§ Long in the Planning

This will be my last post for about two weeks! I have a couple of posts pre-scheduled on my bird photo blog for the Bird D'Pot's meme to be active each Saturday in my absence. CLICK HERE. 

A few posts back, I mentioned March will be a busy month.  I am gonna be offline without access to any computer and probably won't be using my phone much either. Besides, I won't wanna ruin my time away with emails, texting, blogging, etc..].so, I thought I'd share some of the beautiful Spring wildflowers at Oso Bay recently [the Texas Bluebonnets along the interstate were dazzling and I took photos of those too, I'll post those when I return to blog].  Just to bid you adieu for now:

See you when I return to the States!!!

§ Signs of the Times aka-Nostalgia Lane

--- from the 50's. I know this ages me, but when a youngster, during summer vacation and traveling somewhere by car, one of the 'fun' things to keep from boredom was reading the highway signs! And Burma Shave was one of those that kept you awake and from whining "Are we there yet?" Once on a deserted highway, far from the maddening crowd...out of nowhere, a sign along the highway shoulder would appear. It usually had just part of a sentence. 5-10 miles down the road another sign would show up with another section of the sentence in text...on and on it would go, around curves, behind a boulder, in the barrow ditch...somewhere another sign would come to view until the last sign that promoted the product....Burma Shave!! [shaving cream in an aerosol can] For examples I add here:

My job is ...drive another 10 miles or so, then:
Keeping faces clean ...drive another 10 miles or so, then:
And nobody knows ...drive another 10 miles or so, then:
De stubble ...drive another 10 miles or so, then:
I've seen ...drive another 10 miles or so, then:
Burma-Shave

or:

This cream ...traveling the desert highway, down the road a piece:
Makes the ...traveling the desert highway, down the road a piece:
Gardener's daughter ...traveling the desert highway, down the road a piece:
Plant her tu-lips ...traveling the desert highway, down the road a piece:
Where she oughter ...traveling the desert highway, down the road a piece:
Burma-Shave

I remember these dearly as they kept us kids entertained along the long, boring stretches of roads when we wondered if we'd ever get to our destination. Read more of the Burma Shave Signage HERE with links for 4 pages of them


How 'bout popular toys of the 50s?   I'm sure you'd agree that probably the most coveted toy of that generation would be the Barbie Doll.  Altho Barbie was a 'dream' figure [literally speaking and playing dolls], she was to be the first anatomically correct doll ever produced.  And 'cause we girls wanted to live out our fantasies, keeping us again from being bored, we were given a companion for Barbie....his name was Ken.  Clean shaven, perfect.  Funny thing was the Ken doll mold had him in underwear if you decided to change his outfit....and perhaps go swimming with his love interest....the underwear?  Flesh colored...all to cover up for our 1950s innocence standards of that era.  Barbie sold for ...ready?  $3 back then!!



image source

§ Inns and Outs...

outside our hotel room window...the reflections of the sky
in the window by the mermaid fountain
and a
landscaped resaca for ambiance
linking to:  Weekly Top Shot - Skywatch Friday - Weekend Reflections

Along the banks of the Rio Grande River, in Cameron County, Texas, there are resacas. Resacas, the term, could be derived from the Spanish rio seco meaning 'dry river' or resacar meaning to 'retake'. Either way, in reality, they are similar; being that the river itself, when flooded, formed many areas that held the flood waters eventually drying in areas, then forming from the silt channels of water that turned marshy; swamps. At Santa Ana, when we walked several of the mile long trails, we came upon a quiet, peaceful, area that is a resaca. The vegetation was 'to die for' pretty. The stillness, except for bird calls, was pure enjoyment. The variegated verdant shades, the richness of silver, dried wood and moss...all beautiful to the eye. The shadows and reflections - the dense woods - the Spanish Moss draping off the branches, swaying in the trickle of the slight morning breeze, the many sections of boardwalks crossing the mossy green water, bright contrasting red and yellow and indigo blue feathered birds flitting from branch to fallen stumps or dancing just ahead of us through knee high grasses....it was just short of paradise. Actually, I was so busy drinking in the surroundings, I never did take any photos of birds. It was all about the resacas that day...

...read more on resacas in Texas

- - -***- - -

Walking along some other areas, birding of course, we came upon a new species we've never seen before...a squirrel!! Neither of us knew what it was until we were able to get home and have time to research with our photos at hand. It is a Mexican Ground Squirrel. And cute; ever so cute!!



...tho a rodent from Northern Mexico, a Mexican Ground Squirrel can be found in the southern, and west-central part of Texas. It's habitat is sandy, dry, grassy areas. Sizing it up, they can grow to 15 inches in length, their distinctive marks are NINE rows of white dots along its backside, a white eye ring, and very small, rounded ears. It is omnivorous...meaning it eats fruits, vegetation and also consumes flesh....often seen eating carrion along the a stretch of highway from roadkill.


...read more on Mexican Ground Squirrel

linking to: Camera Critters - Saturday Critters

§ ..."A pillar of fire by night, of cloud by day..."

THE INDIGO SKY ENHANCED THE LIGHTHOUSE BEAUTY!!

Post title a line from 1st stanza in a Longfellow Poem - The Lighthouse

Construction of the lighthouse on the point began in 1851. Completed two years later. During the Civil War it was used, more or less, as a spy lookout for the troops. But, in 1866, repairs were needed and the lighthouse guided ships, for nearly two decades, from 16 miles away. With shipping in decline, the lighthouse was abandoned permanently and eventually donated to the state of Texas in 1950; repair work done and opened to the public. The only lighthouse along the state's coast that is accessible to the people. Even today, the lighthouse is marked on navigation charts, still assisting sea vessels with its mercury-vapor light. Read more....

MY PHOTOS SHARED [top to bottom]:
State Historical Marker
Exterior from park grounds
Entrance to lighthouse park with wooden sculpture in foreground
The Beacon's tower
One of the windows from interior stairwell
[with my shoes] showing as I climbed to the top --looking down
Spiral staircase, climbing UP
Outside again, looking up from foundation
Lightkeeper's house
At the base, me sitting and getting my breath back; resting.
Lighthouse view from the bay [behind me is the Queen Isabella Bridge to South Padre Island]



While walking around, reading historical signage, etc., out of the grasses this showed up to greet me. And trust me when I say, it was HUGE [cellphone camera so not good quality].....

linking to:  Saturday Photo Hunt -"Indigo" - Weekly Top Shot - Skywatch Friday - Camera Critters - Saturday Critters

§ ...Brownsville Girl

Our trip was a quick jaunt through the Lower Rio Grande Valley...


Rio Grande River...top of photo is Old Mexico and bottom of photo is Texas, USA.


...in hopes of seeing a few birds that are indigenous to the area. I was wanting to spot two, but of the two on my list, I spotted only one...and then, a couple of unexpected species instead of my '2nd' on the list. So, all was not wasted mileage. At one time, while I was driving, a small flock of snow geese flew out of a resaca* between two towns on a busy highway, which means I was unable to pull off and get a photo of the beautiful birds in flight...way too much traffic and a dangerous, narrow shoulder on the road to pull off safely. At least I saw them...it was a first for me. And trust me, their name is a perfect fit...snow white against a beautiful, clear, blue sky...it was amazing to see.  But the trip wasn't ALL about birding....

...We also had planned on stopping at some areas that we've never taken time to visit. We've been to South Padre Island before, and it has never appealed to us both since it's a busy, over-crowded, tourist trap now-a-days. Once a beautiful island marred now by high rise hotels and congestion...no longer a pristine, quiet island as it was long ago. But, on the way to the island there is a small town by the name of Port Isabel. Here there is a lighthouse that is a 'main attraction' to some.  I've never stopped to see until this trip. I went inside the lighthouse and climbed it as far as I could since the exterior tower is, at the time we were there, inaccessible. Bud didn't 'cause of his arthritic knees. And it's a good thing he didn't...it was steep and the outdoor top was closed off because of the railings outside the house...they were and still are doing repair work. This lighthouse is the only one in the state of Texas that the public can enter. Port Isabel, Texas is very quaint; the residents are extremely friendly!!   I enjoyed it. I took pictures...coming soon to a post near you.

But this particular diarial is a bit of history, along with some beautiful, natural surroundings while birding. The history? The Sabal Palm Forest...a forest of the only remaining Sabal Palms, surviving naturally without human intervention [NOT transplanted as are some today in other cities].  This forest is found in Texas along the border of the Rio Grande River.  The trees are nearly 500 years old; probably older.  [first written record of its sighting is 1519]  I wanted to walk the trails amongst the living sculptures of centuries ago!!

TEXAS SABAL PALM. The Texas palm (Sabal texana), also known as Texas palmetto, Rio Grande palmetto, palma real, and palma de Micharas, is a native of the lower Rio Grande Valley. It is a stocky palm that grows to a height of twenty to forty-eight feet and has large blue-green, fan-shaped leaves that form a thick, rounded crown. Small white flowers produce an edible, dull-black berry that matures in the summer. The tree has gray to reddish-brown bark and soft reddish-brown wood. The Texas palm has a continuous range extending from the lower Rio Grande valley in Texas through eastern Mexico to Guatemala and to Oaxaca and perhaps farther north on the west coast of Mexico. In 1519 Alonzo Álvarez de Pineda found a forest of the palms along a river ten miles south of the site of present Brownsville; the trees were so numerous that he referred to the river, subsequently named the Rio Grande, as the Río de las Palmas. Texas palms were reported along the Rio Grande up to eighty miles inland from the Gulf of Mexico as late as 1852, but by 1925 agricultural clearing had severely reduced the number of the trees in Texas, and none was reported more than sixty miles above the Gulf. By 1986 only about 100 acres of Texas palms existed in Texas, most of them clustered in thirty-two acres of the Audubon Society's Sabal Palm Grove Sanctuary, located in Cameron County; the tree was listed as a threatened species by the Texas Organization for Endangered Species. The collective, indented, text courtesy of this site...

Sharing some photos of the Palm Forest as we walked several of the trails in the sanctuary - I couldn't resist humming the theme from Indiana Jones movie...I felt I needed a machete at times like the natives and scientists searching for the lost gold in the tropical forest...

...a few birds seen on our hike in the forest - the jay was seen at a feeder station along the numerous trails, and these three bird species can also be spotted in/or near our home town, Corpus Christi...nothing new in birds here.  Bud and I also spotted a great horned owl nesting in one of the palm trees...will share those photos soon on my birding blog.


Brown Thrasher & Couch's Kingbird


Green Jay

The Couch's kingbird was named by ornithologist Spencer Baird in honor of Darius N. Couch, a Civil War general who took a leave of absence from the U.S. Army to participate in a zoological expedition to northern Mexico.

linking to: Nature Notes, Wild Bird Wednesday, Our World Tuesday



...some randoms:

...By the way, the title I chose for this blog "Brownsville Girl" [once titled Dansville Girl and changed to Brownsville Girl] is by Bob Dylan.

*Resacas are former channels of the Rio Grande found in the southern half of Cameron County -in and around Brownsville, Texas ---sometimes a dry channel, but most often a marshy, watery outlet ---depending on the weather patterns and rainfall - Resaca photos coming soon to a blog near you!!

Another random: Anyone else a GRIMM fan? Watching what we missed last week online, I'm now gonna ask...just how are they gonna explain all the broken glass from the police vehicles in front of the precinct caused from Adalind screaming? If the writers even DO attend to this dilemma, I'm thinking they'll say 'earthquake'? lol Maybe, maybe not. Why, even they may just ignore it altogether and move on without any explanation. Or Officer Wu may come up with something comical as he does so very often.