Swallow-tailed Kite!

Birds are still migrating along the Gulf Coast. I was running in Dow Park today, when I saw, out of the corner of my eye, what looked like a laughing gull that suddenly banked and corrected itself too quickly. Intuition fired in: this wasn't normal flight behavior for a gull. I stopped and stared at the soaring bird, which was at least a sixth or fifth of a mile away. It banked again, and I saw a long, deeply forked tail. This immediately identified it as a swallow-tailed kite, which I've never seen before, which is local mainly to Florida and the southeastern coastline of the US, which is almost certainly just migrating through (since the only TX-based population is a summertime concentration in a small area along the TX - LA border), and which is one of the most elegant birds of prey in the world!

Its wings appeared longer than a laughing gull's. It was much more agile than a gull (of course: this exceptionally agile bird is known to catch and eat prey on the wing!). I stared at this spirit of the sky for two or three minutes while it banked and soared like a cross between a gull and a swallow high over freshly-mowed lawns of Bermuda grass and eco-unconscious housing developments. Was it disappointed in the yield of prey this cancer-stricken earth offered it? I hope not.

Many birds out today. A hawk soared over my head before I saw the kite. I saw it plainly, despite wearing my very old eyeglasses and not having binoculars at hand. It had whiter areas more distally along the wings, and a white patch (perhaps its leg feathers?) in the proximal tail area, and also a white neck and/or face. I couldn't identify it when I came home, but my closest guess is red-shouldered hawk.

Before that, I encountered a Carolina chickadee singing alone on a power line. It reminded me of my forest runs and hikes ("chicka-dee-dee-dee"). I don't know why it was there...I don't think chickadees migrate, and this park is not forested.

Other birds seen: a loggerhead shrike and the usual sparrows, grackles, starlings, and mockingbirds. I also heard what I thought was a warbler vs. vireo, but couldn't identify it by going through warbler and vireo recordings afterward. It may have been part of another family of birds.

Yesterday, while searching for a party in Pearland at dusk, I saw a silhouetted scissor-tailed flycatcher alight on a power line and flick its long tail.

High Island

I rose at the crack of dawn, Thursday, to bird High Island. It's an hour and thirty minutes away by car, from where I live, and a bit less on the way back.

The first thing I saw upon getting on the feeder to the highway was a hawk, probably a red-shouldered hawk, sitting alongside pigeons on a power line!

On the way to High Island, I saw a male scissor-tailed flycatcher cross Interstate-10. It crossed the path of an eighteen-wheeler but I didn't see it emerge from the other side! Driving in the rural or suburban parts of the east half of Texas, I've seen scissor-tailed flycatchers more often than I expected I would. The males are unmistakeable -- you see the silhouette, and you know it's a scissor-tailed. You don't even need to examine its flight pattern, which can be described as over-exerted and slow. The only other possibility would be a fork-tailed flycatcher, but that's a rare tropical vagrant to these parts.

In total, I saw approximately 18 bird species (not counting mockingbirds, starlings, grackles, and sparrows), a few being new life additions. (Birding is a cross between gambling and packrat-style collecting, I've come to think. I don't gamble, but I'm certainly a packrat!) I saw 14 species in the span of 45 minutes or so, at High Island.

The sky was overcast when I reached Boy Scout Woods, and the only other birders there were a mid-30s photographer type (immense zoom) and an older lady from Galveston. The mosquitoes attacked immediately and unrelentingly. They mobbed me, and I had to return to my car to spray Deep-Woods Off all over myself, including my t-shirt and hands. I also rubbed some on my neck and parts of my face.

Before even entering the woods, I saw an eastern kingbird vs. northern rough-winged swallow sitting on a powerline. Also saw a brown-headed cowbird nearby. Immediately upon entering, I saw a male Baltimore oriole in full breeding plumage! Beautiful. It won't stay here, of course -- it's a migrant.

The mosquitoes attacked me in intermittent swarms. I couldn't stand still to take photos or look around for long, because they would gang up on me. Whenever they attacked, they would go mostly for the parts of my head that weren't rubbed with Off: my scalp, temples, eyes(!), etc. Crazy. I was constantly swatting the air surrounding my head.

Anyway, I hurried through the woods, heard some interesting birds, saw mostly grackles, starlings, and male cardinals, and headed back out. In the gravel parking lot, I startled a pair of Inca doves. The male was in breeding plumage. Very different from mourning doves, in call and plumage (also, the male had otherworldly red eyes). Headed off to the rookery after killing about 10 mosquitoes in my car!

At the rookery, I finally saw the alligators that patrol the pond surrounding two small islands atop which the rookery has been built by the marsh birds. Saw about half the number of birds I usually see: roseate spoonbills (in the US, found only along the coastal areas of Louisiana and Texas, and in deep south Florida), black-necked stilts, common moorhens, long-billed dowitchers (vs. curlews or godwits), cattle egrets, great egrets, and neotropic cormorants. The cormorant rookery on the southern end was decimated, probably by the last hurricane.

Took photos and headed back to my car quickly, to avoid being devoured by mosquitoes. Checked out the abandoned building in which barn owls nest...the owls weren't there (I've seen one of them before)...saw some other birds at distance, but they were silhouetted and I couldn't make them out -- I've seen an orchard oriole at the rookery, in the past.

Back in the car, I killed at least 20-30 mosquitoes before heading back home. The photographer drove a Volvo...his was the only car parked next to mine...he walked past, saw me frantically killing mosquitoes in my car, and told me to start driving with my windows open. That wasn't very effective. He pulled out a hat with a
mosquito net, because he was photographing the rookery...another photographer had recommended that to him last week!

Anyway, I got back on the highway to head home after about 45 minutes of birding. Periodically, I'd see stray mosquitoes in my car and I'd try to swat them away or kill them! Saw a red-winged blackbird in the reed marshes north of High Island; also saw one on the way to High Island. No bobolinks, unfortunately. I have yet to see a bobolink, although I really want to see one. Also missed seeing blue-gray gnatcatchers -- they've all migrated north by now. Every now and then, I miss their wheezy, soft, incessant gibberish, their constant activity, and their large, white-ringed eyes. Lovely birds.

As I parallel-parked alongside my parents' house, I saw another mosquito and killed it. Wow!

Other birds seen: swallows and several loggerhead shrikes.

In short, the trip was largely a waste of gasoline. I wanted to donate money to the High Island stewards (Houston Audubon Society), but no one was manning the welcome area of Boy Scout Woods, so I couldn't. I'll donate online, by joining the Houston Audubon Society (but I'll decline their print newsletter, to save on costs for them and to reduce the environmental impact of the newsletter, which seems to be printed on high-quality paper).

Monarch Caterpillars on Butterfly Weeds

My friend Julian made an interesting video of his butterfly weed plants and the Monarch caterpillars that eat them:

Yugen

From The Book: On the Taboo Against Knowing Who You Are, by Alan Watts:

There is no English word for a type of feeling which the Japanese call yugen, and we can only understand by opening our minds to situations in which Japanese people use the word.


To watch the sun sink behind a flower-clad hill, to wander on and on in a huge forest without thought of return, to stand upon the shore and gaze after a boat that disappears behind distant islands, to contemplate the flight of wild geese seen and lost among the clouds. (Seami) All these are yugen, but what have they in common?

Black Lungs

I love running along the Memorial Park bike trails. (I live in Houston, Texas.) I tripped over a tree root and almost broke my left arm recently, but I'm confident I'll keep running there. The bike trails wind deep into the city forest, and newbies are always afraid of getting lost. Under the forest canopy, I'm protected from sudden subtropical downpours, but I'm also protected from the intense summer sun -- the air is markedly cooler inside the forest than out, and the broad leaves of the giant deciduous trees around me absorb the brunt of the midday sun.

Last week, I decided to run along the official running trail of Memorial Park, and I was disgusted by the smell of exhaust from passing cars, and by the smell of charcoal burning at a nearby BBQ restaurant (it was noonish). It forced me to detour through a narrow strip of woods between two streets, and I noticed an immediate difference in air quality! The air was noticeably cleaner inside the woods. I soon reached the opposite side, and the air reeked again (this time, of lawnmower and trimmer exhaust, since I had entered a residential area). I jogged a bit through the neighborhood, then turned back. As I approached the narrow woods, a pileated woodpecker spanned the mouth of the trail! Beautiful: a black and white blur trailing a splash of red.

There was no shortage of runners along the official running trail. There never is a shortage of them, and this fact never ceases to amaze me. It's a universal law that people have no qualms about running alongside busy streets. This trail reminded me of the very popular one around Rice University. I ran there once, with a friend, and I swore to myself to never run around Rice again. I've run through Rice many times, but I'm the only person who does this, to my knowledge -- I've never encountered other runners within the Rice campus. However, a train of runners surrounds the campus at almost all hours, running along busy, ugly, noisy, smelly streets, and totally missing the beauty and better air quality within.

There was a recent New York Times article about measurable levels of nicotine byproducts in NYC nonsmokers; I've often wondered if "sidewalk runners" are similarly affected by motor vehicle exhaust.

Up to 15% of lung cancers arise in people who have never smoked. Interestingly, peanut butter (and other natural sources of vitamin E) may protect against development of lung cancer.

Nesting Dove

My apartment complex has a few palm trees near the main pool area. One day, while walking past one of these trees on my way to the gym, I noticed a dove sitting in a leaf base about six feet above the ground. Over the following week, I consistently saw the dove sitting there, and figured it's nesting. Here's a photo:


Sure enough, two weeks after I first saw it nesting there, I came upon this scene:

What is Grace?

I was stuck in slow traffic yesterday and decided to take the feeder. I'm glad I did, because I passed by a flea market and its neighboring plot of undeveloped land. Rolling with soft hills, and covered with a mess of uncut grass, shady trees, and large patches of Mexican primrose in full bloom, it was as pretty as any rural meadow in spring:


A few blocks farther down, I passed by a concrete dump. Atop this dump, at least thirty feet in the air, grew some small trees! They were surrounded by patches of grass. I feel that this, this is grace:


These scenes were as moving as any I encountered in Europe or elsewhere.