Back to San Antonio Viejo

    It's been about a week since our intrepid party of four returned to the main ranch. Mostly good weather so far, but things are bound to change. Compared to El Sauz, these past three grids have been pretty light on captures. Two of those grids were a bit labyrinthine to navigate, having us constantly checking our compasses and desperate to find the flags. It was a bit late in the game to put up flags between points, so I ended up drawing arrows in the dirt with my heels.

A hispid pocket mouse (Chaetodipus hispidus) at a more open grid

     But spring seems to have come to Texas. All this rain has set up the plants to put on a good show, and the scrubs and grasslands are alive with flowers. Even the prickly acacias and mesquites turn out fluffy yellow and white blooms. Probably my favorites would be the winecups and purple sage, they produce such a different color than you would think you would see out here.

Purple sage, aka cenizo. Zane Grey anyone?

 

     We definitely have a full house here at the headquarters. Our eight have condensed ourselves into the kitchen bunkhouse to make way for other visitors from Texas A&M University. We have a grad student working with grassland bird predators and an entire herpetology class plus their professor and grad students. The herpetology class is a bit on the rowdy side, but have yet to live up to their reputation for inebriated shenanigans. From what I gather, the group neither has to wake early or work late, and mostly tours the ranch searching for snakes and the like. This makes it a bit easier for them to party late, which we with our hours cannot really sustain. There are definitely some interesting stories from their trip out here last year, I believe involving a run-in with Africanized bees during one of the days and some burying of boots and keys during one of the nights.

     As for me, I'm back on my days off. Yesterday I actually managed to have a nice-ish day, so I drove down to go birding at Falcon State Park and then swung around Rio Grande City to get groceries. I didn't exactly get up at thte crack of dawn for the birding, but I still managed to see a lot of cool birds and got a easy hike in. It's actually a little weird now for me to go hiking and have a wide, well-kept trail already made, kind of nice. On the way to Rio Grande I joined the nearly-had-a-ticket club, got pulled over for going 71 in a 65mph zone. I guess I should be more careful; around the border is crawling with local deputies, highway patrol, and border patrol. The officer was courteous enough, and I just got a warning. I suspect that the minor speeding was just a good excuse to pull me over, make sure that I wasn't some kind of smuggler (although what kind of smuggler drives around in a Volkswagen Beetle I don't know).

 Somewhat blurry shots of a cactus wren, desert cottontail, and pyrrhuloxia using my camera binoculars (need to keep tweaking my technique)

 

 Other things that have been going on:

 

-New species: scissor-tailed flycatcher (Tyrannus forficatus), great kiskadee (Pitangus sulphuratus), desert cottontail (Sylvilagus audubonii)

-Got a package from home!

-Saw a good-sized indigo snake at El Sauz

-Was able to visit a bookstore in McAllen

-Avoided a small stampede of cattle by shouting at them