A great place to bird...

Texas is a great place to bird. Most of the migratory bird species that nest in North America will pass through Texas at some point. I visited the San Antonio Botanical Garden my second day in town and the birds appeared to be as thrilled with it as I was. It's a gorgeous park, sprawling over 33 acres, it includes several greenhouses featuring different collections as well as trails which pass through representations of three of the typical habitats of Texas: South Texas, Piney Woods and Hill Country. Before I knew it three hours had passed and I was a bit tired and hungry. Fortunately for me the Garden has a nice cafe where I was able to revive with a bowl of lamb caldo and some tea.

On Saturday, a wonderful woman I met through the Yahoo! Group SATXbirds forum picked me up at my hotel and we spent the day birding together. We visited the headwaters of the San Antonio River, then headed for Warbler Woods, which is a private estate that is kept as a nature preserve and sanctuary. The birds were pretty quiet that day, but it was still an incredible spot and I hope to return for another visit. After that we had lunch at a fabulous Texas barbecue joint called Harmon's. The chopped pork sandwich was to die for and the ambiance couldn't be beat - there were even horses tied to a hitching post out back. Following lunch we headed out to Mitchell Lake Audubon Center where we found a couple of wonderful birds - a Green-Tailed Towhee and a Least Grebe.

I haven't sat down and completed my trip checklist yet but when I do I'll be updating this post with it. You can see plenty of photos over at my Flickr account in my San Antonio Collection.

California Woods

March has decided to come in like a lamb here in Cincinnati. After last month's bitter cold, snow, ice and slush, today's sixty degrees felt heavenly. I grabbed my camera and binoculars and headed out to California Woods to hike the trails. I was hoping to catch some early emerging wildflowers but there were none that I saw. I did spot my first Turkey Vulture of the year though. Of course, some of them don't migrate all that far south in the winter; they just mosey down to Kentucky or Tennessee for a couple of months before heading back this way.

The park is collecting maple sap for syrup and many of the trees near the nature center had buckets attached. One was overflowing so I helped myself to a few drops of the faintly sweet sap. It helped convince me that spring is truly on its way.


There was a nice stand of horsetails in the park and I hunkered down to get a few snaps of them. They get the name horsetail from the feathery fronds that sprout up later in the year. Horsetails are primitive plants, reproducing from spores or rhizomes and they have been around since the reign of the dinosaurs. The stalks contain crystals of silica and were at one time used for polishing and scrubbing pewter ware; their other common name is scouring rush. They prefer wet soil and I found these growing along the flood plain of the Lick Creek.