Spring Break

Things had gotten into a bit of a rut lately.  If it were not for the challenge of dealing with the wind, it would be hard to tell one day from the next.  Here in the Big Bend March has certainly roared in like a lion.  That would be okay if it would live up to the agreement that it should go out like a lamb but there is none of that.  With the exception of a few hours here and there, the wind is inescapable.

But we did have a little something to stir things up besides the wind.  Spring Break!  We had a crazy ten day period.  The whole state of Texas as well as most of New Mexico and Arizona let school out at the same time.  I can say with no hesitation that not every spring breaker goes to the beach for the holiday.  Our visitor count at the Chisos Basin Visitor Center jumped from just over one hundred a day in February to roughly six hundred fifty a day once spring break got underway.

The above photo was taken on a Wednesday.  This is Cyndee's and my day to roam the park but the basin visitor center needed supplies and change for both registers, so we made a delivery.  This is the way it looked inside the basin visitor center for a solid week.  The ranger behind the counter with the hat on is our supervisor, Ranger Rob.

The warmer weather that has attracted the spring break revelers has also seen the coming of migratory birds, bears coming out of dens with new cubs, reptiles warming up enough to move out of their burrows, and the leafing-out of mesquite trees, the last of the trees to decide it is safe to expose tender new growth to the desert night.  A sure sign there will be no more freezes.

Just before spring break commenced we made a trip down to the Rio Grande Village and visited the nature trail and Daniel's Ranch.  We heard that the birds had started showing up so we went to see what had come in.

Standing on a bluff above the Rio Grande Village camp ground.  Looking west the Chisos Mountain range is visible in the distance.

 At this time the cottonwood trees were just beginning to fill in their crowns with pale, tender growth.  While admiring the promise of spring I became aware of a presence and there, on a rock, about waist high to me sat a bird.  A rock wren to be more specific.  He seemed to be as interested in me as I was him.

 

While the rock wren was not the least bit bothered by my presence, the same can not be said for other birds we have been trying to spot.  At Daniel's Ranch the vermillion flycatchers have arrived enmasse.  But while there were plenty of them about, they were very fidgety and really hard to get close enough to photograph, even with a 300mm lens.

 

I finally resorted to bracing the camera against a tree and waiting for a bird to appear in the lens.  Being at a significant distance made the field of view pretty large.  Whenever I saw something red I just held the shutter button down and hoped for the best.  What you see below is the result of heavy cropping and enlarging.

 



 

 The above series was pretty nice since there was direct sunlight making the most out of the brilliant red feathers.  When I took the next shots I thought they would be little more than silhouettes but when I got home and looked at them on a large screen I was pleasantly surprised.



 

The sun shining through the wing feathers and the feet releasing their grip on the branch was a double bonus.

On the way out of Rio Grande Village we took a side road that services the port of entry.  This little area has seen the rise and fall of tiny communities.  Sometimes supporting farming, sometimes mining but always a monumental struggle to eek out a living in this hard country.  And sometimes this was the place where lives ended.  Like life was lived, death was attended to in the same manner.  People made do with what they had, which usually was not much.

Crosses, but not names mark these graves that have a view of the Chief Border Patrol house.

 On a grocery run to Fort Stockton we got an early start.  It was going to be a long day because in addition to acquiring a months worth of sustenance we were also going to have the truck serviced in preparation for our departure from Texas.  And a trip to the pharmacy, and the strip mall, and lunch at K-Bob's.  But on the way we have to cross a lot of ground and at that time of the morning driving requires plenty of alertness to avoid critters on the road.  It is a pretty serious game of rabbit dodge, deer dodge, coyote dodge, and javelina dodge.

But not everything is on the road.  We know to look for raptors sitting on telephone poles, warming themselves in the morning sun and waiting for the thermals to build that will be their locomotion for their hunting from on high.

We spotted the below hawk from a distance, just before border patrol station south of Marathon.  There was nobody on the road and we coasted to a stop and I got out and walked across the highway towards the hawk, snapping pictures with each step.

This shot was the last one before he decided he had had just about enough of me.

He turned his back on me and got pointed into the wind.

And with a heave from his legs he was airborne without so much as a flap.

In another second his legs were tucked, wings curved to maximize lift and tail ruddering him away from me with great efficiency.

Fort Stockton is a 126 mile drive (one way) from where we are parked in Big Bend National Park.  After driving that far I have expectations of getting what I have come for.  For around these parts I guess that is leaving myself open for disappointment.  There is a Walmart Supercenter there and Walmart has consistently been our go-to store to find all the things we need for our eating habits. like salt-free and sugar-free spices, sugar-free cereal and a bunch of other something-free stuff.  But the Fort Stockton Walmart has mostly shelves that are free of stock.  I honestly think that they do not know how to order supplies.  There are literally isles with nothing on the shelves.  And this is not a one time thing.  We have been going in there for five months and it is always the same.  We had to drive the extra hundred miles to Odessa to get what we needed.

But with it getting so close to our time to depart Big Bend we made do with what we could get knowing we will be in Midland and Odessa the first of April (about a month from this trip).  The nice thing about this trip is that we did all this stuff and will be pulling up to our rig while it is still daylight.  We'll have groceries put away and a glass of iced tea in hand just in time to watch The Big Bang Theory.