Better late than never, and better to be slightly within the greater region than entirely in the wrong state, I hope! After surviving all that Big Bend threw at me, surveys at Amistad and the Devil's River were on the menu. Thankfully I was home for the first measurable rain that Marathon had all year (0.35 inches!) over Easter weekend before heading back. But...
The adventure started with a Myotis bat of some sort, unfortunately crisped and lodged in the front of a park vehicle. Sad, seems most of my bat work is with the deceased. At least this wasn't work related.
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| Myotis spp. |
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| Overlooking the Devil's River. |
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| Overlooking the Devil's River. |
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| Overlooking the Devil's River. |
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| What the...? Oryx. |
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| San Pedro campground. |
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| Horse crippler. |
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| Excellent slopes to hike on. Kidding. |
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| Just a cactus spine. That got pulled out of my leg. |
The quick return home revealed a pile of mail with a copy of Texas Highways that included an article about the Davis Mountains. Those two folks on the left look awfully familiar...
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| Davis Mountains State Park, plus Trudell, York, and a team of volunteers. |
Flip over a few more pages, and there's Jack Johnson of Amistad. Small world, considering that bat pic is from his work truck! Serious world shrinkage is occurring.
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| Jack Johnson, Panther Cave. |
After the Amistad / Del Rio adventures, it was on to Fort Davis, then the Guadalupe Mountains... but Amistad certainly held its own with excellent bird diversity: White-throated Swift, Chimney Swift, Lesser and Common Nighthawks (Lessers making their amazing, skittery calling screeches) along with a nearly full set of swallows: Cave, Cliff, Northern Rough-wing, Bank, Barn, just about everything but Tree and Violet-green. Purple Martins and the Chimney Swifts made my head spin, feeling so very eastern. And on one afternoon, a bit of scouting around Del Rio proper turned up Great Kiskadee, Olive Sparrows, plenty of Long-billed Thrashers, Painted Buntings, and enough oriole activity to make me think I was in the Rio Grande Valley.
More adventures later!
Sounds and looks amazing! I guess it's a bit more harsh when you're going it alone, but having some elements of danger and pain in the wilderness treks always make it feel a bit more real, more satisfying to me, than birding at the board-walk bedecked WMAs and what not. Very cool.
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