* title donated by Matt, or at least his description of the vocalization of his new life bird, the Fish Crow (Corvus ossifragus)
** post contents taken from an e-mail to the family, scientific names added for the blog only, since nobody on the e-mail list would have cared ;-)
Happy Saturday, everyone.
I hope y'all don't anticipate daily updates - Matt and I are quite nearly zombies at the moment, but at least we'll get to bed an hour before we would in our usual time zone. Friday's funeral for Laura in Abilene was beautiful, but it was followed by quite the exhausting drive to Dallas (even though we missed most of rush hour) and evening of screaming children running amok at the hotel. A few calls to the desk later, it was 1 am and things settled down for the most part. Of course, the alarm going off at 5 really didn't help, but we made both of our flights uneventfully and all of the children aboard were at least well behaved for our in-flight napping =)
We're pretty sure that Laura is tagging along for this trip (in spite of the chaos), since the giant thunderheads looming from Tampa to Boca Grande (2.5 hr drive) never did rain on us, and Matt ended up with 2 life birds by the time we reached the condo (we shared 1 of the 2). Oh, and the car we ended up with is an Eclipse - Laura always said that a convertible would be the perfect birding vehicle since the view is so much better, alas, this one doesn't have 4WD. Ah well. Thus far, the top has remained down and sun burn levels range from "mild" to "pink," depending on who you're looking at.
Highlights so far:
Swallow-tailed Kite (Elanoides forficatus) (2)
Fish Crow (Corvus ossifragus) (dozens, a life bird for Matt)
Gray Kingbird (Tyrannus dominicensis) (6, a life bird for both of us)
Evening Bat (Nycticeius humeralis) (at least, they didn't look free-tailed)
We'll try to keep the blog updated, but I figured that y'all would get an e-mail before checking the blog... but, yes, we're in FL =) And the shells are not inhabited by hermit crabs so much as two-eyed, one-mouthed, single-footed slime aliens ;-) Very cute little fellows.
Tomorrow: to the marsh!
-h
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I'm glad to hear your first reports from S. Florida. I hope you guys see lots of great stuff, and have a great time together. Good call to Matt on the "kazoo" for the Fish Crows.
ReplyDeleteor someone's first try blowing through a duck-call.
ReplyDeleteHope all is still well with the Jones-trio. :-)
We'll be meandering our way further southward and to the east today, after taking it easy this early morning. Probably stopping at a Ft. Meyers area location for a bit, before ultimately finding our way to the SE corner.