Bike Ride

We took a bike ride to the Bentsen Rio Grande Valley State Park (aka the World Birding Center) to see how much progress they've made in opening it. We had heard that it was open to the resaca. We were pleasantly surprised to find that it is open quite a bit farther--through and past the old RV park. When we turned around at the barricade, a park ranger named Jennifer drove up in a pickup truck. She congratulated us on being the first members of the public to enter the newly opened area and invited us to join the volunteer crews working to get the park cleaned up.

We stopped at a couple of the bird blinds along the way and saw green jays, redwinged blackbirds, a flicker and a couple of cute titmice along with some of the ever present grackles. The flicker and green jays were trying to get to some orange halves nailed to a feeder, but having the dickens of a time because the fruit was too close above the perch.

A rare black-vented oriole has been spotted in the park several times and has caused some excitement among birders. We haven't seen it, probably because we haven't been in the headquarters area in the early morning.

The resaca itself is still off limits, but the adjacent blind is open.

Redwinged blackbirds

A green jay lands atop a feeder and scopes out the possibilities for getting to the fruit.

The jay finally tries to grip the perch and maintain its balance while snatching some orange, but this requires beating the wings rapidly and trying to hover there, something it could do for only a few seconds.

This morning we did the laundry. When I went to the laundry room, no one was around, so I turned a blind eye to the sign suggesting limiting to two loads at a time and put in all three. It's very handy to have an iron and ironing board all set up. I actually ironed a couple of things (generally I figure that RVers don't iron....).