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hookem2010

Certifiably Surly
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Everything posted by hookem2010

  1. Clearly if these kids were armed, the good guys with guns could have shot the bad guy with a gun before he beat them to the draw. More guns!!1!!
  2. I fucking dread summer
  3. We're working on #2 now. Should know in a couple days if we made it happen the first month of trying. The first kid was very much a happy accident.
  4. Just had about 75 turkey vultures, a couple dozen hawks (swainson's, broad-winged and probably some Cooper's/sharp-shinned), a falcon and a half-dozen Franklin's gulls stream over my house heading north. Raptor migration in full swing!
  5. 10 month-old boy seems to have hit a developmental spurt after being just a bit behind. 2 months ago, he was barely sitting and definitely not babbling. Now, he's pulling himself up to standing in his playpen and crib, and since he started babbling yesterday, it's his new favorite thing. I'm not sure how I had a hand in creating this handsome devil.
  6. Nice little broad-winged hawk! The next month or so is the best birding all year in Texas. Tens of millions of birds will be passing through between now and mid-late May.
  7. Still waiting for my first to arrive in the yard this spring. I've got my feeder up and my Turk's cap will hopefully bloom any day now. At Reimer's we'd get a couple dozen at a time, and occasionally have to help them escape from the booth.
  8. Turks cap and trumpet vine are good. It's possible Turks cap is what you had.
  9. Oh God, outdoor cats...
  10. Yep, eastern phoebe. They'll perch and flick their tails a bunch, then fly off briefly to catch insects.
  11. Worked in foot and ankle for years. We immobilized bone bruises in a boot routinely. I was in one for a couple weeks due to a cuboid bruise. I didn't see the thing attached to it but would guess bone stimulator to speed up healing.
  12. As mentioned, Merlin is probably the best. Not an app, but Cornell's all about birds site offers pictures of similar species and how to differentiate between them, which is super helpful when you begin to realize that many species are nearly identical. If you care about being that specific with an ID... Between similar species, sexual dimorphism, juveniles and plumage changes to individual birds depending on season, it can be a lot at the beginning.
  13. They can be hard to see without hearing them first. I've had their song described to me as sounding like 'La cucaracha', which is actually pretty accurate.
  14. Tracked down my first golden-cheeked warblers of the year on the Cedar Hollow Trail along Lake Georgetown. This is the earliest I've had them, and they were abundant and vocal!
  15. This one was cavorting with another red-tail the last time I saw it, so I'm hoping it's a local breeding pair.
  16. Absolute garbage binoc pic, but proof that there is a leucistic red-tailed hawk in my hood. I've seen it a bunch so hopefully I can get a closer photo soon.
  17. I was worried the dumbass doberman would try to go fishing when we moved here. I should have been more concerned with Donnie, our ancient guy who probably has pretty limited eyesight at this point. My wife let him out early, and a few minutes later we hear an alien noise coming from the backyard. I could just make out the poor pup trying unsuccessfully to pull himself out of the pond. A 530 am dip is one way to quickly wake up.
  18. Pedernales Falls has a great one. I'm now impatiently awaiting spring migration, which doesn't peak for two more months. I've had my share of ducks and sparrows for the winter.
  19. They're definitely koi, and there are probably about 20.
  20. I'm (hopefully temporarily) out of the aquarium game, but we just moved into a house with a stocked koi pond. Any advice on keeping it running properly? I've never kept outdoor fish. It looks like more of a personal handiwork job than professionally done, but has apparently been going strong for over a decade.
  21. For those experienced camping with kids, what age did you start and how did you break them into it? I've got a 9 month-old, so I don't think it would be very fun for any of us right now, but being stuck in the city constantly will drive me crazy. He's at a very fidgety stage right now, so even my one hour hikes/bird walks with him strapped to me in a front carrier are a bit of a struggle. I'm located in Round Rock now, if anyone has specific recs for nearby locations to overnight eventually.
  22. Commons Ford, one of the best birding sites in Austin, just did a prescribed burn of their restored prairie. I believe this was farmland a couple decades ago, and now it's a productive native grassland tucked between the Colorado River and the massive Dell property. I checked it out yesterday and it was unsurprisingly quiet, outside of a very cool V-formation flyover of 120ish greater white-fronted geese, quite uncommon for the county. No shot of the geese, but the fog yesterday morning made it look like a truy hellish landscape. Very cool, and should pay off in the spring when the natives begin to bloom.
  23. Whoops, don't feel like tracking down another link, but to summarize, TPWD has been leasing the land for the park from a corporation that sold the land to a private buyer, who does not intend to renew the lease. So likely no more public access and the $70 million in improvements just get torn down, I guess. The quest to pave the entire middle third of the state continues! In more positive news, it looks like Palo Pinto Mountains SP will finally open.
  24. https://www.houstonchronicle.com/texas-sports-nation/general/article/texas-could-lose-fairfield-lake-state-park-17754974.php As if Texas doesn't already have embarrassingly little public lands, we're losing a state park now.
  25. I've seen the eagles at Warren ranch lake. It's open to the public, but requires a scope or high-powered camera. I think I mentioned in maybe the photo thread that I saw 2 white-tailed hawks dive-bombing a bald eagle flying through their territory along Longenbaugh Rd out there. The baldy would flip over and fend them off with its talons any time they attacked. It was pretty incredible to see.
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