Sad goodbyes

This week we had to say goodbye to one of our beloved cats. Sam had been ill for a long time. He was a beautiful boy, so loving and a real character. He will be hugely missed.

 

 

Texan times

We've been looking at some of our pictures from Texas - surprisingly neither birds nor animals. Happy times.......



The beautiful Rio Grande

 

A train!!

 

The usual odd behaviour

Sounds good to us!

 

Corpus Christi

 

One bird that wasn't hard to spot...



And this one clearly was........

 

Feeding the locals......

Good friends

Beers? Surely not!

The joys of walking......

We have walked so much in the last few weeks, it has been a joy! We find ourselves going out for an hour or so and coming home 5 hours later, usually hungry, tired but very happy.

There are a surprising number of birders amongst the familiar faces we see along the footpaths close to home. The person we see the most is a teenager called David who is an avid wildlife spotter and seems to be there from dawn till nightfall.

The butterflies are just starting to come out, we see glimpses of Brimstones, the butterfly butterflies were supposedly named after due to it's beautiful yellow wings. Unfortunately they never seem to stop to pose for a picture. So far we've managed to photograph a Small Tortoiseshell and a very blurry Speckled Wood (too blurry to post). Never mind, it won't be long till they're out in force.........








 
Leafy green paths.......







 

          The first bluebells -

      quintessentially English

 

 Small tortoiseshell



 Dandelion head

 

  A pretty little Blue tit - so cute

 A close up bluebell

Yet more Spring..........

Today we woke to an unexpectedly sunny morning and foregoing the usual Sunday morning full English breakfast headed off to the woods.

Our first spot was a pair of Skylarks actually on the ground, unfortunately too far away and too "ground" coloured to get a picture. The sound of them singing on high though was a joy!

Our best spot of the day was a Little Owl perched in a tree. We managed to get close enough to get a really good view of it (and a picture!).

Back at home our garden was visited by our first Chiffchaff.

Here are a few pictures of the day:



Celandine - a beautiful Spring flower

 Our garden Chiffchaff

 

A Dunnock also known as a Hedge Sparrow

 Greater Stitchwort

 

 A much easier to spot Little Owl!

 

 A magpie with an extremely small stick

(don't think it will do much for the nest)

 

A beautiful Blue Tit in the garden



Signs of Spring - finally!

This Winter has been very long and grey but at last we have green shoots, birds song and flowers in bloom.........

We have discovered that the woods a short hop, skip and a jump from our house are a veritable treasure trove of wildlife. All this through Twitter (which we have just discovered). On Tuesday we spent 5 hours wandering the footpaths and met Dave who tweets daily on sightings. He showed us where the Barn Owl roosts - wonderful! We caught a glimpse of the owl asleep in the rafters.

Yesterday (Saturday) we had an evening walk and were guided by a fellow bird enthusiast to the Barn Owl in his day roost in a hole in an ash tree. Then we saw another on our wish list - Little Owls! 2 in an oak tree.

 

Barn Owl

Catkins      

Daffodils

Little Owls - 2 - spot them if you can

Pheasant in full breeding plumage

Pussy Willow

Silver Birch bark

 

And a few more butterflies...........

There were so many lovely butterflies at the National Butterfly Centre (sorry - just can't spell it the American way....) in McAllen. The centre itself has beautiful walks along shaded paths, butterfly lures along the trails and a wonderful bird feeding area.

We were instructed to shout out if we saw anything rare or exciting - trouble is we didn't know what we were looking at and apparently the Band-Celled Sister was a bit of a catch!

Bordered Patch

 

Band-Celled Sister

 

Gray Hairstreak - Wings open

 

 Texan Crescent

 

 

Common or White Checkered Skipper

(almost inseparable and possibly the same species)

Butterflies of Texas

We have just returned from Texas - we went mainly to see the birds (and the sunshine and our friends and not necessarily in that order....) but we were introduced to the beautiful Texan butterflies by Lorna. These are a few of the ones we saw. Apologies if any of the names are wrong - we are novices - corrections gratefully accepted! We'll post some more photos when we've identified them....

 

American Lady

Gray Hairstreak

 

 

 Reakirt's Blue

 

 

Gulf Fritillary

 

 

Pipevine Swallowtail