January 4th Blind Report - San Angelo State Park

It was awfully good to get back into the blind this morning. Last weekend was ruined by a lousy experience trying to take my Graduate Review Exam (GRE) and having their network drop 2 tests into the 4 test sequence. Very frustrating. That was followed-up with a Sunday that just didn't work the way I wanted to.

This weekend was a much better set of circumstances. I was able to get back to Abilene yesterday and take my GRE with a very positive test result (no, I'm not going to share, but let's just say I'm a very happy camper). The plan was to get out to the blind today and everything worked the way it was supposed to. Only two things were not that great. First was that it was mighty cold and mighty windy and I did not dress for the occasion. Second was that I'm still shooting without a good tripod head and my hand started to fatigue very quickly. As such I only stayed in the blind for a couple of hours, but they were very productive hours.

Lots and lots of color today. Plenty of Northern Cardinals, House Finches, and assorted sparrows. Both Golden-Fronted and Ladderbacked Woodpeckers made visits into the blind, though in both cases not for very long and not in places where I could get a good shot of them. Sparrows were running very strong with House, White-crowned, and Rufous-crowned varieties being very prevalent. Mourning and White-winged doves were present in large numbers, though White-winged were far more common. No bobwhites this morning, but looking back at the last couple of visits, they didn't usually show up until later in the morning.

No laundry list this morning. The blind was out of sheets, I didn't remember to bring a new supply, and in the big picture I don't think I could have gripped my pencil well enough to make good notes anyway.

Images:
Northern Mockingbird, San Angelo State Park, ©2009 Jim Miller
Northern Cardinal (Male), San Angelo State Park, ©2009 Jim Miller

May 23rd Report - San Angelo S.P.

Starting with a bit of a follow-up from last time. After I left my Golden Fronted Woodpecker friend showed up at the blind, though in my opinion the good light had all ready departed for the day. He, too, may be reading the blog as he was the first bird in the blind when I got there this morning.

One of the things that I really like about the blind at SASP is the fact that birders who come in also record what they've seen (or what they think they've seen). Granted that the completeness/accuracy of the list is up to the skill/experience of the birder who makes the notes, but in itself it shows a sense of community and camaraderie amongst the birders in the area to help pass along what they've seen to maybe help spur novice birders to look in the book and get additional insight.

Now back to our regularly scheduled program... A somewhat disappointing day in the blind in terms of quantity of birds. Species spread was pretty good, along with a "lister" for me (the Roadrunner), but the numbers were way down from my last visit. This was especially disappointing given the fact that it was on a day off, though admittedly I did not have the full amount of time that I would normally have due to family, fraternal organization, and photo business obligations (more about the photo business stuff in another post later in the summer).

Let's start with the laundry list:

Species List

Black Chinned Hummingbird (Female)
Black Tufted Titmouse
Bullock's Oriole
Cactus Wren
Cowbirds (Bronze and Brown-headed)
Curve Billed Thrasher
Doves (White Winged and Mourning)
Golden Fronted Woodpecker (Male only)
House Finch (M/F)
Northern Cardinal (M/F)
Northern Mockingbird
Painted Bunting (Male only)
Red-Winged Blackbird (Mostly male, a couple of juvenile)
Roadrunner
Sparrows (House only)

Outside of the blind I saw a number of Scissortail Flycatchers, Northern Bobwhites, and one Turkey Vulture that was taking care of the remains of a squirrel that appeared to have gotten a bad case of P235/70 R16 disease.

It was considerably warmer this morning at 8am than it has been of late. If the thermometer in the blind is to be believed, in the shade of the structure it was 75ºF (23.9ºC for my metric friends) when I arrived at around 8AM and it climbed well over 80ºF when I left a couple of hours later.

Butterfly activity continues to speed up, and I had my first picturesque Variegated Fritillary sighting of the season along with a couple of Queen butterflies, one of which is a keeper that will likely be printed by the end of the weekend.

I didn't have time to walk the trails after my time in the blind, but I'm hoping to have a chance to get back this weekend to spend some time on the trails to see how the rest of the bird and butterfly activity is progressing.

Images:
Mourning Dove, San Angelo S.P., (c) 2008 Jim Miller
Variegated Fritillary, San Angelo S.P., (c) 2008 Jim Miller