April 3, 2014

Listening to Brownsville's Beautiful Birds

Thursday, April 3, 2014

A Great Egret flies above one of the resacas, surrounded by palm trees.

Another windy day in South Texas!  It has been cloudy and dusty most of the day.  There were a little sunshine late in the day, but not a lot.  Winds today were gusting to 25 mph I think and yesterday was 45 mph.  Ron was trying to leave on a job at one point and had set a box of supplies down while loading the car.  The wind turned over the box and blew his paper work away.  Thankfully it was blowing from the south and it ended up caught on the chain link fence around the football stadium right behind our office.  I think he has had a frustrating day.

This morning I didn't try to go to the gym, but hope to make it tomorrow.  I worked on the new quilt project a little before going to the office.  Ron was in and out of the office during the day.  He had some jobs this afternoon and once he got back from them he said I could leave.  I had spent the day working on more paper work.  How can our small office generate so much paper work to be done, sorted, and filed?  Ron needed me to find some papers for him and then I had to locate some I needed.  It just seems constant.

During the afternoon while he was out I had a lot of customers.  They weren't buying much, but as I mentioned a day or two ago, many at the beginning of the month are getting duplicates of apartment keys.  I had a couple of emails from my daughter-in-law, Vickey and I answered them but late in the day she sent one asking if I was OK since she said I had not responded to her emails.  I told her with our strong winds from the Southeast, they should have just blown into her in box in New Mexico.  I don't know why she didn't get them.

After work, I ran a couple of errands and one took me past the resaca where the Roseate Spoonbills are hanging out.  I stopped for a few photos.  In the photo group I belong to on line, we had a challenge from one of the members for the month of April to take photos that fall into a specific catagory each day.  Today's was "shaded."  I was able to get a photo of one of the Roseate Spoonbills in the shade of the tree.

I will really miss the Spoonbills when they leave this area.  It has been a treat to see those splashes of pink in the trees every afternoon on my way home.

 Once I got home, I worked in the yard before even coming into the house or unloading the car.  I filled the feeders and the ponds and birdbaths.  As is my usual custom, I checked the resaca to see what birds might be out there.  There was a huge, beautiful Great Egret.  He was so pretty in his mating plumage.

While I was working on one of the ponds, I turned around to the sound of some warblers at the big birdbath (did you catch that?  I heard!).  There were three little warblers on the birdbath (probably cooling off since it was 88 degrees).  They had not noticed me being in the yard and when they saw me, they took off.  All the time I was in the yard there was an amazing chorus of birds singing.  I could not believe how much singing was going on.  I finished in the yard and quickly set up my camera in the sewing room hoping to catch the warblers.  I only saw one and he was on the waterfall very briefly.  I got a quick shot, but not a great one.  I am just glad they are here and hope they will hang around for a couple of weeks.

Then the Red-winged Blackbirds took over the waterfall for bath time.  They were all having a great time bathing, singing, and hopping around on the rocks.

During the evening I talked to two of our sons and one daughter-in-law.  I did fairly well on the phone.  I still had to have them repeat a lot but it was better than some of the other attempts.  So much is going on in the lives of our kids and it is hard to have easy conversations on the phone, but it sure beats being deaf and depending on written messages.