Another Funeral

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For the first time in my life, there have been two family funerals in close succession: my mom and, more recently, a cousin. The cousin was 9 years younger than me...succumbed to cancer rather than old age. I’ve discovered that my thoughts spiral in a different direction to the death of someone younger than myself; I suspect they are more intense because I knew her as a child.

I was old enough when she was born to remember her young childhood. We interacted when our visits to our shared grandparents coincided. By the time she was entering her teens, I was married and working full time while going to college part time. Then our grandparents died and I moved to the east coast. In all, there were 50 years when we didn’t see each other at all --- just heard about each other from family members. And then there was a memorable lunch at my uncle’s house during the last overnight travel my parents enjoyed – traveling through Oklahoma to have Thanksgiving at my daughter’s house in Springfield MO in 2019.

After my mother’s death, my dominant thought trended toward being grateful that she’d lived as long as she had….that she was enjoying her life up to the very end. For my cousin, I cycle through feeling like her life ended too soon, regretting not knowing her better over the years, and grateful to learn at her funeral how keen her zest for life had endured.

I don’t dwell on my own mortality very often, but I found myself doing so at my cousin’s funeral. Healthy lifestyle can help us sustain our ability to continue to enjoy our life…but there are a lot of things that happen (accidents, natural disasters, genetics, cancer, etc.) that can evade the benefit healthy lifestyle provides. All my grandparents lived past the life expectancy age, and one lived into her late 90s. Both parents lived into their 90s. So – genetics is probably a positive for me…but there are unpredictable life shortening things that can happen to anyone. The best we can do, is to live every day in the best way that we can.

Road trip with my daughter

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My ‘new normal’ of making 2-day road trips to Dallas to see my dad was very different with my daughter coming with me. I’ve always liked making road trips with her because we get some long uninterrupted time to talk; this time it was 6-7 hours on the road each way. In the aftermath, I am thinking about ways it was different from my road trips on my own.

  • We were on the road about an hour later than usual; she is not quite as much a morning person as I am. I picked her up at her house just before 7 AM. It was a few minutes before sunrise – and I took a picture through the windshield of my car of the color behind the emerging foliage of her back yard.

  • We took my dad on a walk outdoors (cloudy but dry….warm enough to not need a jacket). It was my first time doing that but, now that the weather is warmer, a walk will be included in my visits unless it is raining. He was trying a new walker with 4 wheels instead of 2, so I was glad there were two of us just is case it didn’t work well for him – but he liked it and seemed to maneuver with it very well.

  • I got a suite rather than a single room at my usual hotel. It worked well for us.

  • She suggested another walk after we got to the hotel which I hadn’t done before…I’ll add that into my routine from now on as well.

  • The music for the drive was more varied…still mostly instrumental but we included some artists she suggested mixed with my usual selections.

  • I didn’t do any reading at the hotel as I usually do…we were still enjoying our conversation too much!

  • We stopped for lunch on the way home (she found the restaurant as we were nearing lunch time). When I am on my own, I make a quick rest stop around lunch time and then arrive home very hungry.

Our next road trip together will be for the upcoming solar eclipse. This time my husband will be with us…and do all the driving!

When does a road trip become a commute?

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The road trips to Carrollton/Dallas TX have been going on for years – increasing in frequency in recent years as my parents got older. Until recently their duration as been for at least a week; from Maryland it was a 2-day road trip in each direction which was reduced to 7 hours once we moved to Missouri. Sometimes I stayed longer – for hospitalizations/recuperation primarily. There were no trips at the beginning of COVID, but they started up again as soon as we were vaccinated. They are almost always on my own and my parents’ house became almost like a second home since I was spending at least 25% of my time there.

Since my mother’s death and the sale of their house, things are changing. I drive down one day and come back on the next – visiting with my dad for a few hours and staying in a hotel overnight. I’ve done it 3 times and am beginning to realize that the road trip feels more like a long commute.

The route is becoming very familiar. I set the navigation system but really don’t need it. The places I stop (usually Loves or Pilot….sometimes Choctaw Travel Centers) are familiar. There was a Stuckeys that I stopped at occasionally, but it was always a bit grungy and I noticed on the last trek that I had closed. My route is not on Interstate for the most part and I am very aware of the speed limits going though towns.

Music helps keep me alert…and variety helps. Apple Music on my phone playing via Bluetooth on the car speakers is the way to go!

There are several assignments I give myself to stay focused on the road and surroundings. Some of my favorites are:

  • Observing birds (particularly hawks in treetops, great blue herons or great egrets flying, soaring vultures, murmurations of smaller birds….hoping to see a bald eagle). It’s depressing to notice hawk or owl roadkill, but it happens.

  • Noticing the trees – particularly in the spring and fall. Recently I have been paying particular attention to red buds which are scattered among the roadside trees….not thrilled about the escaped Bradford Pears (Callery Pears) that are also there.

  • License plates, particularly in Oklahoma, are more varied than in most states because the Oklahoma tribes have their own plates! Most of my observing of plates is during the times I’ve slowed down for a town and there is more traffic.

  • There is plenty of time to plan what I need to do when I get to Dallas…or when I get home. On the way down, I think about topics that might interest my dad and whatever estate actions I need to take. On the way home, I think about blog posts and, this time of year, what I need to do in the yard.

Phone calls generally factor into the time I am in the car – hands free of course. I call my husband to let him know when I will get home, and my daughter usually calls me for a longer chat when she knows I am driving. It helps pass the time.

More focused purpose. I am realizing that the trips have one overwhelming purpose – to see and visit with my dad. It’s a few hours rather than 24/7 for a week like it was before. There is not much time for anything else although brief times out in nature might still happen…although not on every trip.

And that is how my road trips to Texas have become more like a commute.

Dickerson Park Zoo (2)

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Continuing about our visit to Dickerson Park Zoo…

The animal sculptures in various places around the zoo are interesting as sculptures…and sized to provide good climbing experiences for young children.

I realized about halfway through our visit…that I was somehow skewing toward photographing birds more than other animals. The grey-crowned cranes are one of my favorites in zoos I visit.

There were children feeding the giraffes….and I tried to get a picture of the youngest one. It is still the smallest…but growing fast; the adults don’t give the youngest a break at the feeding platform, but the human children try to hold out to feed the ‘baby.’

There were two white storks. I wondered if they had an egg.

The red ruffed lemur responded to a sound my son-in-law made…I took a picture through the glass of its enclosure.

The king vulture enclosure contained two birds…they have very unusual heads (the glass between my camera and the birds was not very clean unfortunately).

Several capybaras were relaxing in the afternoon sun. Just before I wrote this, I found out that my grandnephew had gotten a plush toy capybara at the San Diego Zoo on the same day as our visit to the Dickerson Park Zoo; what a coincidence!

Dickerson Park Zoo (1)

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We enjoyed the Dickerson Park Zoo (Springfield MO) on a cool sunny day in late March. My husband and I got a gift membership from my daughter, so we’ll go several times this year. The zoo is always a great opportunity for photography.

The peacocks that roam freely are always photogenic. The birds are very acclimated to people although all the visitors gave them plenty of room too. I only saw one in full display – tail up and expanded; there was no females around, so it wasn’t clear what prompted the display.  The males seemed to be the only ones out during this visit; I wondered if the peahens were sitting on eggs.

The flamingo enclosure is one of my favorites because there is an area where there isn’t a barrier (mesh or fence) between my camera and the birds. I zoomed in on one I thought was sleeping; I liked the arrangement and color variation of the feathers; I discovered when I got home that the bird was evidently awake!

The Trumpeter Swans were living up to their names as the made their way around the pond…very noisy. Beads of water on the swan’s back show how well the feathers keep the swan from feeling wet!

The zoo still has a lot of daffodil/narcissus flowers. Our shifts between warm and cold days (and back again) seems to be prolonging the blooms this year. They are planted around naturalized rivulets.

More pictures from the zoo tomorrow….

Ten Little Celebrations – March 2024

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Picking 10 little celebrations is only challenging because there are so many of them to choose from! I help myself by only noting one each day, but I realize when I look at the list at the end of the month that there are even more, in retrospect, worthy of celebration. Here are the top 10 for March 2024.

My mother’s life. The phrase ‘celebration of life’ is more like a savoring because there is an overlay of grief that is part of every gathering after a death. I stayed focused on making sure that someone was with my dad for the duration and providing narration of the images in the slideshow for him…varying what I said a bit each time it repeated and realizing that she had a very full 92 years!

Getting the check deposited after the sale of my parents’ house. What a relief to not be carrying around a big check!

Home again. I made multiple short trips to Dallas for various reasons and was always very glad to be home again. Even though the time away is only a couple of days, the stress of driving, my task while in Dallas, and staying in a hotel takes a toll. I don’t really relax until I am at home. Hopefully, when I am only going down to see my dad, it will not be as stressful.

Sequiota Cave Boat tour. What a great tour. I liked the non-commercial nature the tour…seeing the tiny bats roosting.

Springfield Botanical Gardens. Full of spring blooming trees.

Dickerson Park Zoo. My daughter gave us a membership for Christmas, so we’ll be enjoying the zoo often over the next year. I liked the roaming peacocks (and other things too). The post about this visit is coming day after tomorrow.

Feeling better. I got sick with something that caused sinus and throat problems. I tested for COVID for 3 days…and was negative for that. And then I recovered rapidly and I celebrated. Also celebrated that my husband did get whatever it was.

Creating more hosta locations. I divided some of my hosta plants as they first began to come up and was pleased that the new plants adjusted very quickly to their new space. I am looking forward to their lush growth this summer…and will divide more plants next spring!

Burning sticks. I enjoyed the fire in my chiminea after cleaning up the small branches and pine cones around my yard….celebrating with some pictures of the fire!

Butterfly and pollinator seeds planted. I celebrated getting the beds prepared and the seeds planted…right at the mid-March suggested planting deadline.

Gleanings of the Week Ending March 30, 2024

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The items below were ‘the cream’ of the articles and websites I found this past week. Click on the light green text to look at the article.

Floating Solar Array Is Designed to Take the Rough Stuff - Rich opportunities for solar co-location with offshore wind. By combining floating solar with offshore wind farms and thereby leveraging the same energy infrastructure and export cables, the resulting energy production capacity per used area could be drastically improved. Prototype has been developed…should be in the water by June 2024.

Lessons In Rewilding the Scottish Highlands – Working with nature…increasing biodiversity…reducing monoculture.

Five Shocking Animal Hybrids That Truly Exist in Nature, From Narlugas to Grolar Bears to Coywolves – I’ve heard about a few of these…the pictures were interesting.

Pregnancy advances your ‘biological’ age — but giving birth turns it back - Brewing a baby leads to changes in the distribution of certain chemical markers on a pregnant person’s DNA — changes similar to those that are a hallmark of getting older. But new research shows that, several months after a person gives birth, the chemical patterns revert to an earlier state.

Did You Know Sandhill Cranes Dye Their Feathers? – The birds rub iron rich mud onto their feathers…staining them. And some trivia about sandhill cranes at the Platte River (Nebraska) in the early spring:

  • The birds find a lot of waste corn in farm fields, as well as small invertebrates in marshes near the river. A crane can add 20 percent to its weight during two or three weeks in the area.

  • At night, the cranes move to the Platte River for safe roosting in the shallow water.

  • Sandhill cranes are the most numerous of the world’s crane species.

  • In the Central Flyway, more than 500,000 cranes – more than 80 percent of their population.

The heat index -- how hot it really feels -- is rising faster than temperature - Researchers looked at Texas's summer 2023 heat wave and found that the 3 degree F rise in global temperatures has increased the state's heat index as much as 11 degrees F on the hottest days! Arizona's most populous county, covering most of Phoenix, reported that heat-associated deaths last year were 50% higher than in 2022, rising from 425 in 2022 to 645 in 2023. Two-thirds of Maricopa County's heat-related deaths in 2023 were of people 50 years or older, and 71% occurred on days when the National Weather Service had issued an excessive heat warning. With climate change, the relative humidity remains about constant as the temperature increases, which reduces the effectiveness of sweating to cool the body.

158 Cherry Blossom Trees Will Be Cut Down in D.C. in Effort to Withstand Sea-Level Rise – Part of the project to reconstruct a seawall around the Tidal Basin.

Landscape Architecture Strategies Reduce Impacts of Dangerous Extreme Heat – And these apply to what we do in our yard too!

  • Increase tree percentage in parks and green spaces

  • Provide shade on sites

  • Use plant materials and water instead of hardscape

  • Switch to green ground cover, including grasses and shrubs

Plastics Contain Thousands More Chemicals Than Thought, and Most Are Unregulated – Scary! The report also highlights 15 chemical priority groups of concern. These include phthalates, which are used to make plastics more durable and have been found to affect the reproductive systems of animals, as well as per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS), which break down very slowly over time and have been linked to health issues including reproductive and developmental problems and increased cancer risk.

Only seven nations meet WHO air pollution standards – The US is not one of the seven: Australia, Estonia, Finland, Grenada, Iceland, Mauritius and New Zealand. Bangladesh, Pakistan, India, Tajikistan and Burkina Faso were the top five most polluted countries in 2023 with PM2.5 levels nine to 15 times higher than the WHO's standard. Columbus, Ohio, was the most polluted major city in the United States, while Las Vegas was the cleanest and Beloit, Wisconsin polluted U.S. city overall.

Zooming – March 2024

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Lots of birds in the Zooming slide show this month – from the Whooping Crane Festival in south Texas as well as Josey Ranch (Carrollton TX), the Springfield Botanical Gardens (Springfield MO) and Hagerman National Wildlife Refuge (near Sherman TX). I find myself picking images that show bird behavior rather than portraits.

There are spring flowers in this collection as well…more of those coming in April!

Enjoy the March 2024 slide show!

Springfield Botanical Garden – March 2024

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Springfield Botanical Gardens is one of my favorite places; I will try to go at least once a month for the rest of this year. We went on a sunny cool day in the late morning. The sky was almost clear and the light was very bright….making for some ‘almost high key’ pictures of the blossoms on a tree growing close to where we parked.

There were other trees/bushes in bloom as well.

The maples were already making seeds (i.e. past blooming). The seeds were still colorful.

Spring bulbs were still blooming….

But I was more interested in the new growth all over the hosta garden. It will be very lush this summer.

I took some pictures of the garden mosaic…carefully avoiding getting my shadow in the picture.

Lenten roses were blooming. My daughter has some in her yard too. They do seem to grow well but I tend to not like them because their blooms face downward.

There were birds in the gardens too. Lots of robins. We heard a brown thrasher and then saw it high in the tree….too high for a good picture. I did get a picture of a blue bird though!

My husband was very tolerant of my walking around to take pictures even though he didn’t see anything he was interested in photographing. He seemed very intent on macro photography….and didn’t see any opportunities. I find that the zoom on my bridge camera (Canon Powershot SX70 HS) is good enough to take some ‘almost macro’ pictures without being close to the flowers (or birds) at all!

Sustaining Elder Care – March 2024

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A recap: My sisters and I started our journey ramping up elder care back in November. At first we thought we were being proactive in our conversation about ‘next steps’ with my parents’ doctor….but, less than a week later, my mother was critically ill and in the hospital. I spent the next 7 weeks in Texas. My mother managed to recover enough to come home before Thanksgiving even though she needed a lot of support at home. We hired caregivers to assist her at night through December and moved my parents to an assisted living group home just before the new year. As we worked to get them settled into the assisted living routine, we started a surge of effort to get their house cleared and on the market; the sale was finalized at the end of February. Both parents responded favorably to assisted living and decided they wanted to go out to eat occasionally rather than having special meals via take out as we had done for them at their house. In mid-February, they became sick with COVID…my dad first; he got Paxlovid and was recovering. My mother tested positive a few days later; her doctor adjusted her meds and she got Paxlovid; at first her case seemed even less symptomatic than my dad’s; the staff at the group home thought her breathing was wheezy one afternoon (even though my mother did not think she was having breathing problems) and sent her to the hospital via ambulance; she died 2 hours later.

The last few weeks have been busy ones. We reconfigured my dad’s living space from two rooms down to one and are in the process adjusting the assets my mom and dad accumulated to support his long-term care. As I write this, I realize that we have already settled into a ‘sustaining’ rather than ‘ramping up’ mind set. It isn’t that we won’t evolve what we do based on my dad’s needs…but we have a framework that will stay the same: the assisted living group home…daily visits from family….out to eat several times a month…walking in the neighborhood when the weather is good. Right now, he is still adjusting to not having mom around all the time; she was there for him for over 71 years. We are grateful to the staff of the assisted living for their increased attention. He still has times when he looks lonely…but he is talking more than he did when mom was around to talk for him.

Going forward, my trips to Texas will be quick ones – drive down and visit with dad in the afternoon before I head to my hotel, drive home the next day. Sometimes I will visit with dad in the morning before I drive back. I have done 2 of these trips so far in March. My sisters are there more frequently because they live closer than I do – one is there almost every day, another comes 2-3 times per week, another once or twice a week. Along with taking him out to eat, we put out his clothes for the next day, work on a puzzle with him, accompany him on a walk, help him find something that he lost (his wallet with his id and he glasses tend to go missing).

My sisters and I have had conversations about how much we have accomplished in the past few months – having to adjust very rapidly. We are not exactly relaxed at this point, but the stress level is dramatically lower!

Previous posts: November 2023, November 2023 update, December 2023, January 2024, February 2024, March 2024 (1)

Macro Photography – March 2024

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Sometimes I get in the mood for macro photography. It has happened several times this month.

The first was at my mother’s funeral. I was thinking about the bouquet of daffodils/narcissus that her neighbor cut from their old yard (with the new owner’s permission) and decided to take some macro views of the flowers while we were waiting for the service to begin. I thought about all the joy my mother experienced with her garden…with the flowers growing there and the ones she cut to bring inside. And that she transmitted that joy to her daughters.

The second round of macro photography was when I trimmed some low branches from one of my pine trees and decided to take a closer look at one of the branches.

Pine cones are so sturdy….they are hard on my lawn mower…but there is a fragile aspect to them too. At close range they are wrinkled and folded and etched.

The bark on a small stem shows where needles once grew and the expansion of the stem making brown islands in gray green.nce.

The bud at the end of stem looks reddish surrounded by green needles. Once again – I realize how much color there is that is unnoticed until we take a closer look.

The last macro photograph is one my daughter sent via text when she visited the Memphis Botanic Garden recently. She knows how much I enjoy finding fiddleheads….and evidently had caught the macro photography bug too. These were interesting because of the felt-like covering that must have protected them until they started to unfurl.

Sequiota Cave Boat Tour

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My daughter enjoyed a boat tour of Sequiota Cave (in Springfield, Missouri’s Sequiota Park) last spring and encouraged us to sign up when they were offered this year. They only do the guided tour a couple of weekends in the spring and fall – leaving the cave to the roosting bats for the rest of the year. The instructions were to ‘bring your own headlamps’ so we grabbed our headlamps that we have for astronomy nights/emergencies.

It was my first visit to the park, and I was a little disappointed that Galloway Creek was dry. It has been channelized in the area near the cave entrance with abutments and concrete additions. There was a bumpy area of concrete that might work to slow the water a bit.

The buds on some of the young trees near the sign-in pavilion were colorful close up.

We picked out hardhats (which seemed to be fall squash colors!) and flotation vests and gloves for our visit to the cave. The boats were loaded at the mouth of the cave; they held 4 people (including the guide). Our guide worked for a non-profit associated with water quality and was volunteering for this event. I appreciated his comments about the cave and its water quality (and the water quality of the region).

As we entered the cave, my husband took a picture of the mouth of the cave with the truck/trailer that brought in the boats.

The cave is not pristine in the sense that it was used as a fish hatchery in the 1920s and the mounds that were once mushroom beds are still visible. The water course has been cleared (probaby would not have been navigable by boats originally). Nubs of metal from old infrastructure are still visible. But the cave features are in great shape – still actively growing…unbroken…no algae growth. There are not any blind cave creatures; if there ever were any, they didn’t survive the fish hatchery days.

But there are bats. The ones in residence during our tour were tri-colored bats – roosting alone. They are very small….but stand out because they are often darker than the cave walls (the bat is to the right of center in the picture below). There is a colony of endangered gray bats that roost during their migration that number in the 1000s. We’ll go in September to see their nightly exodus from the cave!

This might be my favorite cave tour! I liked it because it was not as commercial. The only light was from headlamps. The tours happen infrequently enough that there isn’t algae or moss growing on the cave features (although there was fuzzy white mold growing on poop from racoons that wonder quite a way into the cave). Spotting tri-colored bats was a great challenge during the tour. The water flowing through the cave made for lots of drips….but also added to the ambience of being in a cave now being left alone most of the time.

Hagerman National Wildlife Refuge – March 2024

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My March visit to Hagerman National Wildlife Refuge was on my way home the day after my mother’s funeral in Dallas. I needed the healing of being out in a natural place like Hagerman. There were the usual male red-wing blackbirds proclaiming spring and their territory. Several times I could see males spaced out over the landscape…a visible cue for the size of their territories.

There were American wigeon, gadwalls, northern pintails, and American coots on the water in small numbers. A neotropic cormorant was enjoying the warming sun on its wings. Some birds had probably already headed north.

There was a group of 2 great blue herons and a great egret in sentry mode. They must have already had their breakfast because they didn’t move while I was watching.

A vocal cardinal perched in a tree near the road.

I had two favorite birds of the morning: a killdeer that was posturing in a field just as started down the wildlife loop road (it looked like it was signaling something…but I don’t know what) and

A female common goldeneye…the first I had seen at Hagerman. This bird would certainly be moving north soon since most of their breeding area is in Canada and Alaska!

I continued home…glad that I had made the effort to photograph birds at Hagerman.

Fennessey Ranch

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Our last field trip at the Whooping Crane Festival began with another early morning because we had to drive to the place (taking the ferry to cross from the barrier island). We arrived just a few minutes before the gate at Fennessey Ranch was opened for our tour group (not the first in line but not the last either).

I took a few pictures in the soft morning light: prickly pear cactus with brambles and a bird house, the layered reflected color of sunrise with the moon, and then some mourning doves in a nearby tree just as the sunlight hit them.

We waited a bit for the trailers with haybales for seats to arrive; we would tour the ranch in the trailers pulled by a pickup truck.

A few minutes into the tour there was a song sparrow in sunlight surround by mossy limbs.

I found photography from the trailer even more difficult than the bus at King Ranch. We did see wild turkeys and a bobcat…..but I wasn’t able to get a good line of sight with my camera. The bobcat was very hard to spot until it moved!

 I did get some good shots of two crested caracaras high in a tree. Were they a mating pair? The birds tend to be solitary except with their mate and offspring. Since I was almost under the birds…I took a picture of the talons.

There were a few wildflowers blooming.

One of the places we stopped included some sandhill cranes in the distance. There were feral hogs near them, and the birds flew off when the hogs got too close. The ranch does sponsor hunts of feral hogs…hopefully lowering their numbers.

The ranch has nine linear miles of river frontage on the Mission River. We stopped at a place where there is a blind and feeder. Only cardinals came to the feeder the morning we were there.

I opted to photograph more wildflowers and a post emerging from the water with what looks like barnacles (I forgot to ask if the river was tidal).

I also looked at the bank on the opposite side…lots of vegetation to the river’s edge in most places although there were places where cattle probably came down to the river. The bank on our side of the river was much steeper. It would be interesting to see the flood model for the ranch.

The Fennessy ranch field trip was a good winding down for our festival attendance. I learned that hayrides on trailers behind pickups over bumpy roads are hard on my back…probably won’t do that again. We headed toward home.  I was looking forward to Czech pastries in West, Texas on the second morning of the road trip back to Missouri.

Leonabelle Turnbull Birding Center

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We signed up for a shorebird identification field trip for the third afternoon of the Whooping Crane Festival. We got on the bus after lunch and, it turned out, spent the whole session at Leonabelle Turnbull Birding Center…which was fine with us since we had wanted to return there. We spent less time with the guide and just enjoyed all the birds at the place. There is a lot to see; the boardwalk makes it easy to see birds without disturbing them. The shallows are a popular place for them to feel secure enough to rest and bathe…and snack.

American white pelicans – in a big group or singles.

The common gallinule was near the alligator (again). I decided to take close up views of the feet (very long toes).

A black necked stilt wondered along through other species…looking aloof.

The green-winged teals were bathing…preening.

Grackles were bathing and preening too….or making raucous noise in the reeds and glaring at my camera.

A pied-billed grebe wandered near the reeds…hiding in plain sight as usual. Once I noticed the bird, I took a series of pictures as it found lunch.

A northern shoveler snoozed…another perched on a post in the water.

Ibis preened and stretched their wings.

I took a series of images of a bird in the shallows…thoroughly cleaning its feathers. It takes a series of contortions. The bird appeared to be enjoying the water!

A blue-winged teal showed the blue on its wing when it bathed.

Now for some group pictures. They are good for size comparison and ID practice. The first has 2 black-necked stilts and a male northern shoveler.

The second had a black-necked stilt and 4 American avocets.

The smaller birds were easily startled and would explode up into air…circle and return very close to where they were before the panic.

There were neotropic cormorants seemingly content to just sit in the sun.

There was a tricolored heron that seemed to be posing for pictures. I couldn’t resist!

The alligator did not move at all in the several hours we were there!

Overall – the place lived up to my expectations; we could have done it on our own rather than with the bus/guide. I am beginning to understand better that we have learned enough about birding to leave more free time to during festivals…or go early/stay late.

The last field trip of the festival would be the next morning at Fennessey Ranch.

Whooping Crane Boat Tour

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We were at the dock for the 7 AM departure of our boat on the third day of the Whooping Crane Festival.

I took a few pictures before we boarded – the moon over the harbor area.

Our destination was the Aransas National Wildlife Refuge where Whooping Cranes feed in the marshy/shallow areas…only visible via boat and it took over an hour to get there from Port Aransas. We passed familiar areas early on and saw a group of American white pelicans, morning light with moon setting over the shore, roseate spoonbills and white ibis in the distance, and the Aransas Pass Lydia Ann Lighthouse.

Then we entered an area that was different than our previous tours and more open water…with occasional platforms with cormorants and great blue herons hunkered in the chilly morning wind. There was a tall bridge as well.

Then there started to be a lot of small islands full of birds: Cormorants, great blue herons and brown pelicans. One area seemed to have a lot of great blue herons and I wondered if the island was their roost.  There were also groups of laughing gulls. (Click on the small images to see a larger version.)

And then we started seeing Whooping Cranes. Even at a distance – they are easy to identify because they are so large…and so white. The young are rusty looking – particularly their heads. Many sightings were of 3 birds: 2 adult birds and a colt; it must have been a good year for increasing the whooping crane population!

There were other birds to see too between whooping crane sightings – roseate spoonbills, green-winged teals, willets, American avocets, more great blue herons, buffleheads, cormorants, an osprey, and reddish egret (that took off as a wave covered the spit of shells the bird was standing on).

I took some closeups of some shells…out of the water at low tide.

I also realized how wakes of boats impact the shoreline…why there are often blocks on the shore to reduce the erosion wakes can cause. It doesn’t take a big or fast-moving boat to cause damaging wakes in smaller channels.

And then we took a break as we headed back to Port Aransas – no more photos until the jetty with the usual brown pelicans.

We got back to the dock with plenty of time before our afternoon field trip for lunch; we then headed back to the Leonabelle Turnbull Birding Center.

Bird Photography Boat Tour

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Our second day of the Whooping Crane Festival continued with another boat tour after returning from the King Ranch and a quick lunch. The afternoon emphasis was on bird photography. The difference was subtle. The guide did suggest some settings to accommodate photographing in the very bright environment of a sunny day. I opted to take the normal opportunities to photograph birds as usual…but then took some photographic challenges too.

I started before we even boarded the boat. Grackles were taking snack packaging out of a trash can. The female seemed to be unimpressed with her partner’s antics.

I attempted to get a double-crested cormorant taking off from the water…managed to capture the form and splashes of water but the eye doesn’t show….plenty of room for improvement.

There were terns (probably common terns) diving toward the water for fish. I tried pointing my camera in that direction and pressing the button to take multiple pictures in fast succession. It was hard to hold the camera still as the boat moved! The shape of the bird as it nears the surface of the water was something I couldn’t study until I looked at my pictures on a bigger screen. This was my first attempt at photographing feeding terns!

The back of a white-tailed hawk – the only sighting of this species of the trip. It isn’t a great picture in the traditional sense….but it does tell a story. The bird was sitting in dead mangroves; the mangroves died during very cold weather a few years ago and recovery is slow; hurricane damage to the Aransas area would be even worse than before if one comes through before the mangroves can become established again.

The birds always seemed to be a little further away than optimal…and the boat was rocking. But I took pictures anyway: white ibis, little blue heron, osprey, great egret, and great blue heron. I tend to take photographs rather than make notes about what I am seeing…it’s easier with the camera already in hand!

And then there were the reddish egrets… with their pink and black bill.

And finally one started foraging…moving rapidly in the shallows. It seemed to veer off suddenly…something there that the bird didn’t expect?

I took group pictures of birds on small islands in the water…always interesting to see how many I can identify on my big screen later. In the one below, I see brown pelicans (adult and juvenile), American white pelicans, cormorants (double crested probably)…all in the foreground.

As I zoomed in on birds that were not in a group I noticed a black skimmer and some Caspian terns.

It’s always a thrill to see a bird I would not have seen without being on a birding field trip like this red-breast merganser. It was a single bird…swimming rapidly away from the boat…and I probably would not have noticed it without someone pointing it out. I’m not sure it was the guide or another participant that noticed it.

The same was true for another black-crowned night heron.  I photographed one on the King Ranch in the morning! I was pleased that I was able to find and focus on the bird more easily than many of the others on the boat.

The light began to change as we neared the end of the day. There were enough clouds to try a non-bird landscape shot of the water the sky…a bit of land at the horizon.

I changed a setting on my camera to try an artsy image of a cormorant and the shore as we came back toward the dock.

And then the boat stopped just before we got to the dock….for dolphins. I couldn’t top my husband’s dolphin picture in the bow wave of the big ship, but it was fun trying to anticipate when they would surface!

And then one last picture before we got off the boat! It was a great second day at the Whooping Crane Festival. The next morning was an early one….getting on a boat at 6 AM to see Whooping Cranes in the Aransas National Wild Life Refuge. We headed to the hotel for an early evening to be ready for it.

King Ranch

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The second day of the Whooping Crane Festival started early; we got on a bus to head to the King Ranch at 6 AM! The King Ranch Visitor Center was a little over an hour from Port Aransas (and we did not take the ferry). By the time we got there the sun was up.

We had a ‘rest stop’ at the visitor center…plenty of time to look around for birds. There were curve-billed thrashers on some prickly pear cactus.

A rufous hummingbird was not bothered by the sudden influx of people. It stayed in place long enough for everyone to get a good look.

Mockingbirds were around too….they are the state bird of Texas.

A golden-fronted woodpecker was spotted. It moved around a lot but there always seemed to be twigs between me and the bird!

Then we did most of our viewing from the bus for a bit since the ranch is so big…and the trip has a limited amount of time. I managed some OK pictures through the windows: a roadrunner and crested caracara….

Longhorn cattle.

We made a stop and saw a group of sandhill cranes in the distance.

Back on the bus…we had been seeing American kestrels all  morning and I eventually managed to get an image of one through the bus window…good enough for id but focus not sharp enough.

A group of female wild turkeys moved away as our bus got closer. Later we would see a group of male turkeys.

Another raptor through the bus window…a red-shouldered hawk.

The bus stopped at a water impoundment…and we all got an excellent view of an American Bittern.

There was a feeding station for birds at the next stop. We got good looks at red-winged blackbirds and gold-fronted woodpeckers…

And green jays!

There was a least grebe in the water a little ways down the road.

A snowy egret had caught breakfast.

Green-winged teal, pyrrhuloxia, and American Coots were also enjoying the water.

Alligator!

A Great Egret took off as the alligator headed toward it.

In the distance….Cinnamon teal with blue winged teal and a black necked stilt.

A great kiskadee made an appearance.

A black-crowned night heron is often hard to see in heavy vegetation. I always feel lucky when I finally see it and luckier still to get a photograph.

And the male turkeys were the last birds we saw as we headed back to the visitor center.

My husband and I both enjoyed this field trip…saw a lot of birds that we didn’t see during any of other field trips. It was interesting to learn a little history of the King Ranch as well. We had enough time for a quick lunch before showing up for trip out on a boat in the afternoon.

Sunset Dolphin Cruise

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The second activity of the Whooping Crane Festival for us was a Sunset Dolphin Cruise…in the late afternoon of the first day of the festival.

The angle of the sun made the water look bluer that it did earlier in the afternoon. There were plenty of brown pelicans about.

The moon was visible in the clear sky…above shoreline construction cranes.

Cormorants were using structures further above the water than earlier in the day.

I took several pictures of the Aransas Pass Lydia Ann Lighthouse as we passed by.

The high point of the trip was dolphins surfing the bow wave of a big ship coming through the channel. My husband managed to get a picture of three leaping out of the water!

By the end of the cruise the sun was sinking fast into the haze.

We headed to the hotel to rest up…be prepared for the early start of our second day at the Whooping Crane Festival.

Mustang Island Boat Tour

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The first tour of the Whooping Crane Festival for us was a birding-by-boat tour of Mustang Island on our first afternoon in Port Aransas TX. It was a sunny day…perfect temperature for the tour. We saw cormorants as we left the dock area for the main channel.

The bird sightings included a first for us: the white morph of the reddish egret. They are distinguished from other white egrets/juvenile herons by the pink and black bill. We saw more white morphs than the usual more numerous dark morphs! One of the images has a little blue heron along with the white morph of the reddish egret…for size comparison.  

A yellowlegs was searching for food in the shallows. It is hard to judge the size. Does the bill look long enough to be a greater yellowlegs? Not sure.

There seemed to be a lot of great blue herons as well. The wind was blowing enough to ruffle feathers.

A white ibis strolled near the shoreline.

A pelican on a post kept our boat in view.

A ring-billed gull was also enjoying the view from a post…did not seem as keen to turn as our boat moved past.

Turkey vultures were doing cleanup on a coyote carcass. There is some trash in the background. I try to avoid taking pictures of trash. The area was relatively clean, but trash is inevitable even in wild areas within water or wind distance of developed areas.

A little blue heron looked very intent on something in the water…ignoring our boat.

The osprey swooped in…and missed!

The cormorants with white outlining their yellow chin are neotropic cormorants. There was a group of them on a sandbar as we went by. Most of them stayed facing the sun but a few looked our way!

Port Aransas is on a barrier island with a ferry to cross the channel. Our tour boat went past the ferry crossing…a different perspective than when we were on the ferry in our car!

On the way back to the dock, we passed the jetty again with gulls and pelicans….and a royal tern.

Tomorrow’s post is about the sunset dolphin cruise that was the finale of our first day at the Whooping Crane Festival.