Birding in Southwest Texas - March 13

the big fish4
Originally uploaded by J Semenza

I picked up my birding partner in crime at the El Paso airport. Melinda and I hit the hot, sunny road heading towards Big Bend. Did you know you can do 80 mph on some of the freeways in West Texas? It may not be good for the gas mileage, but it's great for making the miles zoom by.

This was my first time to be stopped by border patrol in our own country. They took one look at the two blondes and all of our luggage and waved us on by. It is very weird that we as a country are doing this. It kinda creeped me out that we'd have this stop not at an entry road into the U.S. but just on one of the freeways near Mexico.

We stopped at Van Horn earlier in the day than expected so we canceled our hotel there and extended our reservation at Alpine. We had lunch at a darkened Mexican cafe named Chuys. The food was good and the people around us were very talkative, including us in some of their conversations.

Of course, we took the long scenic route from Van Horn to Alpine, going through the Baldy Peak area.

Here we encountered the Chihuahuan Ravens for the first time and still more Mexican Jays (of the Texas race). The drive was gorgeous.

As we approached Marfa we spotted a huge white thing on the horizon. It looked a bit like a hot air balloon, but it was close to the ground. It finally resolved into a really, really, big white fish. It
was almost as amazing as the Chihuahuan Ravens.

Photos for the drive to Alpine: http://www.flickr.com/photos/jsemenza/sets/72157604122222305/

Birds of the day included:

1. Chihuahua ravens (near baldy peak)
2. American crows
3. oggerhead shrike
4. rock doves
5. large fish (okay not a bird)
   
6. red tailed hawks
7. Mexican jays
8. white winged doves
9. pronghorns (not a bird either)