Olaf Danielson's Blog, page 6

RV LIFE 2021, Destination Chicago (Days 1-4)

\We started our six month RV journey on September 23rd.  We've had COVID, two shots, and we are ready to see the world.  Initially we were going west, then fly down to bird the Amazon, then fly back to Arizona before catching a flight to Thailand, Bhutan, and then New Zealand, but alas, COVID cancelled the best of plans and as such, it seemed the best course of action was to head southeast, and head towards South Carolina and then zig zag around and see what we could see.

What craziness and problems we would run into we could only be guessed about and as such we prepared as best we could for the worst and hoped for the best as we pulled out of the campground on Sims Rd and headed south towards our future.

Our first destination after an overnight in East Bethel, Minnesota to pick up our rig, was Zion Illinois, about as close as we could come to park our RV and see our son Seth (Tyko) in Chicago.  He is a third year medical student at Rush University in Chicago and we do not see him as much as we should. 

Life immediately interrupted us as our daughter's living situation at Hamline disintegrated to the point we were calling in favors to get her an apartment.  We wondered if we should turn around and what.  We looked at apartments on the internet and Silja talked her sister into going apartment shopping with her.  It was a stressful 400 windy miles to Madison, over to Milwaukee, and then to Zion, Illinois, where Google immediately sent us to the wrong unit of the park.  Luckily, there was a turn around and we got out unscathed.  We found our campsite and despite having to unhook, back in, and a night filled with frog noise, mosquitoes, and automatic weapon's fire we were able to find our son and enjoy Chicago.

We walked the streets, saw Christina Quarles and the Museum of Contemporary Art in Chicago.   Her stuff is interesting, but their comics exhibit, was painful to the point, Silja went to the bathroom and got lost in the giftshop, as she had enough.  We had been to a similar museum in London and almost the same thing happened, and that art was better.  There was too much art trying to make statements we had already heard ten years before the art, and some of it was just plain poor. My opinion, but well, if in Chicago....go somewhere else.
We walked seven miles around town.  Next, we went to the pier and saw the Ferris wheel and while my wife and son rode it (I passed), I watched a cameo appearance of The Galaxie Girls of Chicago, mostly dressed.
We ate Indian food, Mozambique food, it all stayed down, and then we drove up north and back to Zion and luckily slept to the insects and only were awakened by a nearby coyote, no gun shots.  It was a great visit with our son.  We miss him so much.
We drive through Chicago unscathed and into Indiana, our goal was to see Silja's first cousin, whom she could not not remember.   Chicago was easy driving and getting gas in Indiana was also pretty uneventful, our first fuel stop.  They were on our route and served us a great steak dinner while we talked football and what happened to what relative.  They lived in a gorgeous house above the Ohio River near Hanover Indiana.  We planned on staying at the Clifty Falls State Park, the road to the campground was windy and narrow, but when we arrived at three. our site was filled.  The checkout time on Saturday was strangely at 5 pm, but luckily we had a second site we could use before they left, and we ended up staying there
late departure campers from our campsite leaving us to scrounge for a new spot.
View at Silja's cousins house.
we did not see many birds but we saw deer
We walked around the park for a while before we braved the narrow roads out, but that would be another day's adventure
Clifty Falls
The tunnel near Tunnel Falls
The first four days of our 2021-2022 adventure
So far, our trip, we had fought wind and people in our campsite but successfully navigated around Chicago.  More importantly, we had found a formula that kept our cat, Tiger from getting car sick, and it was like a miracle.  We had survived just a single fuel stop but so far, all was well.
The adventure continues, next Kentucky!
Olaf

Olaf's COVID induced writing binge

So why am I showing you a photo of 16 month old me?  I  do not remember much from 1967, although it was a big year for me.  I learned to walk and well, I got inspired for a project that it took 48 years to complete.  Now it is 2021....and whoa!  What a rush.  I have been a writing machine. I am just finishing up a contract volunteer writing and research project creating a 214 page book on the history of a storied campground and community in the Upper Midwest, that will be the sixth book I've finished since the start of COVID, but one in which is not available to an outside audience but the other five.....  I've also even finished a magazine article on rare butterflies, and way too many blogs, although truth be told, I have not put too many blogs up this summer as I have just been too busy writing. 18 months of lock down, isolation and I somehow got in the biggest creativity and researching mode of my life.  All thanks to COVID.

I decided to not list any of these books on Amazon, as I'd have to sell 10-20 books to put through the costs of one, and on the historical books, writing them was more about sharing things I liked or were meaningful to me, than making money, but I would like to lose less money on any project.  So all of these are available from me, directly, email me at storolaf@yahoo.com.

Book events, I did just two.  I am have a presentation of my Rolite book in Grantsburg on the 14th for the Rotary Club, and other that will be me only event for this book.  A little advertising on Facebook, a couple of emails and well, I sold a few, good enough.

So here is what I put together:

ROLITE: Eggs to Nails to Tin Cans The history of Grantsburg's niche camper manufacturer that existed from 1960-1973.  Selling a book describing a niche manufacturer that only made 6065 campers and the last one was built 48 years ago.  Lots of good memories there with the original motorized pop-up hard-sided camper.  It was not a perfect book, the information on the company is quite scattered and unfortunately a couple of people have information and we just could not connect, for reasons unclear.  Oh well, in not too many years all of what I did not put in here will be gone.    
So back to 1967.....the year my great uncle showed me a competing brand and I was not very impressed, so he bought a Rolite.  Well sort of....
From photos of the trailers to even photos from inside the plant.  I even got to do a book event at the Grantsburg Rotary Club.

CLUB ORIENT: A Photographic History This is a photographic history of St Martin's iconic clothing optional resort destroyed four years ago from Irma, and first opening in 1981.  Of course it is NSFW, and as I did marketing for the resort in 2008, and with all I had, who else could put this together?  I managed to get photographic work from four world renowned photographers to include, stumbled upon some other tidbits and put together a colorful 230 page 8.5 x 11 book with 200 photographs to catch the flavor of a place like no other in the world. It also includes shots from the 1992 movie "Treasured Island" shot there, not an Academy Award winner but a rather funny little movie produced by an European travel agency as a marketing project and released to get people to think about the place.

If you want to see the uncensored views of this one-of a kind place destroyed on September 6, 2017, this is it, but if photos such as these offend you, this IS NOT the book for you.  This is an accurate depiction of life on the Caribbean's largest and most famous naturist beach, so I just depicted life of what was photographed and the way it was.   It is a place you can still dream about, paradise on earth.
Brown Boobies, Hairy Peckers, and Great Tits. Although this book documents my (our) experiences from 2017 through Covid 2020, it mostly looks at our 2019 adventures around the world to see places less travel and less attired to a circumnavigation of America by RV, to South America, a voyage across the south Atlantic, safaris in Africa, and life in France, I visit places some do not even know exist.  Definitely, the road less traveled. 
We followed in the footsteps of Charles Darwin, famous author Robert Heinlein, and Thor Heyerdahl along with many other notable people and events at many of our stops.   
From the grave of Ernest Shackleton of South Georgia Island 
To the beach where Charles Darwin first came ashore on South America aboard the HMS Beagle and maybe where he conceived his theories on evolution of species while bathing in Uruguay
To Olaf cruising around with 2000 naked people all over the Caribbean 
GRANTSBURG: The Golden Years The history of Grantsburg Wisconsin, my hometown from about 1920 to 1985.  I wrote this as a bucket list item with my mother (that was the bucket list item).  Grantsburg has had some quirky past and many interesting businesses and as such, this 420 page book, was a very nice and so far, well received historical document of the community. 
We discuss mail order brides, a decade of lying about the weather, an opera diva, bank failures, a toll bridge empire, and well, many of the characters along the way Dr Anne Carlsen, a woman who made severe handcapped seem normal (being given a award from Richard Nixon)
To Dr. John Toepfer, the man who literally wrote the book about the greater prairie chicken, a person I met randomly looking for the birds back in college' The Search for Paradise This is a compilation of many of my photographs from all over the world.  I look at 50 of my favorite places

The photos include butterflies, landscapes, animals, and birds from six continents, and the arch in Malta no longer even exists
Magazine Articles: My research on photography of two South Dakota threatened and endangered butterflies which will be feature in the South Dakota Magazine next spring:  Dakota skippers and regal fritillaries need to be saved.  Dakota Skipper
Regal Fritillary 
So that is what I did last summer.....next winter and summer IDK, maybe I actually send Christmas cars. 

Of Mice and Olaf

 Oh Canada, how have I missed thee.

With Canada opening the border on August 9 (but with us being in the Boundary Waters Canoe Area) we waited until August 20thto try to get ourselves north in order to get to some phenomenal fishing.  My Mother and Dad, originally scheduled to come with, decided that the threats of COVID and the process put forward from the Canadian government was too daunting.  We had to coordinate our departure, get negative COVID tests with results in hand 72 hours from the submission and be at the border within that time frame.  There were a lot of ifs.

We convinced some other travel partners of ours, Don and Nancy to go with and take my parents place, promised them some fish and well, that seemed like an easy promise. 

After our long absence (well it seemed long), the lake was the same, the cabin was the same, our award still hung on the wall, and the fish bit. 

There were still signs all over in Canada to wear masks and such and even Leroy had to abide.  It was like it was last October in the USA, where somewhat unfortunately, we've seemed to move on despite COVID around mostly die to vaccine avoidance

In Armstrong, Ontario, there was no eat-in dining.  We walked in, ordered pizza and twenty minutes later, we walked back in an carried it out and ate it.  Otherwise, save for the camp and the border, we never stopped to see anyone or buy anything.  

Gail's, the finest (only) place for food in Armstrong Ontario
 With COVID being the big concern of Canada, who would have guessed that this trip, however would be plagued by, of all things…mice.  I had figured this would be the trip of the wolf (note later) but no, it was something totally different.  Over the course of the week, our cabin would progressively be taken over by the little vermin.  It started by seeing one scurrying around in the bathroom, we found a trap and then trapped it.  By the last night, the whole gang had arrived and one got in a chair, so we took to barricading the doors to our rooms but as it would turn out, it was to no avail.  On our last night in camp, I was awakened by something running over my leg.  I was thinking that could not have been a mouse when something ran over my face.  Yuck!

My wife and I watched him poke out from under the mattress and then scurry around the room.  She went back and fell asleep and was soon snoring.  I moved to another room but then I heard strange sounds above, below, and all around me.  It sounds like one is in the lower part of the oven trying to get out.  So I got out and wrote this.  As I write this, there goes one in the bathroom.  I had to take a break from writing this to get the broom to defend myself when two were looking at me.

A week of wildlife and fishing to a place that has been closed for 17 months and all I can write about is mice, or so it seems.  Unfortunately, I’m done with sleeping in this cabin, my hearing is still too acute and my imagination is just too strong.  Oh well....sleep is overrated, I guess.

The walleyes on the lake bit like they had not been fed in two years and they seemed, two years bigger.  We caught as many as we wanted and we got into holes where it seemed they were only 18-20 inches in size, and I mean like all of them.  Mind you, the biggest two were just around 23 inches, but catching fish under 15 inches was a difficult problem to do, something everyone who fishes, wishes they had.

There goes a mouse across the living room, oh one is on the stove looking at me.  We had one trapped in a chair, we made a barricade to force the critters to cross over some extra sticky, Gorilla tape, sort of a poor man’s sticky trap, unfortunately, the vermin can walk right over it without any cause for concern.  I think that mouse went in the bedroom with my wife but well, what can I do?  Wait, one just went under the fridge, or was that the same one?  How did he just get into the counter, or is that yet another one.  I hear a noise in the bathroom and yet another one scurries out the door.

The pike fishing was spotty.  Chaos in spots and in other spots just plain good.  The weather was not conducive for pike when we arrived, it was too hot and dry, but then the weather changed and when I could convince my bride of 31 years to pike fish, we got into some fishing chaos.  Mayhen in a boat.  Pike fishing is a lot of work, but worth it when the big ones hit.  To save her arms, she geared down her walleye rod and then used a leader on light line so she could more easily cast.  She caught some fish, but on the next to last day, in a bay that has historically produced monsters, she finally changed her mind when she got a big one on, and well, even with a special second drag system all of my reels have on, her line broke and she lost it.  It is just very difficult to land something big if they refused to be coaxed to the boat on light monofilament and a small rod.  One thing on our normal pike set-ups now, nothing breaks.  One may not get the hook set properly, but no fish is ever found to successfully bite through stuff that is better meant for barracuda fishing or towing cars.

So, on the last day she was back fishing the heavy tackle and in the first bay, setting her rod down with the lure a foot or so above the water to warm her hands, a good-sized pike jumped up and grabbed it, and utter chaos ensued.  I was bringing in a smallish northern when I heard the commotion and saw the only thing keeping the rod in the boat being the reel catching on the side of the boat.  My wife grabbed it, somehow clicked on the baitrunner drag and let the fish just go out to sea. 

“I think you can reel him back toward the boat now,” I said assessing the situation, my wife was still startled.  But now it was a normal fight and in a little while I grabbed the fish, extracted the hook, and she held it up for a picture.  

At 35 inches, it was her largest fish since she caught a series of 42.5, 43, and a 44-inchers in a reel pike bonanza in Manitoba, earning her three “master angler awards” for catch and release from the province and more fully described in my book Confessions of a Pike Whisperer.

Me, I missed one in the upper thirty class momentarily losing concentration at the end of the last day and did not get the hook set properly, but I did what I had to do, earning our trophy for the biggest pike again, a 37 incher caught a few days earlier. It wasn’t huge, but well it was nice to fish again. It had been a few years since I got to “pet the beaver” and capture the "Falun Sucker Club Trophy" for monster northerns on Smoothrock Lake. There is a beaver pelt under the award in the now mouse infested cabin.  The year was basically a year fishing against myself, and the odds of no one again even getting here in 2021 was pretty high.  Just trying to get up here was deserving of some sort of award. 

My fifth Falun Sucker Club Memorial Trophy, the ugliest trophy for angling
My first award from 1985

It was worth the fish hook I had to cut out of my hand and the significant cut I had on my finger that would require stitches in another setting plus the myriad of other cuts and pokes.  As they say, your not pike fishing unless there is blood in the bottom of the boat.

The mouse under the fridge also ended up in the stove and now sounds like my two cats are stuck in the litter box.  How can they make so much noise?  Then later it was on the stove on the counters, everywhere or so it seemed.  The mouse circus was in town.  They climbed, scurried, jumped, fought, mated, and even it seemed, flew around the room.

The mouse circus, we made them do tricks, or so it seemed

The highlight of the trip was seeing a family group of wolves.  We saw them on two days.  Seeing a wolf is some sort of omen, in many cultures, but I’m not sure mouse induced insomnia is one of them.   But when you see a wolf the first time and it urinates as it watches you and the second time you see it, it lays down on a rock with a look of total disregard towards you, whatever that means cannot be good. 

We got to even see the Wolf pups
 As for other wildlife, we saw a moose driving up, but not from the water or from the air.  The birds were the usual—Canada jays, some flocks of Sandhills coming south, a breeding pair on the lake, a few warblers, lots of eagles, and many loons. 

With the cold and wet setting in mid-trip, the few late season butterflies vanished save for a few large luna moth caterpillars going somewhere to make their cocoon to survive upcoming winter and remerge as the huge green moths in 2022.  I did photograph a common branded skipper.  The only butterfly I was able to do so all week.

Common Branded skipper
Bald eagle feeding
Canada Jay
Luna moth caterpillar
Merlin
All in all, a good week of fish, mice and wolves, but note to self, bring mouse traps, real sticky traps, a lot of them, and maybe also more than the usual amount of jig tails for 2022.  We also brought way too much food.  Maybe this was just another fish story but well, it IS a trip story, and with Bhutan 2021 like Bhutan 2020, Canada Fishing 2020 A, B, C and 2021, A B and C, as well as Amazon 2020 and 2021 cancelled, well we at least got somewhere once.
Some fish were almost the size of the lure
Boats waiting patiently for fishermen to finally arrive, we were the only guests at Smoothrock Lake last week
even a 31 inch pike was a welcome fighter
a photographic moment with a 32 incher
Digging out a hook of a 31 incher in No Fish Bay
a nice 23 inch walleye
I'm back out there exploring and writing about it, immunized and hopefully, full of COVID antibodies and hopefully to places with less vermin, yuck!

Olaf

The Deceitful Plovers

 

I have never seen a deceit or possibly a brace of Wilson's Plovers (who gives out these names for groups of birds?  We will get to that).  I have only seen one or two birds at a time, and even at that I have only recorded 9 different sightings of this bird named after Alexander Wilson, whom never saw the species (was documented by George Ord from Cape May in early 1800s).  Of my nine sightings, three have occurred on St Martin, where a pair nested near the salt marsh behind the resort I frequented, but did not find every year.  Today, though this bird was hanging around the east end of Fort DeSoto Park in spades...were there 30, definitely, could there have been a hundred, possibly, they were sitting, feeding, snoozing, and one even took a bite out of a sanderling for offenses not apparent, maybe for just being too pale or something.

My wife went off to see manatees and I figured it was a good day for me to go birding, so off I went, being too lazy to get up at 4am to head north to see the flamingo.  DeSoto was a more manageable drive.
Wilson's plovers are interesting birds, and possibly a bird in some trouble over disturbing their beach habitat.  One source estimates on 22,000 breeding pairs internationally, and less that 9,000 pairs in the USA.  Maybe only 2-3 times the totals of Florida scrub jays for comparison.  People, dogs, and the dreaded peregrines are also listed as culprits.  
Their large beaks make them good at fiddler crab feeders and they are rarely if ever found inland and away from beaches.  I have seen them on one of the access waterways nearby to South Padre but that area looks like a salt marsh, so it was not that much of a surprise.


I have no real agenda for this blog, just enjoying a day out from our COVID hibernation in Lutz, Florida.  What does one do?  DeSoto is a safe outing and with all of these plovers, a lucky bonus.
The only other plover around were a few semipalmated plovers, smaller beaks, with a little orange on them.  They are about the same size.
The end of land here was not very busy, it was cool and windy, good for birders, no so for bathers.  I started at the north end where I usually find Nanday parakeets and I was not disappointed, but I'm not photographing them unless I get something good, now.  I think this is now the most reliable spot for these guys.  They are always near the parking lot here in the mornings.
DeSoto Park is a place where apparently the Mottled ducks (and there was just a pair) are suspect, as on eBird Mottled ducks are rare and mallard/ mottled are NOT.  This looked like a mottled duck drake to me.  I looked at other reports from there and there are thousands......so was I over thinking this to mark it as mottled/mallard or was I lazy, as I did not have to write a description?  

the hen was nearby

Also  nearby was a pair of redheads, which had attracted the attention of two guys with large cameras

Redhead is not a "rare duck" here
The small flock of red breasted mergansers was much more interesting to me, but no one save me with a large camera, cared.
I had actually came here to get my year reddish egret No one cared about him.  My friend Barry says the redheads are already up north, so big deal, I guess. I saw a group of tripods, people with hand held cameras in the distance, being the skua birder I walked over and looked and looked at what rarity they were on, no one talked, no one seemed even remotely friendly, and all I was seeing was this osprey in her nest, but then I figured out the stakeout was FOR this osprey.  I wandered away to photograph a white peacock butterfly, then more butterflies before I drove back to the RV after a trip to the post office.

then a monk skipper
Gulf fritillary
The migrant passerines are a month away from here, but it was a pleasant morning outing and worth the ten bucks of tolls and the admission.  What is the value of seeing a deceit of plovers?  More then 10 bucks IMHO.
A "deceit" of plovers...It comes from a 1486 book of venery of St Albans and from the northern lapwing's broken wing routine, and also used for plovers which, not to be outdone by their larger cousins, can perform the hoax very well themselves, maybe better, but today, they were just eating and scurrying away from Olaf, the birder. Such a pejorative description of many majestic birds.The Alexander Wilson's plover...as I've said before see them while you can, because the future is unknown, both from COVID, sudden illness, and habitat destruction. 
Stay safe out thereOlaf






 

Southern Living

It's Valentines Day.  It is cold up north in the Dakotas and we're not up there, lucky us!  I'm down south as we have been for a month and being down south makes me think of my first "experience" with the south, Television.  "Cooter Davenport," was a character in the now quite politically incorrect series  Duke's of Hazzard.  He drove a tow truck, had on a well worn ball cap and dirty jeans, and spoke his mind in a southern country drawl, but never went to jail, unlike his two cousins, those Duke boys.  Quiz question:  

The southern nickname "Cooter" comes from:

a) a southern slang term for a raccoon

b) An 1840s era nickname for usually dirty and unkempt Georgia miners who would come down from the hills in the state's Dahlonega Gold Mining district

c) a species of freshwater turtle

d) A breed of hunting dogs closely related to the Blue-tick hounds that are sometimes used to track deer and people.

e) Crayfish

While you are contemplating that, I've been busy doing everything down in Florida except birding.  I have been finishing off writing two books these past few weeks, and that seems to have consumed me. We watched the Super Bowl, and caught the fly-over of the B-1, B-2, and B-52, they went right over our lot.  That was cool!

We've been tending to our crop of Monarch caterpillars, we've planted milkweed and moving the little buggers from leaves to better leaves.  We have about twenty on the plants right now, a few are in their chrysalises (not a word I write much).

We are just doing our part to try to save the species, but they are hungry little buggers, eating us out of house and home, and striping our milkweed, which the local nursery is only too eager to sell us.
There are other butterflies, like this barred yellow...

We also bought an RV lot. What is owning a piece of paradise worth, you say?  Looks to me like it costs $75,000..and I cannot tell you if we got value or taken.. .but it is a place to go, in Florida no less, and I guess campsites are not always easy to find where you want them.  I have buyers remorse now even buying a hamburger through the drive-though or even buying toilet paper, so it is hard to read this deal. There was no celebration even though we went to our neighbors and got quite drunk "celebrating" or "consoling" the purchase. Despite the hangover, we like our neighbors and the quite unusual community we have now spent a few winter months in, so all is well there.  We even have our own Tiki hut.  It is not out in the wilds, in fact, it doesn't even have grass, but it works.  The bar in the center has to go, though.  We need to get a shed, but that is another story.

A male cardinal lives in the Tiki hut, too, who can say that?  We went canoeing on the the  Hillsboro River this week.  I got the worst case of boat butt ever, I could write a country song about this extreme boat butt I had, ala Garth Brooks, or Zac Brown but other than that, it was a good time.  Besides the usual birds, we saw out FOY (first of year) alligators, there was no problem finding them, they were all over.  I could of hit the paddle on their snouts if I liked.

So that gets us to the Cooter Davenport answer.  The word "cooter" is not on Microsoft's spellcheck either despite it being a word, so it works in Scrabble.  Cooters are turtles about 7-10 species of which (depending on taxonomy) live in North America.  I am not sure if that is why they picked this name for the character.
The Hillsboro River had cooters, lots of cooters.......Florida or Coastal plains cooters
Then we went walking in Pasco County today and saw another species of cooter, the Peninsular cooter walking in the woods.  It was a cooter two-fer for the week so to speak, and a lifer turtle.

Ben Jones, the man who played Cooter, was elected a Democratic Congressman from Georgia but after two terms was redistricted in 1992 and faced and lost to Newt Gingrich, now 80, he is a man from a different era and along with the other cast, from a story that isn't even shown in reruns now due to sensitivities.
Living in the South, is different, and even for us as temporary that it is, makes one shake their heads some times or almost all the time. Each day is different, Life here is going on, COVID is well, not front and center.  Most of our friends down here have been immunized for the plague unlike my poor mother-in-law which at 83 seems to not be a priority for Minnesota to find her an immunization. Which seems odd thinking that Minnesota is everything Florida is not, yet, they can't get immunizations going up north.  I need my shots but waiting impatiently.  I assume I will get fired up to go bird, but today, I'm just enjoying the warmth, the love of my life--Silja on a very special day, and southern turtles.  Cooter is a cool name, despite the past association with a car painted with politically incorrect insignias and an even cooler turtle. 
Maybe I'll go birding next week....or maybe not
Olaf

  

The Catfish Hole revisited

What is Olaf up to?  Well, I've been spending the last few weeks trying to save the monarch butterfly, one butterfly at a time.  My neighbors and me have spent a lot of money planting milk weed and trying to encourage and feed the caterpillars. We've saved caterpillars crossing the street, moved them when they've eaten up their plants and saved them from being tossed out with the pruners. This is the first caterpillar we've had hatch from an egg so far.  He is busily eating a leaf.  We'll see if they eat us out of house and home.

There were other lifer butterflies, this orange barred Sulphur for one.
I went birding on the beach while visiting my sister in law, recently We saw black-bellied plovers yawning
Black skimmers sleeping
Royal terns at attention
Sandwich terns being distracted, by....something
Back at my RV I have a cardinal living in my Tiki hut, and I even had yellow throated warblers at my bird feeder but we were feeling stuck and shut in, so we had to go do something.

So today, with nothing better to do, I had to go birding, so I got Silja organized early and we headed out east this morning to check on the status of the Florida scrub-jay population at the Allen David Broussard Catfish Creek Preserve State Park, what I call the "Catfish Hole."  It is located out in Polk County Florida and has miles of very sandy trails and loaded with the endangered birds. My favorite spot to find them. 

We hiked over two miles and found about 30 of the noisy buggers who found me and scolded me for just being there. I enjoyed a properly distanced talk with a horseback rider down in oaks and pines as well.

There were quite a few tufted titmice, eastern towhees, and a whole lot of Spanish Moss.  Nothing says the South more than Spanish moss. 

We were going to look for snail kites at a nearby lake but unfortunately there was an airboat fishing tournament and the lookout onto the lake was overrun with boat trailers.  We didn't bring our rods so we turned around and left to go get strawberry shakes in Plant City.
COVID be damned, I guess, we tried to go to Parkdale Strawberry farm but it was out of control with people everywhere so we didn't stop. No shake there.  People in Florida were everywhere in huge numbers, the wait at a Wendy's drive through was even 30 minutes, traffic was nuts. But we got frosties.  So we ended up back at the RV and in the pool.  Safety outside and the pool was nice.  I had to ID a bird on a woman's necklace.  A tropicbird in pure gold.  It was safe there though, as it seems we are being helped out by all of our neighbors who have all gotten their first (or second) COVID shot now.  Luckily, my parents up north and my son in Chicago were also vaccinated Thursday for their first dose as well.  We are still waiting our turn.  I'd volunteer to help give immunizations but where does a retired doctor even volunteer?  I never had a license in Florida so probably no where here.  
The retired life.  One needs things to do. I guess I can just stay home and play with Gamestop stock.  I did spend all last week teaching my children about stock shorts and how the whole deal worked.  My son Allwin made a good amount on a trade.  He is getting a new coffee table with his new found fortune.  One of my investments, Weis Markets, the stodgy supermarket we shopped at back in 1994 in Pennsylvania was even caught up in a short squeeze...but to be honest, I didn't sell it and Friday is was back to where it was a week ago.  I guess birding is easier.
Birding....but even my little smidgeon of fame is now over.   My 2016 record for the lower 48 big year of 723 species, was broken last year by one bird, by Jeremy Dominquez of Ohio.  We are Facebook friends, but I've never birded with him nor met.  Congrats to him.  I was surprised it took four years to break.  I once wrote if I had spent all of my effort on the record, I could have gotten 740 birds and with the rules change this year on the checklist, that number would be closer to 750.  The Key west chicken I saw in November that year might have been countable even in 2016 due to this new interpretation of the rules which I saw back then but no matter....but whatever, I got other things to do now and time for another to hold that mantle and considering he did it in a COVID year, even more surprising and an accomplishment.  If I ever do that again, it would be for that record but life has moved on from that activity, so doubt that will ever happen.
Things to do.  Next week, I'm buying an RV site in Florida, working on a book, and going kayaking to catch something.  Not COVID!  I'm trying to catch a fish in a nearby lake and not a catfish....they have this record lunker bass that reportedly lives there and well, I have been challenged....Silja had a nice one on last week but it escaped unharmed.....SOMETHING TO DO!
Stay safe and warm out there, we're still hiding in Florida for a while, seeing birds, getting some sun, and staying out of trouble.
Olaf

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year, a letter to all of you.

It has been another year, I'd say this year looks like last year, but it isn't.  2020, a year like few others, especially in my lifetime.  We are alive.  We are trying to be festive, but to be honest, we haven't put up a tree this year and last year's tree in the RV got squashed by a box of books so I'm recycling a 2019 picture of Leroy to wish you a Merry Christmas.
Maybe we should celebrate Festivus this year, but my knee is sore from driving so much and so "Feats of Strength" would not be good.  "Saying of grievances" for 2020 would be long, maybe too long and most involve COVID.  Ahh, well, maybe we should celebrate the tradition of the Yule Cat, an Icelandic tradition of telling the children  a story of a large vicious cat, lurking in the snow waiting to eat anybody who isn't wearing new clothes for Christmas.  I guess this would be hard since these are the 'Yule Cats" in my house this winter. This is what I have to deal with, and these cats would hardly scare a stirring mouse and definitely not petulant children. "Yule Cats" Tiger and Snowball, be afraid, be very afraid.  There was a story in which I told a pair of Jehovah's Witnesses about Snowball the attack cat, "Don't let her purring fool you, it is all a secret ploy..."  but that wasn't a 2020 event, no one came to visit us, so I'll move on.
so the year that was 2020.....  
We started 2020 in Costa Rica on a family vacation, spending time with our kids, which are grown and are starting lives of their own.  this was sort of a late planned trip, one which was sort of organized by the seat of my pants, one in which it could have been a fiasco, but...it worked out and was quite enjoyable.  Don't let the sign deceive, it was a shack in the woods, but a woods filled with monkeys and sloths.

While we explored the mountains, I of course went birding, here with a collared aracari.  

We came home, Allwin, went back to University of Wisconsin where he became a PhD Candidate for Chemistry.  Tyko went to Chicago where he is now a second year Medical Student at Rush Medical School, and Lauren went to Hamline University in St. Paul, now in her Junior year.
We....went went back to Florida to catch up with our RV
We rented a lot for the winter north of Tampa.  We enjoyed the sun, took up pickle ball, walked, and stayed warmth.  I did a little birding, chasing a rare bird in Naples and saw the local specialty, the Bachman's sparrow (below). We saw manatees, tortoises, and some butterflies.

In late February, we went on a theme cruise out of Tampa, it was a bit of a fiasco and ran in the shadow of something ominous, COVID.  The cruise atmosphere was flat, I tried birding, but it was both windy and raining.  We organized birding tours in Mexico and Honduras (Roatan). We saw lifer birds like the cute Cozumel emerald, butterflies...erato heliconian, and Mayan ruins. 

We floated around quarantined ships in Cozumel, and generally tried to stay away from everyone, especially Europeans.
We returned March 1, just as COVID was taking a hold of everything, I flew back to Minneapolis for dental work on the 3rd, was extra suspicious of everyone, became the last on both flights, Cloroxed my rental car, and coming back, Cloroxed my seat on the plane.  This would be my last plane flight for how long?
We sort of isolated ourselves in Tampa, the club next door to us, barred us from entry on the 10th, and our RV park, closed the pool by the 16th, and the park we rode bicycles in on the 17th, reasons of which seemed to just be fear.  Lauren had been kicked out of school to go online so she was home alone.  I had begun stocking up for a long isolation as soon as we returned.  Anything instant online was sold out by a week later.  by the 19th, we decided best to head home.  It would be easier in South Dakota.  The virus would get to the Dakotas last, which proved correct.  We drove the RV hard doing 1775 miles in three days.  worried that everything would be closed, we did find truck stops for gas, ate in our RV, and found open campgrounds.  I arrived home on my birthday.  It was a surreal day, to say the least.  Who would have guessed I'd be toasting being 54 speeding on a freeway with an unknown scourge at our heels.
I came home, instantly picked up our half of beef, a case of wine I had ordered arrived the same day, and we unloaded our supplies, and went to the store and as people in South Dakota hesitated, myself and a bunch of Hutterites fought for vegetables, until only celery remained.  This day left us with 6 months of food.  
Tyko has just returned from a trip to Seattle, when his school closed, he moved in with his brother in Madison.  By Easter, they begged us to come home for a visit and how could we say no, but I think they brought COVID with them, it was a wonderful visit not knowing if the world was ending or what.  A week later, I had a fever and significant gut issues, so did Silja and interestingly, our cat Tiger, Tyko's cat, got pneumonia, making what we had really suspicious for the Plague.  Cats can get it, but they shake it easily enough.  As my chest began to feel tight, I cursed and started a countdown to the ICU, but something odd happened on my way to Sanford health, nothing really happened.  day 9 came ...and went.  The cat got better too.  I asked the Vet for a COVID test on him but they couldn't do it, and me, the state wouldn't test me as COVID didn't cause GI issues or so they parroted, (which never made sense since that was quite common in Europe and New York).   So, we never got tested.
I finally got out and forced myself to get fresh air.  It was good to be alive and if that was the plague we were lucky.
I spent the spring in hiding and looking for rare frogs at the cabin Boreal chorus frogs
second recorded wood frog in Day County South Dakota
COVID life was more than just mucking in swamps for frogs
I finished book on my photography in the spring A few people bought it, and it was something to do.  I think it is a nice collection of my photos of trips in the past.
I also spent the summer writing and researching a book with my mother Susan, I have never called her so many times.  It kept us both isolated with something to do.  I am really proud of this project which was a bucket list item and my 2019 Christmas gift to her.

I think this is the definitive history of Grantsburg and the surrounding area in this period (1920-1985), and turned out really nice, and we have just started to sell these.  We'll see if the non-profit that produced this ever has any profit for other projects, as who buys books?  How can you even market books in the time of COVID?

I wrote two other projects isolated due to COVID, riding the creative high that I got on, the first, a history of Club Orient Resort on St. Martin, I'm having someone editing that now, and I just tracked down some obscure newsletters with key info, so I may need to add that in somewhere. Yeah, sigh, maybe too NSFW for some of you, and I also don't know what I am going to do with it.  Not sure it is worth the production costs.  It is loaded with 30 year old photos I stumbled upon (I ate dinner with a woman who had an entire famous professional photographer's collection in her garage.  There is also a segment of the former owners that either see things differently or haven't moved on, but we'll see.
I also finished our adventures of 2019, including trips to ..Curacao, RVing all over the US, Bahamas, Roatan, Jamaica, Mexico, Uruguay, Argentina, South Africa, The South Atlantic, France, and Canada
I did a world big year birding in 2019, and had a whole lot of fun going on the road less traveled.  But again, despite being done, what am I doing with this book?  I don't know, so there it sits.  
In 2020, we were going fishing three times to Canada, cruising to the Amazon and off to Bhutan and Thailand, all of which cancelled or postponed.  How long until a postponement becomes a cancellation? 
In June, saying heck with it, a friend and I cannonballed to Arizona to see a very rare bird, an eared quetzal.  we did 3500 miles in 96 hours, I got two lifer birds including the quetzal.
My family, going insane due to COVID isolation, came to visit us in late June, we rolled the dice and everyone was disease free.  We could only rearrange the wall, play with the Yule cats, check on the cattle at the ranch, or the level of the flood water, so many times.  How often do you dust a stuffed bobcat?




It was time to venture out, a little. My niece Lily with our old dog, trying to get her to eat

Sarah, Lauren, and Allwin, went to Oregon in August to her nephew Tristan's wedding.  They were being careful and even braved a plane flight which we had to use a credit for before they maybe went bankrupt.   the three with Aunt Carol (right)
at least my kids were being safe
We headed off out west on an RV trip as South Dakota's covid cases started to rise the day after first frost in September.
 Winter was coming.  It was time to go.
We spent a week in Oklahoma, four north of Phoenix, then a week in San Diego County.  We visited friends in Tucson area, before camping for a week in SW New Mexico, a week in West Texas, before we got to Florida on December 1, just before the winter rains found us, we saw odd butterflies like this snout...

other people who had too much time on their hands, Sanderson Texas

we hiked....a lot, even with friends.


looked for the Marfa lights but all we found were strange things

 and some stuff we saw, well, seemed like messages from previous years, almost like 2020 never happened at all
the year of the tarantula seeing them in three states and three species

It was like we had come a full circle, back to Lutz Florida where COVID had all started, in two weeks, I chased birds to Key West twice, seeing this red-legged thrush, hopefully avoiding COVID, which I tested negative a week later, and then we headed north, just as we heard that some bad things were happening to Silja's dad.
so alas, it wasn't all mindless travel.  We had some deaths in 2020, luckily not from COVID, the only family members with COVID were my sister, Jena and my two young nieces.  They all did well, and only my sister had any symptoms.
The bad news, My father-in-law, Don Kramer broke his femur in early December, and in recovery had complications and died suddenly.  Don was a quiet, religious man, and somehow he put up with me.  Don's loss is still sinking in here at the holidays.  He'd had some close calls before but those weren't his time, unfortunately this one was. Donald Kramer (1926-2020)
We also lost our dog in July, very sad and I still ,miss her too.  This dog was a travel companion, liked pizza and hated bicycles Brighid (2006-2020)
Sigh....I'll miss Don, and I miss my dog.  Why do we love pets so?Two Christmases and Funeral....it is like a bad movie, this whole year has been a bad movie.  but well, 2021 begins anew, vaccines are a coming, the COVID case load up north is dropping AND God willing we'll slide south again early in the year....2021 plans?  
Eurovision 2020......maybe they'll have it, but will it be Eurovision 2021 but will it happen?The Summer Olympics....will it happen?Will the Canadian border open for fishing?Will rare birds show up?Will we get springer spaniel 3.0?More yule cats?Will they have to yank out our President kicking and screaming?Will I write more books, or will anyone buy my old books?  Will their be book singings?  Will there be anything ever again?  Will the grass grow on our ranch, will the butterflies fly, the birds return, or will this snow ever melt?All I can say is that the Vikings will NOT win the Super Bowl or the Gophers go to the Rose Bowl, with or without COVID, the wind will not stop blowing on the Prairie,  these things are certain, everything else, is purely speculation, but Olaf will be there to write about it.
Merry Christmas and to a better 2021,
Olaf, Silja, Tyko, Allwin, and Seth



 




 

RVing in the time of COVID 11: Sidetrack home

 I grew up in northwestern Wisconsin, went to medical school for two years in Duluth Minnesota, lived in Superior, Wisconsin for 7 years, and during and afterwards, supervised Emergency Rooms in International Falls, Moose Lake, Cloquet, Grand Marais, Two Harbors, Virginia, and Roseau, as well as worked at Baudette, Crosby, Aitken, Aurora, and Cook, Minnesota as well as the three hospitals in Ashland, Hayward, and Spooner, WI.  I trapped and ice fished northern lakes.  I've said before I have ice water in my veins. I cross-country skied, curled, and learned to skate. Working at all of these northern outposts such was my life to be on the road in the north country,  I've seen cold, snow, ice, buried cars, gotten frostbite, broken through the ice, and along the way seen a lot of wildlife and especially, birds.

Lately though, I have taken to becoming a migrating bird, a creature of the sun, and more of a fan of sand and warm waves, than that of freezing fog and cold winds.  I asked my wife to marry me just down the big lake they call Superior.  Home though is north, and nothing feels better than the cold and snow of the north, so despite CDC advisories we went home for Christmas, but along the way, my father-in-law, Don Kramer, aged 94, fell, broke his femur and last Thursday night, died.  I've known Don since I started hanging out with my future wife, his youngest daughter in 1989.

Don was an electrical engineer, went to the Univ of Wisconsin, and was part of the brain trust at Honeywell during the Sixties working up the corporate ladder in Europe.  He had married a preacher's daughter from Wisconsin and had started a family, but the European life wasn't her cup of tea and as such decided to give that up for his family, and they moved back to Minneapolis.  He tried consulting, ended up back at Honeywell, got laid off during the cutbacks after the space race in the Seventies and then he finished his career at the power plant in Elk River, possibly having forgone success and riches but had five kids, including a cute one which caught my eye.  There is nothing wrong with that.  Don had no vices.  Created no waves, and well, was a model citizen.

Over the years we've gone on a couple of trips together.  Don once caught a nice lake trout on a rather tough fishing trip to Ontario otherwise.  There was a trip to Hawaii before my daughter was born, nothing bad happened, nothing weird happened.  I remember going to a Luau, we ate poi.  There were a few other trips, but like everything and everyone, we were busy with our lives, and in retrospect, maybe too busy.  Don never said much but I guess that was okay, maybe I just didn't need a talking to? I don't have a lot of amusing anecdotes about him, he just wasn't that kind of guy to create many.  

We ended up in northern Minnesota this weekend, remembering Grandpa.  My wife was so distracted, she ran our of gas in the tunnel in downtown Duluth and had to get towed to a gas station.  If there is a worse place to run out of gas for 300 miles, I don't know of it.  We all needed some better distractions, and luckily Silja finally got up north safely. 

The checklist of winter distractions for me:

Rough-legged hawk: check

Ruffed grouse:  check

Boreal Chickadee:  check

Canada jay: Check

Pine Grosbeak: check

White-winged crossbill:  check

Great Gray Owl: Check (great sighting, just took off my lens cap and the click spooked it and it flew away

Snowy owl:  check, well sort of, everyone else saw it but me

Common goldeneye:  Check

King eider: check, ....a king eider?  who knew?

Evening grosbeak, redpolls, spruce grouse, northern shrike, other owls, well, it is good to leave some meat on the bone for later.

White winged crossbills
from a ski lift
ruffed grouse
rough-legged hawk
pine grosbeaks

Female king eider
common goldeneye

an eagle watching the female eider
Others in our group had different distractions. Before you give us too much crap, we all had negative COVID tests this week and how much COVID risk is there outdoors?  Masks and eye protections....check
The restaurants, bars, and spas were closed as were the warming huts, but still people were skiing but social distancing was a bit in short supply in lines for the lifts.  Cook County, Minnesota has the lowest COVID rates in the Midwest, not many people but plenty of tourists.  Hard to make any conclusions.
Christmas is coming, so stay safe.

I guess I have two Christmases and a funeral.
Olaf

RVing in the time of COVID 10: Side trips to the Conch Republic.

We made it to our next parking location, a campsite we are buying near Lutz, Florida.  I had barely gotten set up before packing the car and heading south for needed birds.  For weeks, two birds I needed had been reported in and near Key West.  I thought it would be a fortuitous event, to not only get one bird but two, unfortunately, in a period of three days, I would be making two 450 mile one-way trips to the southern point of the continental US.

As it would turn out the ABA (American Birding Association) would be making their listing criteria, consistent.  Ever since they added Hawaii to the listing area, there have been inconsistencies.  Many birds in Hawaii are exotics and when they added Hawaii, they added these species.  Well, some of these birds have established themselves on the mainland, too, but are not on the "Continental" list, so this summer the ABA came out with a list showing which birds that are in HI have established populations.  One of these I wrote about before, the Key West Chicken, or Red Junglefowl is the USA's longest established exotic population of birds, and had been ignored to be on the list, well, now it is on the list, as is Rose-ringed parakeet (California and Naples), red-vented bulbul (Houston), and Indian peafowl (California and Florida).  Your list is your list, you can add these HI exotics in other US established populations or not, but for me, I like being consistent so I can compare myself to others, so now each of these birds can be added to my list, (I have seen all of them in HI already).

So I met up with Larry Manfredi as I told him, misery loves company, and birding together is more fun than by yourself.  I drove down to Florida City and slept in the first motel I had during the whole pandemic, I had to Clorox the place, but I slept a little before meeting Larry at dawn.  One bird, the red-legged thrush, a Cuban subspecies of the species (it may eventually be split from the Bahamas resident subspecies seen in Florida too) which had been seen at the Key West Botanical Gardens, a place that only opens at 10AM, so at 10:01 I paid the $20 for two admissions and we went in to the stakeout.  We waited, and waited, and we waited.

So, standing there I got distracted by other things:

The Florida duskywing, is a species of spread-winged skipper that is limited entirely to habitat within the Keys.  This female has purplish wings.  This butterfly has declining numbers and a limited range.  It was nice to see them.

Lifer butterfly nabbed I then got my Key West Chicken, bird #808.
So....we waited, waited, ....waited...waited some more...waited....I saw a year bird, a worm-eating warbler, playing peek-a-boo, and then we waited....
Some other butterflies: Cassius blue
Mangrove skipper
three-spotted skipper
So after six hours, we bailed on the thrush and drove up to Big Pine Key and the "Blue Hole" to look for another potential lifer bird, which as soon as we arrived was pointed out to us, and in seconds, I was taking pictures of the Cuban Pewee.  

Lifer bird #809, Cuban Pewee
I had seen one of Little San Salvador Is. in the Bahamas in 2019, so it wasn't my world lifer, but it was a good bird and fun to watch for a while.  Larry and I then toured the neighborhood,  Hurricane Irma central, the island is coming back pretty nice.  I understand the ravishes of Irma as it was the same storm that nit our homes on St. Martin.  The endangered Key deer are still lounging around.
The nicest Key Deer buck, I've ever seen.
Then we saw our goal, free-ranging, self-supporting, Indian peafowl, peacocks, hanging around, acting just like the Key deer, relaxed, also hurricane survivors.  Chickens, peacocks, and...pewees, a strange listing day, but worthwhile, so we headed back.
Indian peafowl, lifer #810
I was back in Tampa at midnight, and zonked out.  As luck would have it, the thrush was found again on December 3rd, and the 4th, irritating me, and then at 3PM on the 4th, an even better bird--A ruddy quail-dove.
So a few hours later I was driving south all night to be at Ft Zachary Taylor at 8am opening.  I have experience with chasing quail-dove species.  I learned some things.1) they are hard to find2) if you don't find them when a park first opens, the skulky devils will either flush or just sit tight and it is only dumb luck when seeing them.  a park like Ft Taylor is busy so if not looking at 8:05 you will miss your chance.3) everyone will be there.  I could feel people flying south already from any point you could get to Miami by midnight (the last flight)4) COVID be damned, no one will care about that 5) they are creatures of habit so focus on where it was
So I arrived at 7:48, and here is the line waiting for "Reveille" at the nearby military base, then the gate opened. There were 20 cars behind me, people on bicycles, and a car tried to sneak in from the wrong lane, it was crazy, the check in lady was overwhelmed and was trying to give everyone a map, everyone knew exactly where they were going and she was just slowing us down...but a moment later, the hammock was full.  I was on stakeout just above where the bird had been "put to bed," Other birders were there barefoot, birders with dogs, babies, on flip flops, some hardly dressed, some over dressed, and some well, ....I digress.  I was recognized by many birders, one wanted to talk too loudly but I was trying to stay alert, seeing this bird is NOT easy and a bird chaser only talks after the bird is seen, some times to the annoyance of late comers trying to see the bird for the first time.  We walked in and looked in the leaf litter and well, we all saw nothing.........at least the rain stayed away.   Birders had driven from Tennessee all night, flown in from Texas, and Northeast....and all of these guys had seem the other birds on the Keys still hanging around.
The quail dove was never seen all day.  A rumor was going around that it was found by someone using heat signature technology and then spotted by looking.  I don't know if that is true but if so, was both fascinating and scary, scary that I may have to buy that equipment.  At 10 AM I braved a surprisingly crowded Duval Street and town and went to the thrush stakeout where...it rained...and rained.  Then after two hours everyone there disappeared but the rain had stopped, I smelled something.  The old "skua birder" in me made me walk out and see what was up, then I got a text, a text from someone on the dove stakeout six miles away, that they had found...the THRUSH,  I laughed to myself as I ran to the entrance where I saw everyone.
"OOPS!"  A man from Alaska said who I had met birding in Alaska years before,  "We forgot Olaf."  
But then a birder I has chased a LaSagra flycatcher with before in Miami showed me the bird and all was well.  I got photos and bird #811, Red-legged thrush a rather handsome avian specimen, the subspecies from Cuba or Puerto Rico


Birders from the dove stakeout filtered over and after a while I began the 7 hour drive home, or at least back to my RV.  This was world lifer bird #1504, #864 for the expanded ABA list , the numbers just keep growing 
So it was good I had a backup bird...four days, four lifer listed birds and a lot of miles....COVID, the Keys were getting busy.....everyone down here looks to be saying screw it, too bad, and glad I didn't have any one outside of the birders I had contact with.
Despite everyone here, stay safe, wear a mask, and mavbe stay home, but I didn't stay home so saying that would make me a hypocrite 
Olaf

RVing in the Time of COVID 8: Kitsch, UFOs and Shopping

We spent a few days in West Texas beating the Black Friday shopping, going to the World's smallest Target outside of Marathon.  The produce section was a bit picked over, all they had was a pumpkin.

The Prada shop near Valentine, proved interesting but the selection was sparse and they didn't have shoes in my size.

Which is reported to me 3rd hand from the Prada corporate lawyer as being officially "Sanctioned" by the Company.  
Then we tried to shop in Sanderson at Kerr Mercantile, but it has been closed for Twenty years and now it is owned by some sort of shop, but what does one do with any of these?  Where do you pack such things?  Wrapping?

It turns out the Kerr Mercantile building is something special, it is a "lost" Trost building.  A work from a noted and special Southwest Architect.  Being Thanksgiving it was not open to look around.  The famous Gage Hotel in Marathon is a Trost building.  It is cool.    


Many of the hotels in Marfa and the Gage were full of people, and with COVID one wonders...why?  We had a private jet fly over us leaving Marfa, 
So why REALLY did we go to Ft Davis area, it wasn't to shop, nope, it wasn't.  We came to find to UFOs mystery fliers, and so we came for two stakeouts.Sadly both were unsuccessful.
We came to find the Montezuma quail which I saw here in 2016, but alas, we staked out the bird blind at the State Park which was difficult because the State park had reached quota the first day, it was full, and we had to call and beg to get a pass from the state agency which had a just under two hour hold time.  The Conservation Society visitor center up the road twenty miles was closed for the duration of the virus, so we had to go to the State Park, but the birds don't seem to be coming to the feeders any more.  At least not when we were there.
We saw some birds. Oddly the best bird we saw and the only state lifer was this Brown Thrasher, strangely I saw two at one of the feeders
Loggerhead shrikes were everywhere
sage thrasher
Woodhouse's Scrub-jay
Bewick's wren
Pine siskin were everywhere
A Townsend's solitaire came to the feeder.
Some of the terrain in the Davis Mountains, we hiked quite a few miles, but it was dry, dust storms came in from the north and the south on us, and with that significant wind.
I took Silja to the rather strange and depressing Slaughtered horse memorialgo here if you want to learn more...http://ahorsesprayer.com/index.html
Some interesting roadside art, if nothing else.  
Enough of horse overpopulation, then we went after the second UFO, the Marfa Lights.
We staked out the place on two nights, the second of which involved quite a significant party atmosphere, maybe 150 people, including a person painting the lights
He was busily painting the background waiting for the lights, it will probably be at a gift shop in Marfa shortly
Setting up tent for the night vigil
the rater substantial viewing platform, the toilets left a bit to be desired, the lights were red and it had seats.  It was quite a place and parking for maybe thirty cars.  Oddly, most seemed there for the first time
So, we saw some strange lights, Silja saw this light which after a while became two lights, but sure looked like two groups of illegal aliens coming across the desert, not actual aliens or real Marfa lights.  They don't appear every night, and one wonders if they are real or the best marketing scam ever although they were first seen here in the 1850s.
We staked out the area for a while until some five year old showed up with light sin her shoes, which hurt the eyes in the darkness, so I had enough and packed up Silja and we drove back to the RV.
The strangest things we saw were elk while driving down the mountains toward Alpine. I'd never seen elk in the state of Texas, this was a first.
We looked at some historical things, and I will start saving photos of county courthouses, many in Texas are really cool.
Jeff Davis County Courthouse, Ft Davis (TX-1)
Presidio County Courthouse, Marfa  (TX-2)
We looked about Ft. Davis, the real historic Ft. Davis It was based in a box canyon guarding the San Antonio to El Paso road, but closed in 1891 when the Apache problem was taken care of, much like Ft. Bowie
So we had an interesting visit, no UFOs, a little too much dust, a few birds, a little history, and some strange shopping choices.....
So we continue on East.  I like the Texas Mountains of the Trans-Pecos, and I have been around here many times, and we will be back...
Be thankful
Olaf