Thursday, February 22 - This has been a week for the birds...literally. We spent yesterday and today in bird areas, wandering about trying to find new species. And we had some luck, as photos I'll post in a minute will demonstrate. It's been fun, especially since the wind has finally died down. A cold front came in last night, chased away the hot weather with a big thunderstorm, and left us with cool cloudy weather today. But it was good for hunting down birds, both days.

Tuesday was housework and planning. After much discussion and debate, we decided to bite the bullet and head to Big Bend Park. It will add a lot of miles to this trip, but we can' t resist going back to this great park. We'll leave for Laredo tomorrow, then Comstock on Saturday, then on to Big Bend on Sunday. We've booked 5 days there, so that will be as far west as we'll go, since we plan to be home by March 21st.

We have a nice guy next door, a transplanted German from Stuttgart who came to Canada 20 years ago. We were chatting this evening when a friend of his came by. He's retired, sold his home in Michigan, and has hit the road in a big motor home. The interesting thing is that he established residency in South Dakota. All he had to do was stay in a hotel for one night, set up a postal address, and he is domiciled in the state. That done, he has the benefit of no state income taxes. Add that to no property taxes, and he saves over $8,000. a year. Nice touch! South Dakota has no state income taxes. Sort of like the big motor sport and tennis stars moving to Monaco.

Anyway, here are some bird pictures, hopefully, and a shot of a little havelina (not a member of the pig family, but looks sort of like one). First, the green jay, which is very colorful; then the chachalaca, a big guy compared to the cardinal on the feeder with him; third, a golden-fronted woodpecker, beautifully colored; next, the altamira oriole, also finely colored; and then the kiskadee, blessed with a beautiful yellow breast. The guy at the bottom is the havelina, fairly common in south Texas.

It's fun to get out in the outdoors chasing around with binocs and camera. We both get a lot of pleasure out of it, and although we don't keep a comprehensive list, we do keep some records of different birds we've seen in different areas. 

Tomorrow we hit the road, with no particularly long drives. We will probably be out of wifi range for most of the next week, so don't be concerned if you don't see anything appearing on the blog for awhile.

More later, maybe a fair bit later. Stay tuned.