2012 January 15, from Far South Texas

Hello, Everybody,

After a few days camping in Big Bend Ranch State Park, I drove north for an hour
to get to food shopping and the internet. I called Ed and Mary's cellphone to
see how they were progressing toward our rendezvous in Big Bend National Park,
and they were only a couple of hours west of where I was 'camped' in a pulloff
on the same highway. It was fun to meet up with them that way, and the next day
I joined them in to the Chisos Basin (main) campground in BBNP.

Much of Big Bend NP is desert, but the Chisos Mountains are very rugged and
spectacular. Another main attraction is Santa Elena Canyon, on the Rio Grande at
the southwestern corner of the Park.Quite spectacular to hike into, and with
many interesting plants. As I was leaving the Park for the Rio Grande Valley
farther downstream, I pulled over to photograph two hawks sitting on a dried out
Agave stalk, and convinced myself that they were Broad-winged Hawks, a new bird
for me and an extreme rarity for that part of Texas. I excitedly sent my
sighting and picture to the Texas Rare Bird Alert website, and was somewhat
deflated when their expert replied that they were Red-tailed Hawks, the most
common hawk species. Red-taileds are extremely variable, and sure enough I did
find some pictures in my field guides which matched mine. Wishful thinking.

As I was approaching Laredo, back on the River, I saw a most unusual cloud
formation: the north half of the sky was clear blue, and the south half was gray
overcast, with a straight line edge of the clouds running from horizon to
horizon. The photograph I took makes the cloud edge look curved, but this is a
'fisheye' artifact of the panorama process.

Some birds are very easy to identify, and some 'mystery birds' are not. I
photographed an American Pipit who looked just like a Pipit is supposed to look,
but shortly after that I photographed another who fit except the usual white
eye-ring (a key field mark) was not evident. Finally had to say it couldn't be
anything else, so it must be that. Keeps things from getting boring, at least.

I was birding along the River in Laredo when I met up with some Border Patrol
men getting ready to launch a patrol boat. A very impressive Diamondback
Airboat, with a large V-8 gas engine driving a big propellor, and the front crew
carrying a M-16 on his lap. I looked at similar boats on the internet, and the
people who race them were talking about 90 MPH speeds.

At south end of Falcon Lake I discovered a great camping place, Falcon County
Park, which is pleasant with grass and trees, very few other campers and those
quite distant, and free camping unlimited, and even with water outlets. It's
near a great birding spot on the River, Salineño, where one can sit in the shade
near the feeders and have several dozen birds flying and perching and feeding,
many within 10-25 feet. And birds exotic to a western birder: Green Jay, Great
Kiskadee, Plain Chacalaca, and gorgeous Orioles.

Farther down the Valley, I decided to try for a very rare Tropical Parula which
was being reported. After spending 6 hours watching for it, I was about to leave
when another birder asked me "Do you know what that bird is over there?" It was
THE bird, and I had not noticed it and was about the walk out on it.

With that in hand, I continued to the Lower Gulf Coast to look for the Aplomado
Falcon, which I had spent a lot of fruitless time on last winter. Laguna
Atascosa NWR has a 15 mile loop one-way loop drive which I'd driven 4 or 5 times
last winter without any luck, but this time at mile 13 one flushed from a tree
next to the road and I was able to see it clearly. Hooray!

Back in the Valley again, a Golden-crowned Warbler was being reported, and for a
while I thought this would be a 'nemesis bird' for me. I spent 5 days there,
trudging the little paths through the dense brush and trees looking for it,
several times arriving at a group of birders who told me "It was just here a
minute ago". I was about to call it quits when a birder came trotting over to me
and another guy I was talking with, all excited with "It's here!". Just a short
distance down the trail there were a bunch of people peering into the brush at
the bird, which was hopping around vigorously and very hard to see, but I
finally got my binoculars on it for a definitive look. What a relief. Not need
to come back another day. It's very frustrating when a half-dozen other birders
are seeing the bird and exclaiming about it, and you have not yet found it, and
can't help thinking it's going to disappear before you do.

After all that intensity, I'm back at my nice Falcon County Park, relaxing and
working on the truck and little projects, and finalizing the new slideshow. I've
got some new software from Nik which plugs into Photoshop, and I think it is
giving me better results that I was getting before. It seems to pull out feather
detail on many pictures, whereas before I'd get that quality only at short
distances and perfect lighting. And it's quicker and easier that straight
Photoshop.

The new slideshow is 11_12_Dec_TX.exe

The server address is:     http://www.meetmarsha.com/~john (note the tilde ~
before the john part)

Boilerplate follows: Each browser is a little different, but generally you can
either choose OPEN to view the show once, or choose SAVE TO DISK and then OPEN
if you want to have it your hard drive for future re-viewing.

Right-Arrow or Right-Click or SpaceBar will advance to the next picture.
Left-Arrow or Left-Click will return to the previous picture. Esc will end the
show at any time; use Esc if the show ever seems stuck.

If you don't have a high-speed Internet connection it's not realistic to
download these large files on a phone line; please let me know, as it is very
easy for me to send them to you on a CD. And if you would like any of the
individual images, perhaps to print, just let me know. I periodically remove
older slideshows to put up new ones; let me know if you want me to send you a CD
of any of the 'back issues', or of all of them from 2004-2011 along with their
accompanying emails, on CDs. And if you don't want to get any more emails like
this one in the future, just let me know. If you have friends who might be
interested, I'll be happy to add them to my email list and they can download the
slideshows if they have a Windows computer and broadband internet connection.
None of this is commercial or copyrighted, the more who enjoy the pictures, the
better.

Regards, John Armitage 1-970-250-6080 john@qued.com