We get to start a new year-bird list. Last year we birded a lot in January. This year we’re being more careful, so we only birded a little. Mostly we drove around and birded where I could just look out straight ahead. A fun day. We started our year with about 60 species. The best birds were: Fulvous whistling ducks (some years these can be hard to get). Solitary sandpiper (harder to find than spotted sandpipers). Ringed kingfisher (One of the three kingfishers to get. A South Texas specialty. We always get it, but now we don’t have to look for it.) Northern bobwhite (just because I like quail so much). Wilson’s snipe (these can be hard to find too). Citizen Science – We use ebird, a global database to track our sightings. They make the program free, easy to use, and useful; and in return, they have thousands of birders all over the planet providing free data on what birds are where when. I love what they do and am an enthusiastic participant. We finished 2015 with 403 species. That was enough to rank us number 365 in the country. Ebird is such a success and has grown so much in the last five years. In 2010 our sightings of 397 birds ranked us 109 in the country; just outside the top 100. We’re reporting about the same number of birds, but falling way back in the standings. That’s a pretty good indicator of the growth of their data. (I don’t mean to suggest that we are really good birders. I would better describe us as enthusiastic and persistent. Our fairly high ranking, in the top few hundred birders in the country, is not a reflection of how good we are as birders. There are a lot of people that are way better at finding and identifying birds than we are. Our success is more a matter of us living in one of the best place in the nation to see a large number of year-round and migrant birds, plus we travel.) With our slow start in the first couple months of 2016 as we continue to be careful and not turn my head, it may be difficult to match our 400 bird standard. The pace should pick up after we spend the month of May in Colorado though. We’ll spend the month of June in Arizona and they’ve got a lot of birds there we don’t get in South Texas. We may get our 400 birds again in 2016 anyway. I’ll report back.
Happy New Year’s Eve
We’ve been enjoying our weather in the 70s and 80s. It’s cool and cloudy tonight though; a little rainy. A quiet day today; we’ll stay home in the Central Time Zone and declare Happy New Year when it’s time, even if that time is Atlantic Standard.
Happy New Year’s Eve Eve
Six weeks. It has been six weeks today since my neck surgery. Last time around, I got to take the neck brace off at six weeks and pretend I was healed. This time around, I’m halfway through a twelve week sentence. It’s going to be *more* completely healed before I take this thing off this time. No problem. The recovery is going just fine. I can do this. I figure attitude is everything. Stiff upper lip and all that. This is me…
…keeping my chin up.
…keeping my chin up. A Broncos win
It’s not easy. You might think winning and losing is all about how the teams play, but you’d be wrong. There is much more to it than that. I have to have my Bronco Poncho on while they’re playing. If they’re not doing well I take it off. If I had forgotten to put it on, we find it and put it on. When Judy gets agitated and has to get up and do something, she starts cleaning the house. If our team starts playing better, that’s all the positive reinforcement she needs; she won’t stop before the game is over. Yesterday, she put the dinner dishes in the dishwasher and sat down with me to watch the game. By the end of the first half, she was up looking for more stuff to do in the kitchen. The Broncos started playing better. When she ran out of stuff to put away and counters to clean, she turned her attention to the dishwasher. By the end of the game, she had emptied the dishwasher completely, washed everything by hand, dried, and put away. So when we lavish praise on athletes for doing well, let’s not forget the dedication and hard work that goes on in living rooms and kitchens all across America as well!
Fly fishing
I’ve been thinking about fly fishing. In the spring I fly fished poppers for bass. I used to fly fish for trout every summer and fall. When we moved into the bus full-time, I still fished when we were in Colorado. Now I find we haven’t fly fished in years. The three of us used to drift boat fish with Rick once a year in Montana,
…but we haven’t been to Montana in a couple years now. So Rick sends us this picture in a Christmas card this year.
I’m thinking about fly fishing again.
…but we haven’t been to Montana in a couple years now. So Rick sends us this picture in a Christmas card this year. I’m thinking about fly fishing again.