It's been a couple of weeks since coming back from El Sauz. So what's been going on? Well, first off we have a ton more people working out here now. When me and my crewmate got back from the other ranch, we were greeted by almost completely full bunkhouses. It's hard to say how many we have at one time with some people coming every couple of weeks, but at any one time we might have our vegetation crew (4 people), another vegetation crew (3-4 people), another herpetology crew (2-3 people), and various interns helping with birding or working with cattle. It was a bit cramped before, but now I'd say we're bursting from the seems. We all cook our own meals in one kitchen, and we're a little short on fridge, cabinet, bunk, and every other kind of space. I admit I can't get everyone's names, but it is good to have some new faces around here.
We also miraculously got a day off for Memorial Day, making it an unexpected 3-day weekend. Didn't know until a few days before, but I did manage to go somewhere interesting. Four of us made the trip to coastal South Padre, where things went well if not as expected. The event that we went to see turned out to be sadly lacking on the live music, food, and general entertainment, but at least it gave us an excuse to get to the ocean. We were not prescient enough to bring swimsuits, but the weather was good and I got a walk on a real beach. Well, something I could call a beach: the "beach" at Port Mansfield by the other ranch is rather pathetic. Ate some seafood, scouted out some places to go next time around, had a good time.
On the birding front, I think I'm getting all right with the identification. Of the birds that are out here I can identify most by song alone. There will always be a few unknowns, from only hearing bits of the song, just hearing contact calls, or seeing just the tailfeathers of some flying far away from you, but the process is certainly not as overwhelming as it was a little over a month ago. Collectively we're pretty familiar with our sites, and the new topographic layer on our GPS units helps us figure out the trouble spots in moving from point to point. Basically, it shows us an aerial view of where we are, which is pretty useful. Evils like impenetrable hedges show up like shadows and might as well be marked as "here be dragons", and shortcuts like cattle trails and unmarked roads appear like light threads. The weather has been with us, so far. Fortunately none of the major flooding other parts of Texas are seeing.
New species:
-Groove-billed ani (Crotophaga sulcirostris)
-Audubon's oriole (Icterus graduacauda)
-Baltimore oriole (Icterus galbula)
-Yellow-billed cuckoo (Coccyzus americanus)
-Western meadowlark (Sturnella neglecta)
-Long-billed thrasher (Toxostoma longirostre)
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