Southward in Desperation

The middle of October this year felt like winter suddenly and just two weeks before that it felt like fall. A normal transitional feeling but way too fast, already brown and leafy. Every day quickly advancing into yellows and reds. Chlorophyll in full retreat. Bo and I deemed it time to reverse the timeline. Rip south. Our journeys into the Ozarks essentially over for the year. It seemed very long ago we sat with last winter’s Wood Frogs. Now we tore towards Texas, the land of vegetables and bad politics. Bo drove as you must: defensively against Texans. They are not the worst in the world as far as driving but dammit they are always in the competition. We saw more Texas plates than we have in years and at one point in boredom, I, the copilot discovered on my Google collection of all human knowledge that there are 9 million registered Texas vehicles compared to our 900 thousand in Arkansas.

We pointed towards Victoria, Texas as our evening goal. Then into the valley the following morning. This meant ripping through the 60 miles of Houston suburbia and downtown before that quieter town of Victoria on the brink of the new world. We noticed fall fading away well before Houston. We watched for Great-tailed Grackles. An avian sign of decent southward. Houston greeted us with a torrential rainstorm. A creep across this town of tangled elevated roadways and six or seven lanes of people in a hurry at 3 in the afternoon. A sort of madness: water collecting on the lower sides of the roads, rooster tailing into our windshield with great sprawling washes of blindness. Who lives here in sanity? We passed the large stadium where later that evening a World Series game would occur.

Somewhere southwest of Houston in the seemingly endless but finally dwindling suburbs we saw our first Caracaras. We are both notoriously distractible drivers in the case of birds. But I was copilot. My wife fears my head-turning distraction for birds at home when I am the true pilot and now these distractions included roadside plants and trees, the occasional drifting monarch. The Caracara is that hawkish, vulturine, ravenoid bird of the Texas zone that I had lived among in San Antonio for years. I had not seen that many however in my memory of that time. Bo and I began to see trios and pairs. And they were really with us in the valley for the rest of the trip. Orange, intense, eagle-faced, pale-naped, long-winged things that deserve respect. We respected every sighting.

Victoria by late afternoon. And like many towns in Texas marred by active road construction: orange cones, piles of dirt. Every town in Texas believes it needs more lanes for its nine million drivers. To lure them in. To pacify them. It is not clear. La Quinta is chosen for us by the path through the cones. No turning back. And across the street a great gang of Grackles was working the pavement, the cars, the random French fries and detritus of humanity like they knew where the pot of gold was every day before sunset. Noises like wind up toys with wheezes and clicks, cracks and sighs. These are the sonic grackles you want. Unless you are trying to sleep near their roosting trees. A large capped hotelier/greeter/desk clerk waved us in.

To the south a neighborhood skulking under strange trees. Open pastures to the east. We walked the lot’s edges looking for new Texas animalia, plants. The grackle groups shifted and crackled, burred and sizzled. The sun sank. Distantly birds traced the last light. We noted six bright Tesla charging stations at the east side of the lot. In a state where charging stations have been embattled with the state that loves oil and pick-up trucks. We noted the comings and goings of Teslas there out our window. The automotive colors shifting. The only way to tell these electric things apart. I asked our friendly hotelier about them and he grumbled about dirty bathroom antics, the absence of Tesla guests.

Cleaned and situated, it was Bo’s birthday, so we needed a place to eat in Victoria. Something above the random and the fast. The Pump House stood out and looked good enough pictorially that one might even need a reservation on a Friday night. A sweet voiced lady answered and after a hold and some thought she said, “naw, the Astros are playing so come whenever you want.” We had a meal on an outside patio above a river slope with raccoons and several ‘restaurant cats.’ And owl flew over in the dark. We had a shot of Macallan in celebration of Bo’s accumulated years. Walking out a Pauraque, the local Nightjar, fluttered up for insects under the roof lights like some great moth.

Up before dawn and down to find the coffee machine near the breakfast area. Almost no light visible to the east yet, I walked outside with hot cup in hand. A different girl now was in charge of the desk. Traffic on 77 barely beginning, the gas station lit across the way. Roosters began to crow in one and then two and then seven directions. Sounding like Bantams mostly: strangled, ragged laughable calls. I wandered towards the density of roosters and saw a few lights through the trees. We had noted on the map the Guadalupe river that ran near the restaurant last night made some big loops and curves south of the city. And we detoured there after some breakfast on our way further south. We found some back roads and it was really our first steps into alien Texas life. The Turk’s cap flowers that would accompany us everywhere south were blooming on the roadside. Along with an odd new rose. We found a veteran’s park with shallow lakes. Shorebirds worked the edges. The first White-winged Doves. Mistletoe in the odd trees. A strange bat body hung on a barbed wire fence, like some impressive Shrike event. White Ibis stalked a creekside. Yes, this was indeed Texas.

The thing you learn about southbound highways in Texas on the coastal plain is that the speed limit is 75 for everyone. Which translates to most of those millions of registered Texans as proceed Hell-for-Leather. Apparently, that specific phrase comes from Rudyard Kipling, because you know, I had all that car time to learn stuff. Anyway, Texas also believe that 75 is it. Why screw around with all those extra signs that might bring you gradually up to speed? It dropped to 45 in a town that they deigned to even honor with a slow zone and then, hang on, rip it to 75 again. Meaning those little mailbox side roads and gas pull-offs had no warmup zones or slow down zones. Getting back on meant blinker on, look right and gun it. It also meant taking some G’s when you came to a stop. And we suddenly took some G’s as Bo rumbled off near one town and said ‘Hawk.’ I thought he meant another stunning White-tailed Hawk, which we had begun to see. But this was the first Harris’ Hawks.

These are the red-shouldered, travel-in-gangs dark hawks of the oh-so-penetrating gaze. They can really dark-brow you. I can still hear David Attenborough’s reverent voiceover on one of those recent specials where these guys performed some badass encircling movement to take out a jackrabbit or an errant fifth grader in Arizona. “Note the fear in this small child’s eyes?” These two birds we watched were just outside the car giving us the full four eyed stare. Cocked into the wind, all ruffleblown and dangerous, giving us a look that said if we got out of the vehicle they would packhunt the tender white wastrels we were and leave us bloody and absent our softbreads in the nearby abandoned construction lot. We saw many more of these dark raptors as we moved southward. They never bored us.

150 miles deeper south every two hours, the landscape became flat and scrubby. Potholes, arroyos, dry beds and salt licks. Things were getting biologically weirder fast. We tried to look dead ahead, focus on the target. We failed once when ripping past a large body of water to our westerly side. We circled back, rumbled off the road to see Anhinga and Neotropic Cormorants, rafts of ducks and Vermillion Flycatchers. The first southerly butterflies: Sicklewings and Patches. Odd milkweed bugs. A purpled Nightshade in the grass.

Harder and faster south, we slipped into the true coastal plain landscape where the turbines grew. They had certainly not been there when either of us last took this coastal route. I checked when safely home and most of the zone we drove through was peppered with these after 2009 and they have continuously added more three-bladed towers since then. They are privately owned, apparently by a German company which leases the farmland and allows the farmers to continue their farming operations beneath them. They are truly hypnotic constructions arrayed in long lines. We assumed they were connected by some mystical underground communications. The landscape was also riddled with power line grids and substations. Each turbine showed a ladder and door at their base. We thought several times we needed to just drive over on the short dirt access roads and just stop beneath one to listen for the thwock………………..thwock………………..thwock that surely accompanied these twirling massive things. Wikipedia said 22 rotations a minute. This seemed right, the slow patterned revolutions every 2 to 3 seconds. They just went on and on, powering up homes in San Antonio and Corpus and Houston we presumed.

Into the true valley finally, we discovered that the land had been populated and developed beyond our possible imaginings, beyond our world population boom horrors. After the wide expanse of coastal plain littered with turbines and broad emptiness the sudden layering of strip malls and parking lots seemed harsh. It was. We pointed towards Resaca de la Palma which had not even been a wild preserve when we were last here. It became a State Park in 2008 and was now part of the World Birding centers preserve group. Many native plants had been reintroduced. A Resaca being what we called an oxbow up north. These were somehow off the twisting history of the Rio Grande river itself. After the long trial of the car we were ready to walk and the plant life was immediately foreign again. Before we even achieved the door of the nicely built visitor center a Band-celled Sister started zinging above us. Green Jays seemed to be everywhere. The bird that we both remembered from our long-ago valley ventures. I mean, I love a Blue Jay but these things were still unreal. It was also our first venture back into other humans other than the few hotel denizens and the crowded auto horrendioma of Houston. We, strictly by chance, were in the valley at the same time as one of the butterfly festivals so we kind of expected to see some insect nerds possibly on or even above our level of nerdiness. People who had paid large sums of money to be guided around the wild valley spots were skulking around somewhere and were supposedly arriving this same day in the area.

We hit a nearby trail that looked uninhabited. By humans, I mean. Or nearly. Shaded and lined with unknown trees we walked to the Resaca which was dry in this everywhere drought. I don’t think we saw another soul there. But among the blue mistflower bushes, the most common nectar plant I think we saw down there, the butterflies began to entertain us as they would for the whole week. We twisted and turned with our cameras, pointing and sharing this oddity or that one. Occasionally, like on the first appearance of the Guava Skipper, we both took in a breath suddenly. Stunning thing that eats Guava. A tree that won’t grow in my state ever. Blue Metalmarks, Common Mellana, a variety of Longtails dancing around. And we were easily distracted by the birds. We always are.

Across the wild freeway and the land of Taquerias and hair salons again, we located the general area of the Alamo Hotel, a place that Bo had discovered from his brother’s recommendation. A hotel that only caters to butterfly or bird nuts or photographers. We qualified. I guess you just have to say you like butterflies but could be otherwise corrupted in any other way. While Bo went to check in, I stood under an oak tree and found five White-winged Doves quietly staring down at me. Some yard dogs gave me the eye. When I saw Bo walking back the doves suddenly burst away followed by a high-speed Cooper’s Hawk. Afterwards, as always with raptors, the silence seemed both shattered and paused.

Keith, the proprietor, met us at the off-site suite’s location, which was bursting with flowers. He spoke with an Australian accent despite having lived here for what sounded like more than fifty years. He said he had over 107 butterfly species recorded for these gardens where he once lived. He lives nearby now. While we spoke a Buff-bellied Hummer buzzed around. Butterflies zinged. He introduced us to the back yard which was even larger than the front garden space. And a goose ‘who doesn’t like men.’ Keith said he, Mister Goose, was older than 18 years so ‘we cut him some slack.’ I could see some bantam chickens on the loose out there as well. My kind of menagerie.

We saved the first full day that was supposed to be a sunshine day for Santa Ana NWR. A place that held long memories for both of us. Visons so old they had blended into fog and myth in my case. Green Jays and Chachalacas back then made the place seem like a different country. Which, essentially, it is, this Rio Grande landscape. We took the back roads south as the refuge is only 10 or 12 miles from our Alamo Inn temporary homestead. Farm fields that were green stretched between irrigation canals. Everything just seemed to be starting to grow even in late October. At the first big flight of Black-bellied Whistling Ducks we stopped and jumped out of the car to hear the overflying mass of whistling. This bird would also be with us all week.

The gate to Santa Ana was totally unfamiliar. And as it should be when we learned that the old headquarters was abandoned inside the refuge and dilapidating. We pulled into an elongate parking area that was ripped with cyclists. Cyclists in full gear, real bikes. Sunday mornings apparently are ride day. The 6-mile road through the refuge is now closed to cars but is a fine bike run. The lot itself was lined with Cacti and Mexican Olives. A tree that would also be blooming its large white flowers with us all week. The first Chachalacas were just over the levee eating some sort of unknown berry. These big greenish roadrunner/chickens are always striking. They look alert and at many places are wary and skittish. These fed and ignored us up in their trees. They were silent. Since our long-ago meetings at the refuge Bo and I had seen several of their relations and cousins in Central and South America. Those were always wary. And they all are capable of the most amazing noises.

Other than the occasional passing happy cyclist we seemed to have the place to ourselves and headed down a trail to the east that appeared to end in water. Slow as always, camera crazy, butterflies abounded around us: Snouts and Queens, Queens and Snouts. The Snouts along with the Empress Leilia fed on the spiny hackberries and were still emerging continuously. Dragonflies flitted. The beautiful Roseate Skimmer dragonflies required repeated examination perching and coursing. We could hear the sounds of the nearing water birds ahead before we reached the shallow Pintail lakes. Just before that on the right side I spotted a butterfly that made my heart pound and I launched into the spiny unknown after it. It fluttered and stopped, fluttered and stopped then zigzagged off into the dense netherlands. Bo shouted to ask what it was, I said, ‘that orange flappy one. You know, in the book.’ No shot obtained. It was early in the week. We thought we might see another. But this Elf was the only of its kind that week. We learned later there had not been one seen in 16 years in the valley.

The water world and its edges were almost too much for us. Sunlight striking the brush line to our right, water birds lifting and settling towards the sunrise. The Kiskadees were vocal. A large group of Black-necked Stilts never stopped talking. That is a sound we had not been privy to in several years and I don’t think I had ever seen this many in one place. Mixed in was the ever present Great-tailed Grackles noises of wheezing and barking and whooping. It was laughable. Duck groups, Coots. We watched for Least Grebes and after we understood their stealthy movements, we found at least 30 of them. I remember struggling to see one years ago but this broad plain of water was not here or not accessible back then.

Water was actively being pumped into the flats while we walked. There were several other wanderers out in this open area with cameras. And the occasional walker in tight athletic clothing oblivious to stilts, kiskadees, ‘all that nature shit.’ They often appeared to be walking their phones. We stalked the levee and shook our heads at all the butterflies. Also the dragons: the Thornbush Dashers, Great Pondhawks, Roseates. Mottled ducks flashed their purple specula. Cattle Egrets stalked hoppers and god-knows-what in the grassy wet.

Back at the peaceful Alamo, with tired retinas, we thought we might try a pizza. Tower Pizza was within walking distance, so we walked it. Waiting to cross over the main highway we waited with some decorated, costumed young ladies, laughing and patting themselves on the back. In a large square we passed a huge Halloween celebration within a sort of compound with many truck vendors, a stage and an announcer surrounded by ghouls and goblins. We walked past this looking for the pizza place before realizing it was indeed the host building in the center of the Halloween chaos. We shook our heads and went in anyway. We maneuvered through ordering and operating the Endless Beer Wall. And found a table overlooking the party. And it was a people-watching extravaganza. Costumes ranging from sexy to startling to comical. Children as happy as Halloween children are. The beer was local and good. We cheered the costume contest. The pizza was hot. It was the right choice for that night, an evening in a happy crowd.

We discovered the next morning that our local Mexican joint opened early and served breakfast and with style. This became our daily starting spot with its kindly and attentive waitresses. And then we took back roads again to reach the morning destination of the Bentsen Rio park. Drove through some industrial zones that surely had not existed 20 years ago. Our friends the flocks of Black-bellies did not care. They kept whistling and feeding wherever: plowed fields or back yards. And Bentsen was a place I had been to in the past, but I had absolutely no visual memories for it. The offices and store were open on this weekday with a kind and jovial lady at the desk who wanted to hear all about our Halloween extravaganza. She was a big Halloween fan. At the large glass windows, we could see another man who appeared to be having a great time with a large bucket of some kind of homemade suet mix. He was scraping swathes of it onto hanging posts and blocks and stumps. He was tossing balls to Chachalacas that clearly knew this drill. Like chickens they would grab a whole ball and run for their lives. Mr. Jolly Suet-man had a four-wheel vehicle and many buckets of such suet. We met him all morning running the roads to his array of feeder stations. Guy made me smile every time we saw him. What a job. And he did it with joy, apparently every day for many months of the year.

We crossed another levee which held a clear view of some fluttering crime scene tape and warning signs. Atop the levee we had a long hard view of a fresh section of the Great Border Wall. Some serious looking men kept their eyes on us like we might be carrying food out to some cached Venezuelans. It was an ugly architectural thing that was surely a wildlife obstruction for anything but birds and butterflies. It was cutting across the park property like a weird useless scar. This isolated section was gapped east and west by open zones.

Up and over we went and then it was out onto the loop trails which were once again for foot and bike traffic only. And for Mr. Jolly Suet-man. The first feeder station was freshly packed and seeded. Birds were zinging around excitedly. Those giant Altamira Orioles make you stop in your tracks. This biggest of North American orioles was decorated with intense oranges. They made some starter noises in the many places we saw them. They were there for the suet along with White-tipped Doves and Kiskadees. And the sneaky Chachalacas.

Up the road we were greeted by a strolling gang of the Rio Grande variety of Wild Turkey. Some big boys in a pure male group very incautiously coming our way. We discovered they also knew the Suet man’s schedule and were hitting every feeder station along the road with a gang’s vengeance. Boss Turkey would jump on the seed platform and everyone else would grab the fallings. We met the hen group as well, doing the same route but certainly having nothing to do with the boys.

Many of the trail edges were lined with spiny hackberry which is eaten by American Snout, Empress Leilia, Hackberry Emperor and Tawny Emperor caterpillars. These things were covered with chrysalis shells and the road in places was clouded with Snouts. Suet man would drive by and the number of snouts startled up into the air was astounding. I conservatively estimate we saw 10 to 20 thousand down there. Most of the non-snouts were Empress. Often freshly hatched on the shrubs. At a Resaca that actually contained some water, the rattle of the Ringed Kingfisher. A Gray Hawk perched in a distant spire. We chased some robbers and sand wasps over a plantless expanse. We waved at bikers clouded smokily about with snouts. They waved back, surely with dead snouts in their teeth.

It is a short drive from Bentsen to the National Butterfly Center. This is the 100 acres of educational and experimental plant work owned by NABA that has been in the news over its battles with the Wall and the associated border nutjobs. It has a beautiful welcome center built there. If you look at it from google maps it looks surrounded. A canal to the south, then the border service road. And then some farm fields interstices before the actual Rio Grande. Eastward: some large holding pond. Northward: roads and farm fields. Everywhere nearby was border patrol activity for sure. Bo and I were fairly unthreatening in our Subaru, we stuck to the local speed limits. Our biggest worry again was that the Butterfly festival was still going on and we would be swamped by humans even nerdier than we were. Or even butterfly watching crowds, god forbid. Also, we feared cloudiness and rain which did not happen. The flora were abundant even before you walked through the doors. And the whole place was alive with butterflies. A smattering of bending, stooping, pointing, camera-bearing humans. Inside we gladly gave these NABA people some money. The desk clerk warned us they were having a rattlesnake ‘outbreak.’ So we needed to be careful with stomping off into grassy or brushy landscapes. I didn’t want to tell her I would give her some extra money if she would point me to the rattlesnakes. I did show her a Wolf Spider ranging her counter. She bent to see her, ‘oh, she can stay.’

Into the inside gardens and more butterflies, spiders, wasps. Those striking Texas Wasp Moths that we stopped for everywhere. How many shots did I take of that thing? On the graveled pathways it was hard not to meet people who wanted to know what you were shooting, what you’ve seen. Nice guy from Missouri on his own with a beautiful camera. We looked at his shot of what he thought was a leafhopper. We pointed out that it was a beetle as we had already cocked our heads over that weird thing. Some extra chatty people in some spots, mostly socializing about past birding experiences really. I think these guys all started as birders: a common pathway. I wasn’t really sure what to point out to someone but when I did quietly tell a man that I was looking at a Lantana Scrub Hairstreak, he loped over, whipped out a walkie-talkie and called his wife.

The east border was wooded. And Bo and I stopped at the base of a tree that was just ripped with spiny protrusions like a Toothache tree. We scanned up and saw this thing was making huge purple flowers. We were highly distracted by it. No one else seemed to even see it. At one point out in the gardens a man who seemed to be in charge of a Butterfly Festival squad asked if ‘we gentlemen wouldn’t like to see a Hermit Skipper?’ We would, but this announcement vacuumed all the humans in that direction. We thought we’d work our way there slowly. And then things like this tropical looking tree would distract us. Plus, the woods there were ringing with bird noise. Chachas and Grackles, we heard and then saw an Audubon’s Oriole singing. Woodpeckers, Green Jays which were always making wild ass noises. The Chachas were marching in groups and did not seem to care who was where. Some inherent fearlessness around butterfly nerds. One young guy pointed them out to an astounded older couple as ‘Roadrunners.’ We heard them telling many of the others they were Roadrunners. Oh, the roadrunner stories they would tell back home. Who is going to say anything?

The NABA overlords had placed logs along the wooded trail and these things were caked with a gooey brown substance that was insect crack. Every one of these held something interesting. Often multiples: beetles, spider wasps, flies, many butterflies. One of them had been identified by a huge Giant Toad, species name the undeserved horribilis, as the best of feeding areas. He was up right in the goo (later learned it contained beer and sugars) and was tonguing anything in flight including honey bees and wasps. Damn the stingers. Huge squinting tongue thrusts that were comical.

In one of the ditches, where we had the zone to ourselves, we spotted a large orange head. And then the spread width of the Hermit Skipper. Apparently, in about thirty minutes it had already lost its magic. That thing was striking, deeply involved with nectaring. I launched down into ditch, ‘damn the rattlesnakes.’ Bo let me go first. Big skipper had the place to himself. We came back to the NABA center on Wednesday after the Hermit had apparently skedaddled, and people were looking for it in this exact ditch location. One young lady standing nearby (young being less aged than I was) was gazing into the ditch through her binoculars and asked me if that could be the Hermit. She was looking at a Metalmark which are very small in size. I shook my head and I showed her with my index and thumb the spread of the Hermit. ‘Wait, what the hell? No.’ I showed her again and said ‘bigger than a Cloudywing.’ ‘Noooo, bigger than a Guava Skipper?’ ‘Yes, bigger than a Guava.’ ‘What the hell?’ This was the only place in the world I think I could have had this conversation.

Walking back from another fine breakfast on one morning, Bo and I spotted something on the roof of our building. ‘What is that? Bo asked. I squinted and said, ‘it looks like a damn Whistling Duck.’ And indeed, atop our roof was a group of Whistling Ducks. We ran into Marisol making her rounds and she said that ‘oh yes they wait for me.’ ‘The wild ducks?’ Nodding, she asked if we wanted to watch her let the goose out. I had noted on another morning the big goosey guy was in his octagonal cage with a sleeping platform. I did not unlatch him. Marisol said he was locked in every evening. Keith had to come do that. But she released him each morning. She verified he was 20 years old. And she said it was one of the best parts of her job.

Out back the chickens were jumping and scratching at their door to get out. Mr. Goose, as Marisol called him, was honking at the sight of her. She released the chickens. And she spoke to the goose continuously and this goose knew the routine. Definitely approved of everything Marisol was saying. She got his child’s bath tub out and sprayed it off with her hose. Then began filling it. Whereupon Mister Goose jumped in and she proceeded to arc water on him in a full hose bathing event while he shimmied and gronked. Marisol laughed and spoke to him. And honestly, it was the most joyous thing I saw all week. The gang of Whistling Ducks waited on the roof. For afterward she spread corn and seed grain for the chickens and the goose. The Whistlers knew the schedule and just waited for us to clear out.

Tuesday, we expected a rain day on the porch. But it was low cloudy and not raining after breakfast, so we shot over to Santa Ana again for a walk. Bo again swore he was going to jump out at the Kale field and make a flash illicit Kale harvest. Instead we watched a Gray Hawk. The headquarters was open at Santa this time. Also, with busy friendly people working there. We chose to head towards the trail that seemed to track along the actual Rio Grande for a while. We might see Mexico. Dragons were still flitting and perching. We stopped at the hawk tower and climbed the winding stairs to the view for raptors. Probably could see Mexico from there. Did not see hawks.

Along the river we kept stepping over to see the water and the Mexican shoreline better. The river was far more impressive than I expected from reports that it had dried up in the summer farther to the west. This thing was daunting if you had to swim it. Heavy grass and a very steep bank on our side. I froze above a grassy step with a large Indigo snake coiled in front of me. He zipped off and both our heart rates made an up and down jag. Bo thought he saw a quick Brown Jay going up river. We found another Giant Toad, this one perched up on a log like he was hiding in his camouflage. The lakes were still busy with our birds from Sunday. The Least Grebes even friendlier. Butterflies on the mist flower greeted us despite the cloud cover.

We expected sun the last few days. So, we zipped back to the NABA place again. I headed back to the southeast corner to hang with the Chachas. The Hermit was absent. We popped up a Bluewing. The Chachas were eating berries and suet fearlessly. I found a group dustbathing together like my chicken flock. A tour group began arriving of all new humans. Some with long lenses. I saw a young lady gape and furrow her brow at a Chacha standing in the sun. ‘Roadrunner’ I wanted to say. It was time to bail out soon after.

Northward the town of Edinburgh has put some fences and pathways and gardens around their oxidation ponds and called it a Water Park. We had to agree. Though the place was full of signs warning you away from the water. The man at the visitor hut was the first who asked us all week if we qualified for Senior status. ‘Highly likely,’ I said. He said 55 and above qualified. ‘We whipped that number quite a while back.’ I did not want to tell him that 56-year olds had hardly tasted the declinations of ‘Senior’ yet.

We found groups of Bordered Patch caterpillars there. A common butterfly all week. Turtles sunned out in the ponds. The ever present Kiskadees did their yellow bellied thing. We found the only Texas Tortoise of the week, having a plant snack and minding his own business. At a nice patch of flowers we found another person staring at insects. The norm at NABA but not here. He asked what we had seen and where we were from. And we guessed at what he might be interested in. He told us he’d met some Arkansas butterfly guys many years ago down here. And he couldn’t recall the name. I told him we knew most of the Arkansas Insect-minded. He said he’d talked to a robber guy from there on the computer. ‘Raney?’ he thought. I told Bo I missed my chance then to say ‘oh Lord, not that asshole.’ But I just raised my hand. He laughed. It was Mike Reese who had sent me some of his retiring library books on flies many years ago. He was chasing robbers and had driven all the way from Minnesota. We thought our own drive back was off-putting.

Frontera Audubon the next morning is the most closely surrounded of just about any place we went. Suburbia slams right up to the edges with roofing guns, dogs and human voices in the distance. Parking, after driving suddenly upon it amid houses, a young pair gearing up for their walk asked ‘got insect spray?’ We did not. And we also had not encountered ticks, chiggers or blusters of mosquitoes anywhere the whole week. We met none there either. It was mostly a bird focused place and sponsored by Audubon groups. A chalk board on the porch heralded the recent birds. And it did seem to harbor most of the local Clay-colored Thrushes and White-tipped Doves. We popped up an Ovenbird. A striking thing here in the brushy south. The pools held feeding White Ibis, the only Green Kingfisher I saw anywhere. Nice boardwalks and trails. Chatty titmice and some Black-throated Green Warblers. Peaceful small place.

Off to the nearby Estano Llano park which was anything but small. Felt like we were stepping into somewhere wilder. And just out of the car something fluttered up and landed in the vegetation. It was Pixieish but looking closely we could not tell what it was. A lovely long winged thing, it quickly left. A bit later when we had walked into the park center area we found a sign showing the exact moth. A valley rarity which was best found here at the Llano. Called the Saucy Beauty. We saluted the namer. The caterpillar eats a plant only found down here of course, known unscientifically as the Googly-eye Vine.

The large deck at the visitor center overlooked a shallow pond that stretched away to the south. It was covered with resting Black-bellied Whistling Ducks making their constant and pleasant little whistle tones. More than we had seen anywhere and we had seen many. They did not seem bothered by humans on the deck or the long boardwalk conveniently wrapped around the whole thing. Mottled Ducks, Snowy Egrets and dark and White ibis also fed and rested there. A breeze was working across all of us. White Pelican flocks soared by. On the side trails we found odd new cacti and more butterflies, weird wasp nests. At a photo blind we watched Buff-bellied and Ruby-throated Hummers working the feeders. As we closed on the exit lot we saw a young girl with a gigantic camera lens coming in. Bo and I spotted a Sulphur we had never seen and we both started the cursing dancing steps around it trying to get an image, ‘one more, come on, turn this way’ like we were working a model. The girl with the camera gave us the look we were so used to up north. The you-two-have-lost-your-wits look. We just shook our heads and waved at her.

Our last morning before working northward, we got everything packed. I wanted to see the goose once more. Our shifting neighbors, the moth-guy and the Amish were sleeping or gone. We had our last Mexican breakfast and we would miss the El Dorado. Across the street, we could see a bird perched on the wire along the busy highway. We pondered it for a bit before realizing it was a Social Flycatcher. Likely the rarest bird we saw all week. Seemed like the sign to hit the road for our Laguna stop.

The roads on the coastal plain opened up with here and there with small towns and canals cutting across which began to show gulls in flight. On the map Laguna Atascosa NWR was vast but mostly roadless. We pulled off in this flat scrubby landscape at a sign for a trail that seemed associated with Laguna. We noticed several pick-up trucks including one that was still diesel idling in the gravel lot. We could see a large sign at the trail entry that said, ‘Hunt In Progress.’ Gearing up despite the wind and the signage, we walked near the truck idler who emerged.

“Guys, there is a hunt going on and the warden already sent some others away.”

“Oh, what are they hunting?”

“Deer, hogs and Bill Guy.”

And my first thought was ‘Bill Guy? Holy Jesus, here is a Texan that has gone so off-the-rails, murderously illegal that they are just going to let anybody puncture with him arrows without mercy. But he repeated the ‘deer, hogs and Nillguy’ phrase when I asked again. This made it one word.

“Ahh,” Bo and I nodded our heads like we knew exactly what the hell that was.

In the car with pocket google, we learned he meant Nilgai. Of course, the Indian Antelope/cow that looks massive with an odd head and body imbalanced. Also known as the Blue Cow. One of the many exotic creatures running around Texas because hogs and deer just weren’t entertaining enough as hunt items. Nilgai have escaped onto the Laguna landmass and now number in the 15 thousand range apparently. We were just glad to know what they were before one of us had spotted one in our binoculars and decided on hallucination over reality.

At the Laguna parking area itself, it seemed abandoned. The trees looked bunkered like they always kept their heads down for the wind blowing in from the ocean and over us for likely about 300 days a year. Choosing or not choosing to live under all this unrelenting motion. The wind lofting inland to spin those giant turbine arrays, powering up Good Morning America and Joel Osteen with his snake oil and promises of redemption.

There was a small sheltered garden near the entrance. I looked in on a giant Mantis with a horn on its head. The mantis looked intently at me like they generally do: knowing, yet predatory. Always trying on whatever is in its field of view as possible prey, no matter how big the loom or the shadow. There were signs for an upcoming Cat event. Not housecats, though I bet there were some here. Not in the too distant past someone had discovered that Laguna had not only Bobcats but also Jaguarundi and ocelots. No one had known. Stealthy damn things living in this broad land of scrubby underpathways. None of them big enough to eat a Nilgai. Inside they were stocking the shelves for the wave of expected Cat crowds: hats and tee-shirts. The elfin boy/girl behind the counter had big bright eyes. She asked what we were looking to see. We said butterflies, just picking one possibility. ‘Oh, well, it is a bit windy today.’ She grabbed a brochure and pointed to a Silver-banded Hairstreak on the fold, ‘I saw one of these yesterday though.’ Amazed at a counter human who would recognize a hairstreak, we went back to the garden again. My mantis loomed, spiny prayer arms still folded, then ignored me. I saw some flapping and indeed a Silver-banded was there in the fresh grip of an assassin bug, waving out its last signs of life. Inside dark, outside green, inside dark, outside green: the slow burndown of a short life.

A network of trails led away from the visitor center lot. At the start of these: a crab. Bo and I looked at each other. It was a small sideways crab. One that apparently had said ‘to hell with this crowded beach combing, I am going over there where the tigers walk and eat some grasshoppers.’ It disappeared in the litter. An Altamira Oriole fed on something close by. We never tired of this big orange thing. And we heard a bird scuffle, the angry calling of titmice and gnatcatchers. Knowing something was up we headed towards the irate crowd. And I only knew something had happened from Bo’s eyebrows shooting up. A Bobcat had walked out of the brush on the path bearing a large rodent. The cat had given Bo a good gaze and turned back the other way. My angle, my zen was off that morning and I missed it.

Down a straight road west we came to the gazebo built overlooking the great Laguna Atascosa itself. The namesake body of water which looked brackish or just frankly salty out there in its wide sunstruck magnificence. Cloud shadows and duck masses drifted in confusing array. Two ladies were sitting and gazing outward speaking to each other about birds in a lovely Scottish lilt. The masses of bird flotillas were a mix of Coot and Redhead. And surely we were looking at numbers in the 100 thousand range. I had read that most of the world’s Redheads winter here on the waters around Laguna. Some Roseate Spoonbills fed quietly in the shallows to the right of us. The Scottish girls were touring Texas on a birding run. When they get a chance they escape to America for birds it seemed. Our own escape much less lengthy, we understood. A sign warned us all away from the water’s edge where gators awaited any tender and foolish birders. Between the bloodlust of the bow hunters and the death grip of the gators we walked. We wished the Scottish girls well.

We took the back roads west and northward bringing us even closer to the swirling gargantuan wind turbines. We could feel the pull of homeward. I still wanted to run over and put my hands on the base of one active turbine to feel the great rhythmic swirl. And Oh, to stand atop one. Was there an elevator or just a spiral of death-defying stairs inside these things?

All that was left after was the grind of intensifying civilization, one more hotel room and the buzz of traffic back into winter. At the beginning of the trip one of Bo’s tire lights had come on as he drove onto my property. The morning we left it had gone out. After over a thousand miles as we crossed the creek just a hundred yards from my house the light popped back on and we both laughed. We were back in true November, looking around: leaf rattle and bare branches, the absence of Chachalacas. Nuthatches spoke in the pines. But the house was warm. Vicki had made some dense hot chili. We had scotch. The amber nectar from where the Scottish ladies came.

We would be fine. We would be just fine.

        HR

Thanks to Keith at the Alamo Inn and all the caretakers at the remnant and wild places down there struggling against expanding humanity. Thanks also to NABA for their own struggle against boundaries and ignorance. Thanks to Bo for the driving. And a few of the above photos are his. Thanks to Marisol for watering the goose and giving a damn about the animals. Thanks to Jolly Suet man for making us laugh.