Greetings from the road everyone! Brad and Jan are still on assignment and Linda and I are sweating it out here in Kansas. I thought the CMAR race day was hot, but this is something else (link here). After a weeks of high 60F’s to mid 70Fs at home, we find ourselves in a heat index upwards of 107F. Definitely a good time to be on the short break from training. Even managed to stop by a couple of birding locations this morning and added two more species for the annual count bring the Average Year’s total to 298 (link here, not updated yet). A mere 2 short of the annual goal – a good thing as the birding has been weak in this latter half of the year. Are other birders noticing this downturn? There was a theory that our Cicada eruption pushed the migrators further north, but that has passed now and still little piping up to be heard.
Will be interesting to see how this plays out, but for now, let’s turn are attention to a feathered friend with plenty of piping.
Hit the jump to read more about our encounter with this diminutive bird heralding from North Dakota.
Welcome to July everyone, or as we say here “Grind Month”. With the turning of the calendar page, I am roughly 1.5 weeks out from the first ultra race of the year (link here). This is one of the few times I’ll complain about all the cool temps we’ve been experiencing lately as it is definitely impacting the heat acclamation period essential for these long Midwestern summer races. It’s already a sweat filled grind with the benefit of the conditioning and I am definitely not lucky enough to carry these low 60’s temps much further into this month. Need to get through that ultra and then close the month out with my 20th consecutive and last running of the Bix7 up in the Quad Cities (link here). Although usually hotter, the Bix is 25 miles shorter than CMAR so at least the torture doesn’t last as long ha. I am going to take a break from Intrigued as I finish up the ultra race prep – Linda accuses me of turning into a basket case as I fret the details up until the starter pistol goes off and she doesn’t want me passing that on to our readers. Sooooo, I’ll bring you this pseudo 4th inspired post and then let Brad keep everyone entertained until I’m out of the hospital..I mean done with the race!
With that, let’s get started with a little red, a bit more white and a lot more blue.
Hit the jump for today’s Independence Day themed double feature.
Greetings everyone! Brad and Jan are out visiting one of our favorite editors at our satellite facility in Colorado. Always good to see our employees when we can…and I hear the view from that facility is magnificent! While they enjoy their trip, going to jump our typical alternating schedule and bring you another series of shots from our Texas Gulf Coast trip back in 2023.
Hit the jump to read more about our brightly colored and slightly devilish feathered friend.
I have to thank the weather gods as of late, nothing like waking up on a training day to temps in the low 60s. Basically for the past week or so I’ve had the luxury of enjoying cool temps for at least the first part allowing me to stretch out some of the longer runs. I have to be extra careful on the hot days that I don’t over-cook. My thermostat was severely impaired by a couple of unfortunate mishaps over my running career and now more susceptible to “going over the edge” so to speak. The impact to the body would be one thing to overcome, but worse would be enduring the scorn from Linda. I’ll still need more heat conditioning before the July ultra race, but for now focused on taking the legs to exhaustion and then pushing them again before they’ve fully recovered – little ultra-secret, you NEVER train for the full race distances (similar to marathon training), but we can simulate those hardship miles by training on tired bodies. Now, tired doesn’t mean injured so we have to make sure to keep those heavy feet ABOVE the roots of all evil! I was thinking about those careful foot placements on today’s run when this post topic popped in my head.
About now you are probably wondering what a Ruddy Turnstone has to do with trail running. As a general warning, there is a high occurrence of hallucinations and mental disconnects during long runs, so keep your expectations low – hit the jump and I’ll do my best to explain.
By the time you are reading this, I will hopefully be back home from our southern migration. I guess technically I should refer to it as completing our northern migration. This year has been a bit chaotic on the birding front. Our January trip to Arizona netted me over 23 new lifers, but at a cost. Not being in Texas put me over 100 bird species behind for the year – shows you just how good birding is in Texas! We made a quick decision to right the ship and head back to our favorite wintering destination. There are still a lot of misses on the checklist, but did manage to claw back a lot of that deficit bringing me to the exact same point as last year with 272 species for the young 2024 Even managed to pull out three new lifers with one being a first time ever recorded in the US – going to make you wait until those get posted to reveal those gems. To be honest, our timing was not ideal. Probably a week or so early on the birds reaching South Padre Island. High Island was completely dead beyond the rookery residents (guessing 10-14 days early on that location as well). No complaints as there is now plenty of fodder to carry us well into next year (who am I kidding, with my backlog, probably inching into 2026 ha).
One thing that continues to bring a smile is how awesome the Texas birders are (including our fellow winter Texans). Always willing to help get you on a bird, give advice on other hotspots or answer any questions. Proud to say we reacquainted with existing birding friends and made a lot of new ones on this trip. On the downside, I also had three of the most inconsiderate people encounters we have had in a long time (non-birders of course). I can’t tell if this is just isolated cases, the state of the media stoked polarized country or the after-effects of the pandemic, but wow. Intrigued was actually founded as a means to document my human observations and these will definitely get their day in ink – likely on the mothership where the non-wildlife entries are anchored. I may not have yellow eyes like today’s featured feathered friend, but I can assure you my eyes are on constant scan.
Hit the jump to read more about this equally observant bird of prey.
Well, as a quick update, I am still down with the Las Cruces Crud. I am telling you, this is the most craptastic and nastiest hellspawn I’ve come down with since I can remember. General rule..Bri don’t get sick. At this point now at the mercy of the doctor who basically told me to keep down, suck it up and it should pass. Tapping my watch and noting “time’s a tickin’ on my ultra training schedule” didn’t win me any of his sympathy. He gets three more days and I’m out the door ‘nuf said. The good news is I am finally getting transferred over to the new computer. Still have some clean up to do, but this is officially the first post from the new Alien. Note, disappointed I have yet to locate the “auto-generate a post button” on this watts sucker. I’ll keep looking, but at least for now, stuck with me.
If you recall in my last post, I mentioned it was part one of two and eluded to the possibility our little yellow-eyed feathered friend might have been on the lookout for more formidable predators having easily dispensed with an intruding Sparrow. Time to reveal what led us to that conclusion. This is the first time I’ve ever used the WP image compare widget – apologies if it doesn’t work correctly on your monitors.
Hit the jump to read more about our dark encounter with another resident of Anahuac National Wildlife Refuge.
By the time you read this post I will officially be another year older, another year’s worth of wear on the body (actually more like 3 years based on the long injury tab) and hopefully another year wiser. All in all, I can’t complain. No longer in the corporate grinder, get to spend each day with someone who deserves better and my days are filled with activities that make me want to get up the next morning and do them all again. Life is good. This is also the first year I have been able to celebrate my special day in Vegas! Going to get a head start on that wear and tear for the year ha. Being in the city of lights, thought I would go with a fitting neon colored specimen from the birding world for today’s featured feathered friend.
How is that for an orange Lite-Brite peg (if anyone remembers what that toy was).
Hit the jump to see a few more shots and learn a bit more about our Halloween inspired bird.
UPDATE: Thanks to the keen eye and birding expertise of Ted Jennings (link here), I’ve learned something new as a result of this post. My original identification of this post’s featured feathered friend was an immature Little Blue Heron. This was based on the overall white coloring, dark legs and the two toned bill…and not seeing the markers for the other options pointed out in the original post. Ted brought up the possibility of something I had not considered, the much rarer white morph of the Reddish Egret. They have very similar markings to the immature Little Blue, but are a bit larger and more distinctly have, a “shaggy” feathering on their head and neck. That fits my specimen perfectly! Updated my post accordingly – THANK YOU TED!! It is a good day whenever I can grow my birding knowledge.
Greetings everyone! I have been a bit out of pocket since we started or migration south just before the start of the New Year. Always a hassle to get from overnight camp to the next stop and then the connectivity can be sketchy, although, admittedly I must admit, Internet access via phone or local Wi-Fi is much better than just a few years ago. Guessing a surprise benefit of the Covid years. From the trip perspective, we have been lucky enough to meet up with some friends of ours who moved out to Benson, AZ. Always good to catch up on the latest activities in person – novel idea eh? (for the record, I am NOT a Facebook user). Birding has also been good, now up 67 birds for our Average Year ’24 which includes 5 lifers so far – that means 5 more posts coming out say sometime in late 2027 hehehe. Some of us at Intrigued have an embarrassing large backlog. There has been one glaring negative to this point (and likely to carry well into next week)…IT’S COLD! I know, shocking to hear someone from the Midwest say that in January, but remember we travel south to get away from the heartland tundra. We are not ruling out that we were voodoo cursed while in New Orleans for the Sugar Bowl back in 2002. Ever since then, we have brought unseasonably cold weather to whatever destination we vacation – just ask Texas about the ice storm they had a few years back. So far we have just missed snow in New Mexico and bracing for freezing temps the next couple of nights here in Arizona ugh. It is what it is, but the birds have still been active and my brother Ron is flying down here today to add to his checklist – writing this post as we wait for his flight to arrive.
To warm up a bit, thought I would feature an encounter from last year’s human migration.
Hit the jump to see a few more shots of this “Electric Blue”.
Life Intrigued 