went to the next doctor.  He confirmed that the thumb surgery on her right hand is a total success, and we’re through with it, but the discomfort in her wrist is carpal tunnel syndrome that has been there for years, but was aggravated by the stress of the thumb surgery.  He gave her a cortisone injection in the wrist and sent her on her way. Judy, The cortisone kid. We buzzed south in time to pick up Henry from Boy’s Camp before they closed at six, and then home for dinner by dark.  We missed a super happy hour just down the block from us at Ed and Claudia’s this afternoon, but a quick stop there resulted in leftovers and cake to take home for dinner.  J Glad to be home.  It’s all good.