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Archive for the ‘Birds’ Category

Favorite Places: Wildlife Refuges

Posted in Birds, Favorite Places, Nature, Travel, tagged , , , , on January 29, 2012| 6 Comments »

“It is our task in our time and in our generation to hand down undiminished to those who come after us, as was handed down to us by those who went before, the natural wealth and beauty which is ours.” – John F. Kennedy

A Family of Tundra Swans

A family of Tundra Swans at Bear Lake National Wildlife Refuge in Southeast Idaho. -- Photo by Pat Bean

 

Bean’s Pat: Chicks With Ticks: Stream of Consciousness http://tinyurl.com/6rkn8ss All about the chicks and their passion for Mother Nature’s wilder side. .

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Travels With Maggie: The Beginning

Posted in Birds, Journeys, Travels With Maggie, tagged , , , , on January 27, 2012| 13 Comments »

 “Life begins at the end of your comfort zone.”–Neale Donald Walsch

Here’s How It All Began

Balcony House: Mesa Verde National Park, Colorado. Not only have my travels taken me all across the country, they have also taken me back in time. -- Photo by Pat Bean

It was a sunny day in 2004, just three weeks before I would retire from a 37-year career as a journalist, when I drove a brand new RV off an Ogden, Utah, sales lot. It felt like the butterflies in my stomach had developed thorns on their fragile wings.

Everything that had been a part of my past life was about to change. I had just blocked off all chances of remaining rooted in my small, but cozy home that sat in the shadows of the Wasatch Mountains I loved. There simply was not enough money in my future to both fulfill my lifelong dream of living and traveling on the road while maintaining fixed roots within a circle of friends that had taken over 20 years to acquire.

This day I had not only chosen the unknown road that lay ahead, but had wrapped my choice in cement. I had even traded in my Honda Odyssey as part payment for the undersized, 22-foot RV that was now my only form of transportation, and soon would be my only home.
By the time all the paper work giving me title to the 2004 Volkswagen Vista/Winnebago had been scrutinized, signed and finalized, it was early evening. I was too unsettled to take my purchase for a check-out spin. So, feeling tall and strange sitting behind the wheel with my new living, dining, sleeping, cooking and bathroom facilities behind me, I drove home. Emotional turmoil, good or bad, always sapped my energy.

When Maggie and I began our travels, her muzzle was still solid black. -- Photo by Pat Bean

On carefully pulling into my driveway, testing the wideness needed to turn my new RV, I heard frenzied barking from inside the house. It was how my dog, Maggie, reacted to the sound of strange vehicles invading her territory. She never barked when I returned home, nor did she at any of my frequent visitors. But she did not recognize this new vehicle.
When I opened the door, Maggie gave me a quizzical look of surprise. Then, realizing in a split second that something new was parked in the driveway, she dashed between my legs and ran out to explore.

I opened the RV’s side door and she eagerly hopped in. She slowly sniffed every surface she could get at, then finally hopped up onto the couch and gave me a look that I easily interpreted as: So where are we going? To explore America, the beautiful, I reply. I always answer my dog’s inquiring looks. .

And that’s how my travels with Maggie began. It’s been a journey that’s covered over 125,000 miles and heading into its eighth year.  I have nary a regret.

*This post was published today as part of Story Circle Network’s One Woman’s Day blog at: http://tinyurl.com/5tevft5  

Bean’s Pat: Birding on the Cheap: Rio Grande Valley http://tinyurl.com/riograndebirds Great birding blog with photos about a  place to escape for the winter.

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Technology Miracles and Boo-Boos

Posted in Birds, Books, Favorite Places, Nature, Travels With Maggie, tagged , , , , , , , on January 26, 2012| 6 Comments »

“If it keeps up, man will atrophy all his limbs but the push-button finger.” – Frank Lloyd Wright

I found Estero Llano State Park in Welasco, Texas, the old-fashioned-way, with a map. I'm not sure how the anhinga found its way here. -- Photo by Pat Bean

Travels With Maggie

I was in Dallas, returning from taking my daughter to work so I could use her car for the day. All I had to do to get back home was follow the GPS map installed on the dashboard of her Toyota Highlander.

But I decided I wanted to get a different view of the map. Silly me. As I’m sure you have already guessed, I pressed the wrong button and lost everything on the screen — and couldn’t get it back.

Because I had depended solely on the GPS to get me from one place to the next, I was confusingly lost with morning rush-hour traffic zooming all around me.

I was fortunate that I eventually came to a landmark I recognized and, although it took an extra 40 minutes, I did eventually get back to my daughter’s house.

I then used a map, and my own handcrafted cheat-sheet of right and left turns, to complete the day’s errands and to find my place back to pick up my daughter from work later that day.

The truth is that I’ve had to be pulled, while screaming, into most technological changes. I was one of the last to finally get a cell phone, and it was only this past Christmas, and only because it was a gift from my son, that I got a “smart” phone.

On the other hand, I was one of the first to get a home computer. After using one at work to write my newspaper stories, I found using a typewriter for my personal writings impossible.

Without GPS, Monarch butterflies, like this one I found at Quintana Neotropic Bird Sanctuary on Texas' Gulf Coast, migrate annually between Mexico and Canada, although it may take three generations to complete the journey. -- Photo by Pat Bean

My first computer didn’t even have a hard drive. Everything ran from floppy disks. And the word-processing program on it came with a black screen and green type, or you could make the type orange.

Today, I can’t imagine life without my computer and the Internet. Such a thought sounds barbaric.

Ditto life without my Kindle, which was also a gift and which I’ve now had for a year. I thought I would miss the feel of a real book in my hand, but I haven’t. I think the fact I can be reading almost any book I want almost instantly is a miracle – well until I discover how much I’ve spent at Amazon each month.

I still haven’t got a GPS, however. My canine traveling companion, Maggie, and I still use maps, albeit it computer ones, to find our way across the country.  It seems a GPS might be as difficult for me to use as an electric can opener, which is why I still use a manual one. 

But I’ve got a Twitter account, maggieandpat. And when I announced it, my oldest granddaughter laughed and said: “Who would have thought it would take my Nana to make me get a Twitter account?” 

Her comment made this wandering/wondering old broad feel young – well at least until a pain in one of my joints announced a change in the weather.

Bean’s Pat: Vimeo: My Friend Maia by Julie Warr http://vimeo.com/31733784 A video to inspire all us old broads, and perhaps those still young among us, too.

 

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Yellowstone and Antelope Island, Where the Buffalo* Roam

Posted in Birds, Favorite Places, Nature, Travel, tagged , , , , , , , on January 21, 2012| 2 Comments »

 “What is life? It is the flash of a firefly in the night. It is the breath of a buffalo in the wintertime. It is the little shadow which runs across the grass and loses itself in the sunset.” – Crowfoot saying.

Favorite Places

Author Bob Sanchez http://bobsanchez1.blogspot.com/commented that he

One of my favorite shots of an American bison is this one of the large animal taking a dust bath on Antelope Island, which is one of my favorite places. -- Photo by Pat Bean

liked yesterday’s photo of the bison mother and nursing calf that stopped traffic in South Dakota’s Custer State Park. As an aside he noted that since these lumbering creatures can be dangerous, he was glad I took the photo through the windshield of my RV, Gypsy Lee.

His cautionary words jogged one of my brain wires to replay, in vivid detail, an incident back in the 1970s that involved my then 10-year-old daughter, Trish. She, I and my son, Mike, were visiting Yellowstone, where we had stayed the night in the Old Faithful Inn.

Antelope Island bison with a view of the Wasatch Mountains on the far side of Great Salt Lake. -- Photo by Pat Bean

Antelope Island bison with a view of the Wasatch Mountains on the far side of Great Salt Lake. -- Photo by Pat Bean

Back then, there was a small cafe located adjacent to the Inn, where the three of us had breakfast. Trish finished first and asked if she could go outside and look around.

“Stay close,” I said in my mother’s voice.

When Mike and I went outside about 10 minutes later, my heart stopped. While Trish hadn’t gone far, she was standing beside a huge bison that had settled down on some warm sand – and was petting it.

Along with bison, chukars are easy to find on Antelope Island. -- Photo by Pat Bean

Thankfully her guardian angel was looking over her. Not only did she escape without harm from the wooly creature, her mother was too relived she was safe to punish her.

My travels the past seven years have often taken me in sight of these great animals that once roamed across North America’s grasslands in great herds before we humans killed them to the brink of extinction. Perhaps it’s because they were so rare for so long that many people today get so excited when they see one.

I was fortunate that before I retired and left Ogden, Utah, I saw them regularly on Antelope Island in the Great Salt Lake.

I used the island, which has a high claim on my long list of favorite North American places, as my Birding 101 Lab. That’s the thing about being a birder. If you’re looking for tiny things, you’ll never miss all the big ones.

*While we may call this creature a buffalo which I did in yesterday’s blog because it is a term everyone understands, the animal that is found in North America is a bison, an American bison to be specific.

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Nature and Pancho Villa History Out My RV Window

Posted in Birds, Favorite Places, Nature, Travels With Maggie, tagged , , , , , , on January 19, 2012| 3 Comments »

“The first step towards getting somewhere is to decide that you are not going to stay where you are. Take one step. Do one thing. Move, even if you don’t feel like it.” Katherine Misegades

Gypsy Lee parked among the cacti at Pancho Villa State Park in New Mexico

Travels With Maggie

I’m going into my eighth year of full-time living and traveling in Gypsy Lee, my 22-foot RV that I bought in 2004 when I retired and sold my home.

My rootless life has allowed me to get to better know my five grown children, who scattered far and wide when they left home, including Japan, Korea, Canada, Egypt and Hawaii. There’s no question in my mind but that they inherited my want-to-see-the-world gene.

Jobs and financial realities meant we saw little of each other before I became rootless and could visit them, although not too long at any one place so as not to wear out my welcome. I mostly spend winters in Texas, where three of my children and nine grandchildren live. Summer, however, finds me heading north to both escape the heat and for a little bit of solitude, which I’ve discovered I need as much as I need people.

Curved-bill thrashers were plentiful at the park. -- Wikipedia photo

One of the other things I’ve come to appreciate most about my rootless lifestyle the past seven years has been the changing, always scenic and educational view out my RV window. I’ve found something awesome everywhere I’ve traveled, even in a crowded, cement-landscaped RV park in El Paso that was located right next to Highway 10’s whizzing traffic roar.

This campground was the first place I stayed in which I thought there was no hope to feel nature’s presence. But then I looked out my window and saw a family of Gambel’s quail parading past. It felt like Mother Nature had turned into Santa Claus and could find me anywhere I went.

My traveling companion, Maggie, and I spent the next night 85 miles west of El Paso at New Mexico’s Pancho Villa State Park, where Mother Nature’s presence was expected. She did not disappoint either Maggie, who had lizards to chase, or me, who had birds to watch.

Quail, thrashers, red-winged blackbirds and doves twitted about the park’s historical ruins and large blooming cacti.

And before I left the next morning, I had also made a new friend, another wandering/wondering old broad like myself; had learned that the park was located where Gen. Black Jack Pershing had launched 10,000 soldiers to chase insurgent Pancho Villa back to Mexico; and had glimpsed a bobcat lurking under a picnic table.

I wonder what the sights will be out the RV window as Maggie and I continue into our eighth year of rootlessness? Wouldn’t you?

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The Magic of Enchanted Rock

Posted in Birds, Favorite Hikes, Favorite Places, Nature, Travel, Writing, tagged , , , , , on January 17, 2012| 3 Comments »

 “These is no rule on how to write. Sometimes it comes easily and perfectly; sometimes it’s like drilling rock and then blasting it out with charges.” – Ernest Hemingway.

The trail to the top begins by crossing a tiny creek. While the landscape was brown toned, a result of both drought and winter, it still had an enchanting beauty. -- Photo by Pat Bean

Favorite Places

I suffered from writer’s block yesterday. I usually attribute this to procrastination, specifically of putting my bum down and my fingers on the keyboard. Almost always, if I do that, I find myself cured of the disease writers dread.

But when I came across Hemingway’s quote this morning, I realized this time the block was a result of my wanting to convey to you what my Friday scramble to the top of Enchanted Rock near Fredricksburg, Texas, meant to me.

And I didn’t want to tell you the truth, that I wasn’t Wonder Woman.

As hikes go, the trail to the top of this monadock, or kopje as they would call it in Africa, was just a bit over a half mile, and with an elevation gain of only about 425 feet.

I lost sight of these markers a couple of times and had to backtrack. -- Photo by Pat Bean

Until recently I wouldn’t have considered it much of a challenge. But age caught up with me last year, and a couple of painful, physical problems slowed me down to only short, mostly flat walks.

I cried, I ranted, I raved – and thankfully I didn’t accept my regular doctor’s words “that pain was just something that came with age.” While I knew there was truth in his words, I didn’t feel that time had come for me.

A rehabilitative specialist agreed, and two weeks after beginning physical therapy, I was practically pain-free again. My scramble following the ill-marked trail to the top of Enchanted Rock was the most challenging thing I had done in a year. I was out of condition and the hike up was slow-going – but I made it.

Standing on top, with the Texas Hill Country landscape laid out before me, let me indeed feel Mother Nature’s magic.

No footprints to follow, just keep going upward I told myself. -- Photo by Pat Bean

The hermit thrush that flew in front of me, the jumbled rock patterns that to me were as awesome as a museum painting, the awesome robin’s-egg-blue  sky above with wispy clouds drifting past, and the feel of the wind on my perspiring face were all part of the enchantment.

This is what I needed to tell you.

With the Internet at your fingertips, you can learn all the geographical, historical and even mystical facts about Enchanted Rock at your leisure. Facts come with their own magic, but you don’t need me to tell you those.

I know the day will come when my body will no longer take me to the places I want it to go. But thankfully it was not this day.

 

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Roadrunner Sighting Stirs the Wondering Mind

Posted in Birds, Nature, Travel, tagged , , , , , , , on January 15, 2012| 4 Comments »

“A rare experience of a moment at daybreak, when something in nature seems to reveal all consciousness, cannot be explained at noon. Yet it is part of the day’s unity.” – Charles Ives.

Bird Talk

Greater roadrunner -- Photo by Joanne Kamo http://www.pbase.com/jitams

I bird when I drive. While I can’t identify every bird that comes in view through my windshield, I have learned the tricks to identifying many. A red tail glinting in the sunlight from a large overhead bird is most certainly a red-tailed hawk.

Brown birds with yellow throats that flash white on their tails as they dash away are meadowlarks. Kestrels present a hunched profile as they sit on wires. Northern Harriers have a broad white band on their rumps as they circle above, and mockingbirds flash white on their wings and tails as they swoop from one tree to the next.

Looney Tunes' version of the roadrunner

I saw all these birds and more this week as I drove through Texas’ Hill Country. They’re birds I see on almost every drive I take through the Lone Star State landscape.

What I don’t see often are greater roadrunners, like the pair I saw just outside of the Enchanted Rock State Natural Area on Friday. Since I don’t see them as often, the sight of them thrilled me more than did all the others I saw this day.

It’s sad that the rare bird takes the attention away from the more common, yet just as fantastic bird. It’s human nature – and of course we’re not just talking birds here.

The underdog: Wile E. Coyote as Looney Tunes saw him.

The sight of the roadrunners took me back to my childhood – and the Looney Tunes’ cartoons about Wile E. Coyote and the Roadrunner. The funny looking bird always came out on top, which is probably why I always rooted for the coyote. Back then I felt more in tune with underdogs than winners – most kids do, I think.

Today I root for them both. The roadrunner because I’m passionate about all birds and the coyote because I admire this animal’s will to survive in the face of human development.

The truth is I’ve actually seen more wild coyotes than I have roadrunners. The pair I saw Friday only brings my total sightings of greater roadrunners up to about a dozen. But since more of my birding is taking place in Texas these days, I expect that number will begin increasing.

Wouldn’t that be fun. Beep, beep!

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On the Road Again — The End

Posted in Birds, Travel, Travels With Maggie, tagged , , , , , , on January 13, 2012| 4 Comments »

The "Road" is calling. -- Photo by Pat Bean

“Not all those who wander are lost.” JRR Tolkien

Travels With Maggie

“Just can’t wait to get on the road again.”

If you’re a Willie Nelson fan and avid traveler like me, the above words should send a tune rolling through your head. The melody always begins rippling though mine when I start packing up my RV – which I’m doing this morning.

There’s few things that make me giddier than knowing I have “miles to go before I sleep.”

While I’ll just be traveling a short distance across the big state of Texas – from one child’s driveway to another child’s driveway – I ‘m going to take two days to do it.

A trio of web-footed friends -- Photo by Pat Bean

Better yet, I have a sight-seeing agenda of places I haven’t seen before planned for the drive. I could care less that I will be taking a 150-mile detour on what would have been just a 240-mile trip.

Maggie, familiar with the packing up routine, is already claiming her co-pilot’s seat.

So since she and I “just can’t wait to get on the road again,” today’s blog is going to end now. like the song I sang as a kid to the tune of Sousa’s “Stars and Stripes Forever.”

Remember?

“Be kind to your web-footed friends, for a duck may be somebody’s mother. Be kind to your friends in the swamp, where the weather is always damp. You may think that this is the end. Well it is.”

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Merritt Island: Where It’s a Warm Day

Posted in Birds, Favorite Places, Nature, Travel, Travels With Maggie, tagged , , , , , on January 12, 2012| 3 Comments »

 “It doesn’t matter if the water is cold or warm if you’re going to have to wade through it anyway.” – Teilhard de Chardin

 

A gathering of storks, egret and ibis at a pond on Merritt island in Florida. -- Photo by Pat Bean

Travels With Maggie

It’s cold and windy today here in Harker Heights, Texas, where Maggie and I are parked in my oldest son’s driveway.

And it’s snowing in Chicago, my youngest son said in an e-mail he sent me today.

Wouldn’t it be nice, I thought, to be bird watching on Merritt Island in Florida. When I checked out the weather there, I discovered it was a balmy 78 degrees.

"I'll just lay here and sleep until it warms up if you don't mind." -- Photo by Pat Bean

My thoughts went back a couple of years to the winter day I actually did spend watching birds on the island, which is located near Cape Canaveral.

I can dream can’t I?

But there’s no getting around bundling up and taking my daily walks with Maggie. Even if she doesn’t care for the idea any more than I do.

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A Wigeon of a Tale

Posted in Birds, Nature, Travel, tagged , , , , , , on January 10, 2012| 4 Comments »

“Be like a duck. Calm on the surface, but always paddling like the dickens underneath.” – Michael Caine

The flock of American wigeons I saw recently that reminded me of my five-year search for its Eurasion cousin. -- Poor photo by Pat Bean

Bird Talk

My kids tell me I have a better memory for where I’ve seen a new bird species than I do for their birthdays. Well, they’re wrong. I know the dates they were born very well. They just think I don’t because of how often I forget what day it is.

They are right, however, in thinking that I can remember where and when I’ve seen a new bird for my life bird list, which I started back on April 10, 1999.

The first bird on it is an American avocet. It and the next 67 birds on it were all seen when I went on a guided bird tour to Deseret Ranch in Northern Utah. I tagged along as a reporter assigned to do a story on sage grouse.

It was the first time I kept a list of the birds I saw — and the day I became a birder. I give

An American wigeon, a species that can be found all across the United States. -- Wikipedia photo

all credit for my newly found passion and addiction to birdwatching to Mark Stackhouse, who led the tour.

After I had listed the 67 birds, and had decided I would start my bird list, I did a very foolish thing. I added a Eurasian wigeon to the list.

A few years earlier, when I had been following Congressman Jim Hanson around during one of  his visits to Northern Utah, he made a stop at what was commonly known as the Millionaire’s Duck Club, a private hunting club located adjacent to the Bear River Migratory Bird Refuge.

Everyone was all excited that day because someone had spotted a rare Eurasian wigeon through a roof-top telescope. I was invited to take a look, and the wigeon became part of the story I eventually wrote. With written proof that I had seen the bird, I didn’t think twice about adding it to my list.

Eurasion wigeons, which can normally be found in winter along U.S. coastal areas. -- Wikipedia photo

But then I got into the spirit of birding, and realized I wouldn’t recognize a Eurasian wigeon if it dropped down from the sky five feet in front of me. And I knew that I didn’t want any bird on my list that I hadn’t personally identified. But to take it off, would be to mess up the entire order of my list.

It took me five years before I did finally see this duck. It was Oct. 4, 2004, in Yellowstone National Park. What a great day that was. And I remember it as well as I remember the days my children were born.

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