Texas, Sunday March 14th

Sunday morning we woke early, with the sun, just as we had in the desert. Big difference is the four walls around us, curtains on the windows, parking lot outside the door. All good things must end some day. But today we plan to stop just north of Marathon, on our way back to Midland-Odessa Airport, to look around the prairie dog town for Burrowing Owls.

After organizing our backpacks and cleaning out the rental van, we take time to stroll around the grounds of the Marathon Motel. In the back is a large open camping area for recreational vehicles and tenting - if one was so inclined, closer to the road are the motel units and a communal cooking/picnic area.

We meet the maintenance fellow, out doing his rounds - filling all of the birdfeeders in the motel courtyard. The feeders are busy, the water dishes are busy, the shrubbery is alive with chirps and twitters - and we add three new birds!

65. Brown-headed Cowbird, Molothrus ater
66. Red-winged Blackbird, Agelaius phoeniceus
67. Pine Siskin, Carduelis pinus
also Brewer's Blackbird
White-winged Dove
Eurasian Collared Dove
Mourning Dove
Killdeer
Cactus Wren
House Finch
House Sparrow
White-crowned Sparrow
Junco - no photos, and we're having some confusion as to the subspecies, arghh, we'll call it Gray-headed because that's what Karen said was common
Pyrrhuloxia

Leaving Marathon Motel at 8:30 am, the outside temperature is 42 degrees F.

In downtown Marathon we stopped for breakfast along the main street (route 90). Several shoppes were already open for business. Sitting over coffee in Johnny B's Cafe, we noticed that the clock on the wall did not agree with Verizon cellphone time. Turns out we just lost an hour of our vacation! At 2 am on the second Sunday in March we were supposed to change from Central Standard time to Daylight Savings Time and set our timepieces forward an hour.

But wait - isn't Verizon supposed to do that automatically? The worst thing is of course now we've lost an hour of birding. The driving we have to do anyway, but losing birding time was a pretty sad surprise.

On highway 90 just east of Marathon we paused to photograph another Loggerhead Shrike on a roadside fencepost. It was calling with a trilled whistle - chrreep! A few minutes later we had another Curve-billed Thrasher, in roadside bushes. And after turning north on route 385 we saw another Northern Mockingbird.

No more than seven or eight miles north of Marathon, on route 385, is the prairie dog town. Covering a few hundred acres on both sides of the road, this fascinating ecosystem supports a diverse array of flora and fauna. We spent just 25 minutes with telescope, cameras and binoculars before having to press on northward.

68. Horned Lark, Eremophila alpestris
69. American Kestrel, Falco sparverius
70. Burrowing Owl, Athene cunicularia
71. Long-billed Curlew, Numenius americanus
and a few Western Meadowlarks

Mammals were quite visible too. Just before the dog town were some Mule Deer, and within the specific Prairie Dog ecosystem were:

Black-tailed Prairie Dog, Cynomys ludovicianus
Coyote, Canis latrans
Thirteen-lined Ground Squirrel, Spermophilus tridecemlineatus

Since I'm not familiar with the local rodents, I made this identification based on notes in our journal: body has overall impression of being spotted, but spots arranged in rows, and perhaps a solid stripe or two as well, size was between our Red & Gray Squirrels - was investigating the Prairie dog burrows. I made a crude sketch, and indicated a white eye-ring, horizontally flattened tail, some black on the tail, maybe central.

Continuing north on route 385 towards Fort Stockton we drove through gently rolling hills covered in dry chapparal (that's my description, though a botanist I'm sure has a more specific term for it). Along the road we caught sight of a few distant fly-catching birds. We stopped to have a look, and with a little luck some came close enough that we could identify them as...

72. Mountain Bluebird, Sialia currucoides

There was a small group of bluebirds, definitely three, maybe more, feeding in typical bluebird fashion. From a fence-post perch one would fly down to the ground, grab an insect then fly back up to another post or top of a small bush. The bird we made our ID from was a female, the light on the others was so bad we couldn't see blue at all, and I wondered if maybe one was a Townsend's Solitaire!

Another treat along the way was a pair of Red-tailed Hawks in nuptial display - circling each other as they flew higher and higher. One carried a small snake, held just behind the head so most of the body hung down, with a total body length of 30 to 40 cm.

Other roadside birds between Marathon on Fort Stockton included Turkey Vulture, Northern Mockingbird, and American Kestrel. Stopping briefly in Fort Stockton for gas, we had a photo-op with Paisano Pete - the larger-than-life Roadrunner - before pressing on towards Midland-Odessa.

Just east of town in a little roadside wetland I spied a few ducks, so we made a hasty pull-over and flushed a mixed flock which included:

73. Northern Shoveler, Anas clypeata
74. American Wigeon, Anas americana
also Killdeer, Cliff Swallow and other Anas ducks, Mexican or Black, we couldn't be sure.

A Loggerhead Shrike eating beside the road almost became roadkill itself right in front of the van - I joked that it nearly volunteered for Diego Sustaita's research project back home at UConn. Continuing northward the oil pumpjacks began to sprout up out of the dry scrublands and the tops of several vast mesas were given over to wind farms.

Returning to Midland-Odessa Airport at the appointed hour (2 pm), we listed our last birds of the trip, finding a big flock of Meadowlarks, some House Sparrows, Starlings and one last Curve-billed Thrasher. A swallow passed by too quickly for us to grab an ID, though we thought it likely a Tree Swallow - which would have been new for the trip, but we weren't confident enough to call it for sure.

And that's where our journal ends. A 4 pm flight took us back to Dallas-Fort Worth Airport, where the greens of spring were much in evidence. An 8 pm flight took us on home to Hartford's Bradley International Airport, where we landed after midnight and quickly stuffed our backpacks into our own car and turned for home.

Now it's the wee hours of Monday morning, March 15th. A huge rain and wind storm had lashed the state for the last two days, leaving flooded rivers and downed trees in its wake. Less than a quarter mile from home, we find barricades set up across River Road - what happened? Roaring Brook took out its bridge? a tree or power lines lie across the roadway?

Well, we must detour up Village Hill Road and down Schofield Road - only to find this access blocked also - at least here we can see the cause. Branches have pulled power lines down, and the line crew is out working - it's now 2 am. We decide to retrace our steps and simply move the barricade on River Road so we can get home.

Done, we're home! But - no power, no heat, no water.

All we need at this point is sleep, and besides we've just come back from camping in the desert, where we had none of those amenities anyway. Jorge decides he'll stay home from work to monitor the situation during the day, but I opt to rouse myself after a few hours and get on down the road.

By four in the afternoon the power was restored, and we're back to business as usual. The laundry, download the photos and write-up the trip list! We shared a wonderful, and too short, few days with Karen, and both added new birds to our life lists on this five-day trip to Big Bend National Park.