Christmas Eve Day...weird to be in the middle of Texas. I drove most of the day, although I spent at least a couple of hours in small towns trying to get a package of presents wrapped and sent to the SODAs, first in Santa Ana and then in Bangs. The deal was that the post offices close for lunch for one or two hours. I finally just stayed until the Bangs, Texas PO opened and cleaned out my cooler while I waited. There are thousands of small towns all over the country...like Bangs, the good ones evoking a time gone by, towns without Walmarts or Olive Gardens or Starbucks or Best Buys or McDonalds....towns with neatly kept houses and yards, porches, mature trees, no sidewalks, gardens, one grocery store, a few other businesses, usually a school, churches, sometimes a train station...a small post office. On a warm sunny day, these places always slow me down...in a good way.
In Texas even the country two-lane roads with no shoulders at all often have speed limits of 70, and the interstates vary from 75 to 85, so that slowing to 60 through the big cities is like super slow, making the congestion and lane changes seem easy.
It was sunny, so unlike a Michigan winter day. Of course, there was no snow. Leaving the high plains in the west, I was in the hill country of Texas, the Edwards Plateau, with green lawns again after several weeks of dirt or xeriscaped yards, which did remind of a spring or summer in Michigan...the small towns, the rolling landscape and hardwoods like oaks (not the same oaks we have in Michigan), cypress, sycamore, pecan, madrone, black cherry...
By the time I leave Texas, I will have driven close to 2000 miles in this state. It's huge.
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| West Texas |
This morning, I read all the posts about a Common Crane first seen in northwest Texas in late November, which stayed in the area about two weeks. This may or may not have been (and maybe there were two cranes seen) the crane which moved west to Roswell area. It was interesting to read of people driving from all over Texas to try to see this rarity. Most did. Here is a post about one search posted on Texbirds:
Subject: Crane chase (longish)
Date: Sun Nov 23 2014 10:43 am
From: dmarc-noreply AT freelists.org
...We settled in at Paul's Lake on the refuge to wait out the crane...Martin Reid showed us some maps and pointed out a route to search, so we echanged phone numbers with several other searchers, including Ed Wetzel who kept vigil at the lake, and set of scanning the thousands of cranes in the area. ...After quite a bit of scanning large flocks of cranes, we went to the CR1181 playa only to be overwhelmed by the incoming cranes. We and several others scoped every crane we could until we tired of the exercise....After lunch in Muleshoe, we went back to Paul's Lake where Ed still held watch. Many new chasers arrived. There were thousands of cranes loafing on the far shores and so we set out to walk around the lake to get a better look. As we were walking back to the crowd scene, a big blue SUV came screaming up the road followed by another car and another and another etc. We knew the chase was on! We sprinted to the road to hear where they were going and Martin shout out his window CR1181!!!! The next few minutes resembled a scene from Dukes of Hazard as we followed the caravan of vehicles exceeding reasonable and prudent speeds and fishtailing on the turn onto the dirt CR1181. Cameron Carver had located the crane and made the phone call and soon about 40 of us were sharing scopes, clamoring into truck beds and climbing onto SUV's for a better look. This bird is about 20% larger than the SACR's, is quite handsome and shows very typical markings and bill color for Common Crane with no asymmetry or other signs of hybridization....I always love these chases...
It was not a night to spend in a parking lot, so I got a motel in Georgetown, north of Austin, and read a zuzu book, eating Saga cheese and crackers. It wasn't so bad.....
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