RVing in the time of COVID 10: Side trips to the Conch Republic.

We made it to our next parking location, a campsite we are buying near Lutz, Florida.  I had barely gotten set up before packing the car and heading south for needed birds.  For weeks, two birds I needed had been reported in and near Key West.  I thought it would be a fortuitous event, to not only get one bird but two, unfortunately, in a period of three days, I would be making two 450 mile one-way trips to the southern point of the continental US.

As it would turn out the ABA (American Birding Association) would be making their listing criteria, consistent.  Ever since they added Hawaii to the listing area, there have been inconsistencies.  Many birds in Hawaii are exotics and when they added Hawaii, they added these species.  Well, some of these birds have established themselves on the mainland, too, but are not on the "Continental" list, so this summer the ABA came out with a list showing which birds that are in HI have established populations.  One of these I wrote about before, the Key West Chicken, or Red Junglefowl is the USA's longest established exotic population of birds, and had been ignored to be on the list, well, now it is on the list, as is Rose-ringed parakeet (California and Naples), red-vented bulbul (Houston), and Indian peafowl (California and Florida).  Your list is your list, you can add these HI exotics in other US established populations or not, but for me, I like being consistent so I can compare myself to others, so now each of these birds can be added to my list, (I have seen all of them in HI already).

So I met up with Larry Manfredi as I told him, misery loves company, and birding together is more fun than by yourself.  I drove down to Florida City and slept in the first motel I had during the whole pandemic, I had to Clorox the place, but I slept a little before meeting Larry at dawn.  One bird, the red-legged thrush, a Cuban subspecies of the species (it may eventually be split from the Bahamas resident subspecies seen in Florida too) which had been seen at the Key West Botanical Gardens, a place that only opens at 10AM, so at 10:01 I paid the $20 for two admissions and we went in to the stakeout.  We waited, and waited, and we waited.

So, standing there I got distracted by other things:

The Florida duskywing, is a species of spread-winged skipper that is limited entirely to habitat within the Keys.  This female has purplish wings.  This butterfly has declining numbers and a limited range.  It was nice to see them.

Lifer butterfly nabbed I then got my Key West Chicken, bird #808.

So....we waited, waited, ....waited...waited some more...waited....I saw a year bird, a worm-eating warbler, playing peek-a-boo, and then we waited....

Some other butterflies:

Cassius blue

Mangrove skipper

three-spotted skipper

So after six hours, we bailed on the thrush and drove up to Big Pine Key and the "Blue Hole" to look for another potential lifer bird, which as soon as we arrived was pointed out to us, and in seconds, I was taking pictures of the Cuban Pewee.  

Lifer bird #809, Cuban Pewee

I had seen one of Little San Salvador Is. in the Bahamas in 2019, so it wasn't my world lifer, but it was a good bird and fun to watch for a while.  Larry and I then toured the neighborhood,  Hurricane Irma central, the island is coming back pretty nice.  I understand the ravishes of Irma as it was the same storm that nit our homes on St. Martin.  The endangered Key deer are still lounging around.

The nicest Key Deer buck, I've ever seen.

Then we saw our goal, free-ranging, self-supporting, Indian peafowl, peacocks, hanging around, acting just like the Key deer, relaxed, also hurricane survivors.  Chickens, peacocks, and...pewees, a strange listing day, but worthwhile, so we headed back.

Indian peafowl, lifer #810

I was back in Tampa at midnight, and zonked out.  As luck would have it, the thrush was found again on December 3rd, and the 4th, irritating me, and then at 3PM on the 4th, an even better bird--A ruddy quail-dove.

So a few hours later I was driving south all night to be at Ft Zachary Taylor at 8am opening.  I have experience with chasing quail-dove species.  I learned some things.

1) they are hard to find

2) if you don't find them when a park first opens, the skulky devils will either flush or just sit tight and it is only dumb luck when seeing them.  a park like Ft Taylor is busy so if not looking at 8:05 you will miss your chance.

3) everyone will be there.  I could feel people flying south already from any point you could get to Miami by midnight (the last flight)

4) COVID be damned, no one will care about that 

5) they are creatures of habit so focus on where it was

So I arrived at 7:48, and here is the line waiting for "Reveille" at the nearby military base, then the gate opened.

There were 20 cars behind me, people on bicycles, and a car tried to sneak in from the wrong lane, it was crazy, the check in lady was overwhelmed and was trying to give everyone a map, everyone knew exactly where they were going and she was just slowing us down...but a moment later, the hammock was full.  I was on stakeout just above where the bird had been "put to bed," Other birders were there barefoot, birders with dogs, babies, on flip flops, some hardly dressed, some over dressed, and some well, ....I digress.  I was recognized by many birders, one wanted to talk too loudly but I was trying to stay alert, seeing this bird is NOT easy and a bird chaser only talks after the bird is seen, some times to the annoyance of late comers trying to see the bird for the first time.  We walked in and looked in the leaf litter and well, we all saw nothing.........at least the rain stayed away.   Birders had driven from Tennessee all night, flown in from Texas, and Northeast....and all of these guys had seem the other birds on the Keys still hanging around.

The quail dove was never seen all day.  A rumor was going around that it was found by someone using heat signature technology and then spotted by looking.  I don't know if that is true but if so, was both fascinating and scary, scary that I may have to buy that equipment.  At 10 AM I braved a surprisingly crowded Duval Street and town and went to the thrush stakeout where...it rained...and rained.  Then after two hours everyone there disappeared but the rain had stopped, I smelled something.  The old "skua birder" in me made me walk out and see what was up, then I got a text, a text from someone on the dove stakeout six miles away, that they had found...the THRUSH,  I laughed to myself as I ran to the entrance where I saw everyone.

"OOPS!"  A man from Alaska said who I had met birding in Alaska years before,  "We forgot Olaf."  

But then a birder I has chased a LaSagra flycatcher with before in Miami showed me the bird and all was well.  I got photos and bird #811, Red-legged thrush a rather handsome avian specimen, the subspecies from Cuba or Puerto Rico

Birders from the dove stakeout filtered over and after a while I began the 7 hour drive home, or at least back to my RV.  This was world lifer bird #1504, #864 for the expanded ABA list , the numbers just keep growing 

So it was good I had a backup bird...

four days, four lifer listed birds and a lot of miles....COVID, the Keys were getting busy.....everyone down here looks to be saying screw it, too bad, and glad I didn't have any one outside of the birders I had contact with.

Despite everyone here, stay safe, wear a mask, and mavbe stay home, but I didn't stay home so saying that would make me a hypocrite 

Olaf

RVing in the Time of COVID 8: Kitsch, UFOs and Shopping

We spent a few days in West Texas beating the Black Friday shopping, going to the World's smallest Target outside of Marathon.  The produce section was a bit picked over, all they had was a pumpkin.

The Prada shop near Valentine, proved interesting but the selection was sparse and they didn't have shoes in my size.

Which is reported to me 3rd hand from the Prada corporate lawyer as being officially "Sanctioned" by the Company.  

Then we tried to shop in Sanderson at Kerr Mercantile, but it has been closed for Twenty years and now it is owned by some sort of shop, but what does one do with any of these?  Where do you pack such things?  Wrapping?

It turns out the Kerr Mercantile building is something special, it is a "lost" Trost building.  A work from a noted and special Southwest Architect.  Being Thanksgiving it was not open to look around.  The famous Gage Hotel in Marathon is a Trost building.  It is cool.    

Many of the hotels in Marfa and the Gage were full of people, and with COVID one wonders...why?  We had a private jet fly over us leaving Marfa, 

So why REALLY did we go to Ft Davis area, it wasn't to shop, nope, it wasn't.  We came to find to UFOs mystery fliers, and so we came for two stakeouts.

Sadly both were unsuccessful.

We came to find the Montezuma quail which I saw here in 2016, but alas, we staked out the bird blind at the State Park which was difficult because the State park had reached quota the first day, it was full, and we had to call and beg to get a pass from the state agency which had a just under two hour hold time.  The Conservation Society visitor center up the road twenty miles was closed for the duration of the virus, so we had to go to the State Park, but the birds don't seem to be coming to the feeders any more.  At least not when we were there.

We saw some birds.

Oddly the best bird we saw and the only state lifer was this Brown Thrasher, strangely I saw two at one of the feeders

Loggerhead shrikes were everywhere

sage thrasher

Woodhouse's Scrub-jay

Bewick's wren

Pine siskin were everywhere

A Townsend's solitaire came to the feeder.

Some of the terrain in the Davis Mountains, we hiked quite a few miles, but it was dry, dust storms came in from the north and the south on us, and with that significant wind.

I took Silja to the rather strange and depressing Slaughtered horse memorial

go here if you want to learn more...

http://ahorsesprayer.com/index.html

Some interesting roadside art, if nothing else.  

Enough of horse overpopulation, then we went after the second UFO, the Marfa Lights.

We staked out the place on two nights, the second of which involved quite a significant party atmosphere, maybe 150 people, including a person painting the lights

He was busily painting the background waiting for the lights, it will probably be at a gift shop in Marfa shortly

Setting up tent for the night vigil

the rater substantial viewing platform, the toilets left a bit to be desired, the lights were red and it had seats.  It was quite a place and parking for maybe thirty cars.  Oddly, most seemed there for the first time

So, we saw some strange lights, Silja saw this light which after a while became two lights, but sure looked like two groups of illegal aliens coming across the desert, not actual aliens or real Marfa lights.  They don't appear every night, and one wonders if they are real or the best marketing scam ever although they were first seen here in the 1850s.

We staked out the area for a while until some five year old showed up with light sin her shoes, which hurt the eyes in the darkness, so I had enough and packed up Silja and we drove back to the RV.

The strangest things we saw were elk while driving down the mountains toward Alpine.

I'd never seen elk in the state of Texas, this was a first.

We looked at some historical things, and I will start saving photos of county courthouses, many in Texas are really cool.

Jeff Davis County Courthouse, Ft Davis (TX-1)

Presidio County Courthouse, Marfa  (TX-2)

We looked about Ft. Davis, the real historic Ft. Davis

It was based in a box canyon guarding the San Antonio to El Paso road, but closed in 1891 when the Apache problem was taken care of, much like Ft. Bowie

So we had an interesting visit, no UFOs, a little too much dust, a few birds, a little history, and some strange shopping choices.....

So we continue on East.  I like the Texas Mountains of the Trans-Pecos, and I have been around here many times, and we will be back...

Be thankful

Olaf

 

RVing in the time of COVID 7: The Gadsden Route

We spent the last two weeks birding, hiking, and camping in SE Arizona and SW New Mexico.  Birding a part of America that was the last part of America in the lower 48.  All of this was a part of Mexico and only because America needed a transcontinental railroad and Mexico needed money did we get it--The Gadsden Purchase, named after James Gadsden.

History does not look kindly on James Gadsden.  There is nothing politically correct about him in any sense.  Almost everything bad that was happening from 1830 to 1860, he was in the middle of.  In the US Army, he actively worked on the rounding up and the deporting Seminoles from Florida in the "Trail of Tears." He promoted succession by South Carolina after California was admitted as a free state in 1848-49.  He then connived the state of California with a project to split the state in two where he would settle a colony in the southern half with 1200 colonists and 2000 slaves.  When that didn't work, he ended up in Government of all things, as the appointed U.S. Ambassador to Mexico in the Pierce Administration, specifically, the Envoy Extraordinary and Minister Plenipotentiary to Mexico, what a title. 

As bad a man as he would be looked on later, but he did negotiate the last significant land acquisition to form the contiguous 48 states, the Gadsden Purchase added some 20 million acres at a purchase price of just over 33 cents/ an acre. Santa Ana, the ruler in Mexico at the time hated Gadsden, and as far as can be found, almost everyone hated him.

He tried to get more and he did get more, but the US Congress voted the original agreement down, but then agreed to by 2/3 of it at 2/3 of the price.  $7.1 Million dollars was sent to Mexico City but oddly, only $6.1 million reportedly arrived.  The final agreement was signed in June 1854, and the purchase basically added all the land in New Mexico south of I-10 and then a line north near the present New Mexico/ AZ border to Gila River, and all of Southern AZ south of the river.  

For us birders, this Purchase added nearly 50 birds to the US Birding list, as all of the Sky Islands are in this territory, and what was almost bought, would not have given the US a port on the Gulf of Baja, but would have dropped the border south of where it was now nearly 100 miles.  Many might not know that the Gila River in Arizona was the Southern boundary until Gadsden came around.

Then there was George Bascam, a 2nd Lieutenant in the US Calvary stationed at Ft Buchanan south of Tucson.  He graduated next to last of his class at West Point.  Bascam through idiocy and bad luck (the bad luck was that his major and captain were on leave, and indisposed), caused the decades long Apache War by trying to get the release of a local rancher boy from Cochise, but would not believe him when Cochise said he didn't do it (turned out he was correct, a northern tribe had), During the sit down, Bascam took many of Cochise's family prisoner, then Cochise escaped.  Then he took a Calvary patrol prisoner, and offered to exchange them with Bascam, but Bascam only wanted the boy which Cochise never had. and hung Cochise's brother and killed others.  Cochise killed the soldiers and then the war was on, with the Apaches changing their hatred of Mexicans to Americans, and taking no side in the Civil War attacking Confederate outposts as well as Union and then continuing to even 1933, when the last band was defeated in Mexico.  The death and misery caused by an inexperienced young officer in charge of "getting the boy back at all costs," was incalculable.  Would someone else caused the massacres later?  Bascam died in the mud in the Battle of Valverde Ford New Mexico the next year, being run over by Confederate Calvary, in an inglorious end to a man that deserved such a fate. 

Ruins of Fort Bowie built to protect the northern Chiricahua Mountains at Apache Pass, near location of the Bascam Incident of 1861.  Before this fort closed in 1894 it was surprisingly large, with many many buildings.

The Geronimo Surrender Memorial near Apache, Arizona, he surrendered in Skeleton Canyon in New Mexico east of here.  It was a sad end to a people who lived by marauding in a world that changed

South Fork of Cave Creek

view above the forks of Cave Creek

Chiricahua National Monument

View above Cave Creek

Some of the birds of the Gadsden purchase, we saw the eared quetzal on three days, but I was not able to get a decent photo, I had a photo in June so it wasn't a priority

Blue-throated Mountain Gem at Cave Creek Ranch

Female ladderbacked woodpecker

Red-naped sapsucker

A female Ruddy Ground Dove from Rodeo NM, a Mexican rarity seen most years north of the border, this year there seems to be lots of them

Gambel's Quail

Great Horned owl

Then there was this Bullsh%#t, literally.  we were at Willow Tank and this bull was snorting sand then I realized the fence was incomplete.  We got into the car quickly.

The camper next to us in Rodeo.  A different camper where one has a semi pulling a 5th wheel.  The smart car drives up between, apparently there are a whole convention of these types of campers  that meet.  The ramp folds up and is stowed below the car.

The view from our Campsite at Rusty's RV Ranch north of Rodeo, NM

Our last night in the Gadsden Purchase, before we zoomed across to El Paso and left eastward to continue our journey.

As COVID goes, Hidalgo County NM has few cases, we bought a rug from an old lady that last Monday, New Mexico told her she had to close and this was her source of income.  Her shop was the only touristy place open in New Mexico.  The restaurant next to the Museum on the Portal road was supposed to close access for inside, it was a quarter mile from AZ border, yet....the Portal Lodge could be open in Portal just up the road.  

In El Paso despite reports on TV of the dire overflowing morgue.  Of the two ERs we drove by yesterday one was dead, the other looked like they had a couple of patients, but no lines.  The restaurants were crowded.  Juarez had people all over the streets you could see from I-10 and the traffic in El Paso was nuts, and on a Saturday.  The shopping also looked busy, so maybe things were bad, but people were ignoring it, or they just said screw it and were doing what they wanted, or the TV was into sensationalism.  El Paso is the largest US city no one ever hears about and the most Democratic in Texas..so, it isn't a red/blue issue...you don't hear news from El Paso unless it is very bad.  We are heading to Jeff Davis County in Texas which has had just a few cases.  

  

So