A Super Golden-Cheeked Warbler Day!

This morning's plan was to do the bird survey at Warbler Vista. I had heard nine golden-cheeked warblers there last week, before the rain began, but hadn't been able to find one to see through my binoculars. Today, Peggy, another volunteer, asked to go with me for the survey. This is her second year here, and she still hadn't seen the warbler. So, we headed out about 8:30 for Warbler Vista. No sooner had we headed down Cactus Rock Trail, and I heard a male warbler singing. It was a beginning to a spectacular hike. It took us about three hours to do the more than three mile hike, but there were many stops along the way to search the canopy for the singing warblers. We counted 17 golden-cheeks along the way and actually got to watch about seven or eight of them. At one point in the trail, we were able to see five of these endangered warblers flitting about, singing, and chasing each other above us. What a thrilling morning. Although I had identified quite a number of these birds by ear over the last two weeks, today topped the cake with all the visual sightings. We were both happy to add this bird to our life lists. I hope I have similar luck with spotting the endangered black-capped vireo in the next few weeks. I told Peggy that any time she wanted to add a life bird to her list, just give me a call! ;)

Working on mundane chores in the afternoon just seemed too anticlimatic, so I asked Diana if she would like to go out to take pictures of the bluebonnets. She had been working all morning on the computer developing some maps for the educational programs, so she was more than ready to join me for a road trip. She printed out a map of the bluebonnet trail and off we went. As it turned out, it's just a little early in the season for spectacular shots of the bluebonnets. We saw small bunches of them, but nothing very noteworthy. The afternoon was not a loss, however, as we drove around and saw a few more lakes that are made by dams along the Colorado river. We even took a tour of the Shady Oaks RV park. This is a park right along LBJ lake. We came upon this park after driving down a road we thought would take us to one of the dams. The park is for retired persons, only. The sites were pretty close together, but the rent was only $230/mo plus electricity. They really like to have folks that are going to live there full time. It's OK if you like fishing, but certainly didn't appeal to us.

We headed home after our afternoon get away. No pictures today, but I'll try again soon.

Thanks for stopping by....talk to you later, Judy

PS. I heard from Lowe's about the blinds and they do not do work in motorhomes. That kind of bites! I'll have to think of something else.