Sunday, February 1, 2009
Wilders' Driveway, Harlingen, TX: Jan 20-27
When ex-fulltimer Janet Wilder read of our plan to come to eastern TX, she immediately wrote back offering us the RV pad beside their house. While we hadn't planned to come this far south, her generous offer made us rethink the schedule and add a week down here. There is excellent birding nearby, and we were sure we could amuse ourselves and enjoy Janet & Barry's company for a week. The RV spot is quite wonderful, with expansive views, full hookups, free WiFi, laundry, RO water, and an adorable Toy Poodle puppy (Mickey D) to play with. Barry brought the puppy by one day, and both the "new" cats viewed him & touched noses, with no hissing or spitting. The fact that they each outweigh Mickey D 2-to-1 probably has a lot to do with that.We tried out the local bridge club and found it to be definitely second-rate compared to the places we are used to playing. It is held at the local Elks Club and the bridge room adjoins the bar with no partition in between. The whole building smells like a dirty ashtray. When we mentioned this to one woman she looked shocked & said the game was "smoke-free". Here that only means that no one smokes at the game. They were having a tournament that weekend and we decided to play in the Sunday Swiss Team game if they could find a pair to make up our team. They found two women, who were both very nice but also very unsuited as partners. One was a beginner & the other an advanced Life Master. They miscommunicated all day long, but we still had two impressive wins and happily left with our dignity intact!
We went birding at nearby Estero Llano Grande State Park, about 25 miles from here. When we were here many years ago, one of the birds that had eluded us was the green kingfisher, and we hoped to see it. Our first outing to this park was pleasant, but pretty disappointing bird-wise. We saw one new species (tropical kingbird), only identifiable because of our guide was able to distinguish its song from the almost identical Couch's kingbird. 
For the rest of the outing we were shown places where rare birds had been earlier that day. We did see a black-throated magpie-jay, which is a Central American bird that does not migrate. They thought this bird had escaped, so it does not count on an "official" life list, but it was lovely to see.Saturday we accompanied Janet & Barry to a nearby flea market. This is a standard winter activity for RVers, and we needed to keep in the pattern. We mostly "window shopped" but did find a few things that we really needed plus some reasonably priced and excellent looking produce. The avocados from Mexico are especially wonderful.
We had one more day allotted to birding, and instead of trying someplace new, decided to return to Estero Llano, since there were continued reported sightings of some birds we hoped to see. The wind was blowing hard which usually makes for poor birding. However, we headed over to the pond area, where a kindly fellow birder encouraged us to wait around for a green kingfisher that had been there recently. It was worth the wait! We saw both the male & female, and we really got good looks at them both. Plus, we got to see the male catch a fish and fly away with it in its beak. Then we went on the guided walk into the area with the "real rarities". There were many excellent birders in the group, so there were lots of eyes searching. They found almost all the rarities, and we got to see two of them -- rose-throated becard & tropical parula. We were pretty happy!We really appreciate Janet & Barry for having such a wonderful RV pad to offer us. It is their way of keeping in touch with the RVing community, since they now live in a lovely home in Harlingen. It's wonderful to have such a friendly place to stay!
The weather here has been varied, but warm & humid for the most part. We know most of our readers are having lots of cold weather, but we are complaining about the heat & humidity now. I hope it won't be this way until we get west again! We both hate it when the pages of books start curling up and if you spill water on anything it takes several days for it to get dry. The forecast is for much cooler weather starting tomorrow, so who knows, next time we may be complaining about the cold!
# posted by Doug and Willie @ 7:49 AM 
Post a Comment