6 April 2003
Say what you like about Texas and Texans, it's a wonderful place to be in
springtime. Today I'm at Neal's Lodges, 75 miles west of San Antonio. The
drive here took me through the Hill Country at the peak flowering time for Indian
Paintbrush and of course Bluebonnets. Acres of them. Miles and miles of them.
When Neal's opened in 1926, cabins could be had for $2-5 per night.
The price has increased a bit since then. Spread along the clear, spring-fed
Frio River, Neal's is a great place for tubing down the river, horseback riding and of
course birding.
Here we find Southwestern "replacement" species for the
familiar Eastern ones: Curve-billed for Brown Thrasher, White-winged for Mourning
Dove, Lesser for American Goldfinch. The best place to see and photograph them is at
bird sanctuaries (feeding 
stations) maintained by spring resident
ornithologist June Osborne, who has written an excellent book on finding birds of the
area.
My favorite spot is the so-called Cattle Guard sanctuary, set on a
hillside covered with flowering mesquite. Sparrows and House Finches swarm around
sunflower and cracked corn on the ground. The sugar-water feeder, meant for
Black-chinned Hummingbird, draws a Hooded Oriole, which of course is the replacement of
our familiar Baltimore Oriole.
So accommodating (or hungry) are the birds that I don't need a blind - I
just sit quietly with the camera about 25 feet away, and the birds come in with little
hesitation.
8 April 2003
A bird doesn't need gaudy colors to charm a bird photographer. One of my favorites at the station is the Black-throated Sparrow. I've admired them from a distance in the Arizona desert, but here they're very
tame, flying down to within 10 feet of me to feed on the ground. In
fact this is quite a hangout for sparrows. Along with Black-throated we have Field,
Chipping, and Vesper Sparrows. The Black-crested race of Tufted Titmouse is a
regular, and Pyrrhuloxias as well as Northern Cardinals are drawn to the grain.
Occasionally a Sharp-shinned Hawk in turn is drawn to the birds, which of course breaks up
the party.