Last Friday, this little guy showed up in a small tree by the window. I knew he was a baby something, but R saw through that streaked breast right away and called him as a baby mockingbird. A few minutes later one of the adults showed up with a bug and fed it to him before flying away.

The young mocker sat in the bush, trying to stay balanced on the thin branches and chirping for another bug. Eventually, he fluttered over to the neighbor’s shrubs, which are thicker and offer better protection since, according to Kent Rylander’s Behavior of Texas Birds, mockingbirds leave the nest a week or so before they can really fly. The adults feed them and watch over them, chasing away jays, cats, and any other predators that may happen by.

Later, when walking the dogs, I saw the adult singing from a nearby tree while eliciting chirps from several sets of nearby bushes.

That afternoon, we watched as a pair of black-crested titmice led a family of newly-fledged youngsters around the yard, showing them where all the feeders are. I suppose it really was independence day.

Not a great picture, but the best one so far of the golden-fronted woodpecker, a relative newcomer to the yard.

There are a few that have been nesting in the trees around the house and so every few weeks I get to see the fledglings learn how to be birds as they follow their parents from feeder to tree to birdbath.

Here’s one of the juveniles with his short tail and fuzzy, discombobulated look.

He hops, beaks open and wings flapping,  over to one of the adults who has clearly just scored a nice juicy peanut.

Fortunately for junior, the adult bird is feeling generous.

“More!”

Northern Mockingbird… everywhere

White-winged dove, Mourning dove… poking along trailsides, but no Inca doves this time

Common grackle, Great-tailed grackle… open fields and parking lots

European starling… patrolling the medians

Great egret… hunting in the pond like a snake on a stick

Barn swallow… loads of them by the lake–riding over the dam one paced me about 3 feet above my head, a great look

Scissor-tailed flycatcher… a personal favorite, singing from a signpost

Northen Cardinal… singing from a wire

Hummingbird… most likely black-chinned, but too fast to be sure

Pigeons… flying over the parking lot

Blue jay… hard to miss from the trails and near the houses

House sparrow… waving goodbye from my driveway

Purple Martin… chillin’ on a martin house along one trail

Western Kingbird… perched in treetops on the trail where the Incas were last year

Turkey vulture… circling in the distance

American crow… kaw-kawing from the treetops

Great blue heron… looking like a statue on a pole near the golf course

Green heron… flying through a swarm of mockingbirds and scissor-tails

Swans and Muscovy ducks… feral domestics on the duckponds

This year, I saw 22 birds in 20 miles. Though I didn’t see last year’s Inca doves and snowy egret, I did catch the kingbird, hummingbird, pigeon, and turkey vulture. There are others, but I was moving too fast to really see whatever titmice, chickadees and sparrows might have been lurking in the trees.

In addition to the birds, I saw rabbits, deer, and humans.

A Bewick’s wren hunts in my tomato plants for a bug to bring back to the nest box on the fence post.

Last week, I got to watch the young wrens living out back leave their nest. It takes about 2 weeks for the eggs to hatch and another 2 or so for the nestlings to fledge so I had been keeping track so I wouldn’t miss the show, which came last Monday afternoon.

Each day leading up to flight day, the cheeping in the box grew louder and louder whenever one of the adults showed up with a worm or bug. Last Monday, I noticed that the adults were up in the trees singing and calling louder than usual. Then, I noticed one of the young birds kept poking his head out. 

He would sit in the hole and look around at the world, studying it and listening for his parents, sometimes responding, sometimes ducking back into the dark safety of the nest.

Occasionally, he’d get his little feet up onto the lip of the hole and look ready to jump only to back into the nest again. Eventually, he jumped and flew to a nearby tree.

He hopped around in the branches and then flew up to the roof of the neighbor’s house where one of his parents met him, and then they flew off from there. A few minutes later, a second wren poked his head out of the nest and went through the same process.

At one point, one of the adults brought a worm to the nest, went in and then left again with the worm, as if to say, “You want this? Come out and get it.”

By the end of the day, the first 3 (maybe 4, I’m not sure how many there were - 5 at least) had flown and only 2 remained. They flew away early the next morning.

When I cleaned out the nest box, I inspected their nest as I broke it up and scattered it on the ground for other birds to use and was surprised by the amount of dog and cat fur in there.  I guess regular brushings of all the beasts is good for the birds too. 

Yellow flower-dandelion-clovers-weeds, speargrass
That rooster crowing by the shed
Small tree-purple flowers
Cars on the highway

Yellow stars on green grass space
Tiny moth flying below the tops of grass-unseen & secret
Lines of trees-leafless, still asleep
Birds chirp and sing, unseen
Dandelions gone to seed
Vulture, distant, glides horizon wind
Pink flowers beyond the ditch, beyond reach
Stands of bluebonnet
Chilly breeze, gray skies, colors fading in the haze
Mockingbird silently flies between two trees

Afternoon…

Wasp buzzing under canopy,
Killdeer flying over ditch
Smoke from behind the trees, campfires in the air
Purple blossom tree

Ant mound pressed against cracked concrete
Ants stream from invisible holes
Airplane cuts gray sky

Buildings through the trees
Donkey brays, rooster crows
Tiny blue flowers in the grass-invisible from six feet up

Crisp on the grass, old leaves-autumn leftovers-punctuate the ground
Burnt leaf smoke carries on the wind
Drills call cadence while a tiny spider climbs a blade of grass

Chipped bark on live oak
Soft moss on the lower trunk, bird’s nest in the branches
Light green, spring leaves sway
Grass, tired and old, hasn’t started growing yet

In the distance a pile of rocks explode with purple flowers, yellow centers
Alone in the field, a daisy, lost in prairie sea

Soaring overhead,
scissor-tails returning
a long journey ends

I love the scissor-tailed flycatcher. So beautiful and elegant with tails forked wide or streaming long and thin behind like signs towed by toy airplanes. What would the sign say? Bugs beware, spring is here.

They’re the state bird of Oklahoma, and can be found on the Oklahoma statehood quarter, released earlier this year.

Fortunately, they can also be found all over central Texas this time of year, soaring over open fields, twisting and diving to come up with a delicious dragonfly. Watching their forked tailed displays is cause to stop the car and stare.

They migrate up from southern Mexico and central America, and then fan out across Texas and Oklahoma. Those journeys are especially amazing to me. What have those little black eyes seen? Seeing the first members of a returning migration is a sight to make one’s day. For a moment, at least, we can know that some things still work, still happen as they should. With their return, Nature’s clock chimes April.

They showed up on April 1st this year.

The return of the
scissor-tailed flycatcher
April has begun

Not much time for blogging and book writing. Guess what comes first?

So, here, another picture of a bird.

In a free moment at work today, I flipped open Beat Poets and found Kerouac’s advice for writers: “Belief & Technique for Modern Prose.”

Half lunatic love ravings of the self-professed angelic mind (see me vent my inner Jack?) half good advice, half (yeah, 3/2’s) scattered pearls, I found a few ideas I like, especially these:

24. No fear or shame in the dignity of yr experience, language & knowledge

29. You’re a Genius all the time

And, now, off to the labors of my genius…

Being a squirrel sometimes looks like good work if you can get it.

Today was a perfect first day of spring with deep blue skies and a nice cool breeze. I saw a barn swallow while out today, so the swallows are back as are the hummingbirds who are starting to show up at the feeder again.

Spring at last.

There’s nothing like an old stone wall, crumbling and forgotten, to make a gray day seem even grayer. I’m sure its builder would be as surprised to find it still here as I was to find it at all only a few steps away, though all but hidden from the trail.

These thick leathery plants are suddenly everywhere. A good reminder to sometimes look down.

Like a gate, these sticks block the way to a small clearing, owned by cardinals.