Tag: Phainopepla

Imperio

Okay, going to say firmly and for the record to our Texas friends…we are NOT responsible for the frigid temps that have made its way down here this week. Purely coincidental that we happened to have arrived around the same time of the cold snap. We are definitely not used to layering this much in the south and Linda actually had gloves on today while visiting Gladys Porter Zoo in Brownsville. So cold the Monkeys were considering cuddling up with the Lions. Fortunately, the birding has been living up to our high expectations. Currently at 112 species fresh into the new year. I am behind my 2024 Average Year stats (link here), but did manage to get the 2025 page created and updated (link here). For the curious, I ended last year at 325 checks thanks to a late surge in December. Currently sitting 35 species ahead of that pace, but 19 behind 2023. Many birds still left to tin down here and plenty of time to get that done – sitting pretty, enjoying the pretty colors!

South Padre Island Sunset January 2025

Apologies to those back home, we feel for you suffering through the snow and temps in the teens ..no, no, we really do! (Brad, can you make sure the maintenance crew puts extra salt on our Intrigued HQ walkways).

Enough chit chat, time to get to work and present today’s featured feathered friend.

Phainopepla found at Saguaro National National Park, AZ in January 2024

Hit the jump to learn more about our “black robed” friend.

Continue reading Imperio

A Fitting Bird for the Times

I am officially half way through my hellscape with one event down and one event looming at the end of this week. We put an official wrap on this year’s annual Haunted Halloween Trail late Sunday night as we finished pulling all the props out of the woods. Based on the feedback we have received so far, the scare division had another successful year. I’ll let Brad weigh in on how he thought it went.

Halloween Haunted Trail 2023

To be honest, the trail doesn’t happen this year without a lot of people pitching in to help me out. My injury really put a strain on all the things that needed to be done to put this event on: prepping the trails, pulling everything out of storage, loading up the power sources, organizing the items into their zones, hauling it all down into the valley, putting it up, turning it on and then in a state of total exhaustion, pulling it all back up. A special shout out to my brother Ron who came down several weekends including the three days leading up to the event to help work out the kinks and keep everything rolling. There will definitely be posts coming to cover the highlights of this year’s haunt.

With that out of the way, I can now focus on the upcoming 100K attempt that launches 5am Saturday. Like with the Halloween party, a lot of things will have to go right to get through that. Now doing my best to catch up on sleep and tamper down some pains and strains that cropped up from last weekend’s efforts. In honor of what has past and what is to come, I bring you today’s featured feathered friend.

Female Phainopelpa found at Sunset Park, Las Vegas NV in March 2023

Hit the jump to read about our rather pointy feathered specimen.

Continue reading A Fitting Bird for the Times

Not So Shiny

A friend of mine has been getting me all teased up for a vacation trip to Hawaii.  He is headed there soon and busy pointing out all the birds from that region he’s already managed to get in the tin.  Linda and I had plans to go there for our 25th wedding anniversary, but we ended up postponing it due to other commitments.  Every year since then we have tried to plan a makeup trip – again to no avail.  Last year we decided that this would be our retirement gift to ourselves and put the trip on the shelf until we decide it’s time to divorce ourselves from the daily grind.  So every time someone mentions they are heading to the islands my fingers get all twitchy like, a tick develops in the shoulder and my eyes start to blink uncontrollably until I make Quasimodo look like GQ material.  They have some stunners of birds there that I need to see… damn, there goes that twitch again.  Oh well, I can at least live vicariously through my friend’s captures until we decide to turn our badges in.  You’ll be mine Red-Crested Cardinal .. some day… some day.  Until we get to go island hopping, I can still continue hunting for all the continental US birds that still continue to elude me.  Today’s featured bird first fell victim to my hunt back in December 2015 (link here).

Female Phainopepla found at Wetlands Park Preserve, Henderson Nevada, November 2018

Wait.. ummm, a little late on this, but for those that might be slightly concerned over wildlife with red eyes, you might want to be cautious – the light on these shots were not as conducive to getting the nice red highlights, but they do possess the dreaded early morning Vegas eyes.  If you recall back on that initial encounter, we were at Corn Creek Visitor Center outside Las Vegas, Nevada.  While birding the Mojava Desert over New Year’s, we found a Phainopepla hanging out at the top of a tree.  Those shots had to be heavily processed to account for horrible backlighting.   In oddly similar manner, we discovered this new specimen.  Like before, we were in Vegas, in Late November (close enough to the New Year’s timeframe), and once again it was sitting at the top of a tree in horrible backlight.

Female Phainopepla found at Wetlands Park Preserve, Henderson Nevada, November 2018

Hit the jump to read a bit more about the shoot.

Continue reading Not So Shiny

Latin for Damn Evil

Well folks, it is a new month.  Anyone that has been around this blog for a while know that means the post quota counter on the wall gets reset to ZERO.  It is a bitter sweet event. It brings with it the personal satisfaction of completing another successful month of blogging but it also means four more weeks of fretting about getting new material out to my loyal readers.  However, this time I am in a very good position – drum roll please …. thanks to a lot of hours in front of this computer I can announce the image queue has been trimmed to January 2016.  That’s right, this photographer is now only a bit more than 2 years behind (champagne for all).  Takes a lot of pressure off when you easily have 2 year’s worth of post material just waiting to be introduced into the world.  Let’s get to it shall we!?!
Phainopepla shot at Corn Creek on edge of Mojave Desert, Nevada in December 2014

So we all know the old saying, March comes in like an evil demon and exits like a cute and cuddly baby chick.  In honor of it actually being March (you’d almost think I plan this stuff out), thought it would be fitting to feature …well… an evil demon of a bird.  I’ll be honest with you, today’s featured bird scares the crap out of me.  It scared me with I was looking through the glass when the pictures were taken, it creeped me out when I was processing the pictures in the digital dark room and looking at it right now makes me want to go find my childhood plush dog, grab a carpet square and ball up like a baby on my den floor.  In case you are wondering my constant toy as kid was a golden colored Snoopy looking stuffed toy named Henry (don’t laugh, but I still have it sitting on the top shelf of my closet).  Wow, how did I get on this…back to demon spawn.

Phainopepla shot at Corn Creek on edge of Mojave Desert, Nevada in December 2014

Hit the jump to find out what this crested specimen is.

Continue reading Latin for Damn Evil