02-25-19

Not much of a sunrise this morning but at least it came up.

The clouds thickened up and very little sunlight was getting through.  Occasionally a tiny little hole would open up in the clouds and a shaft of sunlight would illuminate something.  That happened just at the right time to catch this barge heading north.

The next time it happened this Caspian Tern flew through the shaft of sunlight.

After breakfast we put on our walking shoes and headed to the beach.  Becky got quite a way ahead of me, she usually does, and when she had walked for half the time she turned and headed back.  On the way back she saw a couple of well dressed guys standing on the beach talking and she snapped a picture.

The two guys turned out to be Ben and me.  I don't know which of us has the best "Beach Hat", probably Ben.

After we returned home we spent some time on the balcony deciding what to do with the rest of the day.  While we were discussing it a couple of fishermen put their kayaks in and headed out.  One of them leaned over a little too far!

We finally decided to tour the Laguna Atascosa National Wildlife Refuge, about 20 miles from here, so into the car and down the road we went.  When we started getting close we saw some birds that don't hang around on the island.  This is a Caracara, sort of a hawk.

A group of vultures was working on a dead critter. When we drove by all of them except one jumped up and flew away.

Here are some of the birds we saw today.  This is a Green Jay having a bath.  There was very little water left in the basin when it was through.

There were lots of trails through different parts of the refuge.

We stopped at a bird watching blind where we could see the birds without disturbing them.  I thought this Cardinal was playing Peek-a-Boo with us.

Eventually it hopped down a little farther and looked around before jumping down to the ground and eating some of the seeds that are put out for the birds.

This little rodent was helping itself to the seeds also.  We checked with one of the employees and he told us what it was and then we mentioned it to another employee and he said that the first guy was wrong and gave us a different name.  Both of the names contained the words "cotton mouse".  That's close enough for me.

We were also told to be on the lookout for a rare woodpecker called a Golden Fronted Woodpecker.  We saw one about halfway through our walk but couldn't get a very good picture of it.  From the back it looks like a few other woodpeckers, like the Ladderback, the Red Bellied, the Hairy, etc.

From the front it's a different story.

We thought this tree would fit nicely in a scary movie, you know, something where the wicked witch would put her hand on her hip and cast a spell on you.

Becky knows what kind of flowers these are but I wasn't paying attention so I'll add the name when she returns from her last little walk.  She just came back and told me they are called Lantana Flowers.

Before we left the refuge we took a drive around the area on one of the roads used for sightseeing.  We stopped at a viewing station by a lake but didn't go down to the lakeshore.

On the way back to the condo we stopped at the boardwalk and took a quick walk to check on the spoonbills.....  they were still sleeping.

There's some maintenance work being done on the building and some of the crew were working part way up the side.  Doesn't look like much fun to me.  At least they're not hanging by a rope like the guy that was painting the other side a couple of days ago.

We must be living right.....  the clouds split near the horizon so we were able to have a nice sunset tonight.

Just a couple more days left to put together one of these pages and then it's back to the land of ice and snow.  Hope our last few days here are nice!

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