Nature Quest

Sherry and I spent a lot of time preparing our programs for Nature Quest this year.  I upped my number of programs from 1 to 3 and Sherry who did none last year signed up for 2.  I repeated my Hill Country Butterfly and added a Migration Program which I had given at Riverside Nature Center in the past.  My new one was a workshop on Hill Country bird songs called "Do you hear that bird?".  In the past I had a similar program for the Upper Texas Coast.  So the overall structure was there - I just spent hours out recording birds with my newly acquired recording equipment and building a easel to hold my hand written flip chart discussion items that took hours to copy from my computer printout to the 18x24 inch paper.

Sherry did one program that she has used in the past - "Beginning Birding" and she added a new program on "Hummers of the World".  This was also her first time to use Power Point and she quickly got over the hard part of the learning curve and put together two excellent programs.  Like my workshop on bird song, her Beginning Birding was also a workshop - a walk around the Nature Quest area finding birds to study.

Nature Quest Beginning Birding group

My Bird Song program was held at Love Creek.  It was a wonderful morning, cool and overcast with just a little wind.  Every bird song I played was quickly joined by one of the local breeding birds that decided there was an intruder and while trying to find this invader, all the participants got good looks at the birds.  The trek down to the creek produced those birds that are best found down in the canyons - Golden-cheeked and Black-and-White Warblers, Canyon Wren, Hutton's and Red-eyed Vireo plus Zone-tailed Hawk.

Love Creek Preserve Bird Song group

With a little free time on our last day, Sherry and I took a short birding trip over to Neal's Lodge and got great views and sound recording of a Tropical Parula.  Seen several times in the past in the RGV and once at Garner State Park, but this was my best view ever.