I hit the Middle... 50!

Well, it is official; I am 50 years old. Yesterday was my birthday, and I hit the middle of life. What a blurry wild ride it has been so far. When I look back at my life, it has been an amazing adventure and a lot of fun. I have stumbled and have fallen (a lot!), through the years, and there are so many things I wish I could do-over. But sadly, I cannot. I hear so many people say, I have no regrets and that they wouldn’t change a thing, but I would. I would probably not be the same person if I did, but I would still do so many things differently and much better. But I am here, unable to change a thing about who I was or what I have done in my previous 50 years on earth, so I live with it, I keep charging forward, fixing what I can, having fun and seeing as much of the world as possible along the way!

I will say this; I am not going to waste any of my next 50. I will become the person I aspire to be, and make right my wrongs and live a much richer life. I am super excited about the future of my life and my companies life - especially this crazy wildlife world we have created here at SDM, from the projects we get to work on to the people we share these amazing adventures with. I am on fire about it all, and no words can truly express how I feel inside with all the unknowns that are headed our way.

Anyway, I kicked off my birthday the proper way - with a 5 am wake-up and an hour and a half drive down to South Padre Island, Texas, to snap some pictures of the spring bird migration. We had some weather blow in over the past week, creating a fallout for birds, which is an excellent time for birding.

I grabbed the Wikipedia definition of bird fallout to explain it for my non-birding buddies out there.

“Bird fallout or migration fallout results from severe weather preventing migratory birds from reaching their destination. This can occur while birds are traveling south or returning to their breeding grounds. Due to the distance traveled, birds will not have enough energy to continue flight when encountering high winds. This exhaustion results in many birds resting in one area. This may be very stressful on the birds and on the surrounding ecology. Bird fallout is not particularly common, as it stems from the chance event of severe winds found in inclement weather. Due to the rare occurrence of a migratory fallout, as well as the abundance of birds resting in a single location, it is a sought-after event for Birders.”

So I decided to visit SPI, which is one of the refuges birds use during a fallout. There are a couple of migratory visitors that I have wanted better images of, and after looking at the FB birding page for our area, I knew they were around. The painted bunting and the indigo bunting are two extremely beautiful songbirds that visit our area in the springtime, and I did not have great images of them, so I decided to stop in and see if I could finally capture a few that I could get excited about.

 Due to the fallout, there was plenty of both species hanging around, and I captured my fill of these species. The indigo bunting was still a bit of a challenge to get close to it. But I now have better images of the bird. Of course, they are not perfect… yet! So I will go back for more opportunities to get that dream shot I am after. I am sharing a few of the images I captured with you guys and once I return to SPI next week I will share some more.

What I am really after is creating a Birds of Color portfolio and a photo gallery for our website. We have so many beautiful colorful songbirds here in South Texas, and Spring is when they are all looking their best, with that amazing breeding plumage. So I am working towards snapping as many of them as possible. I already have a few, but always looking to improve it.

Until then, thanks for reading, my friends.

Morning Birding Session

March 3, 2020 - Went birding this morning at the Butterfly center in Mission with my Sophia. I just got commissioned for an additional 8 images for the Mcallen Hospital. They have already purchased 100 plus images from us for their first floor decorations. They are looking to decorate a section of the hospital that has no images on it. For this section of the hospital they want Rio Grande Valley, Texas songbirds, and I wanted to get them something new. I have been lacking images of Altamira orioles, and Audubon orioles, two, extremely beautiful Valley natives. Well the Altamira oriole is a native, the Audubon is a migrant species.

We chose the Butterfly center, because I knew they had Audubon orioles there, which is a harder to find species than the Altamira. I knew they had Altamiras there as well, so I could kill two birds with one stone, no pun intended, lol. So we went to try and snap some images of these beauties. Of course, while there, I was hoping to improve my catalog of other colorful song bird species, and the Butterfly center is pretty good for that. The usual suspects were there as well; Greenjays, cardinals, kiskadees, and a few others.

Altamira Oriole, one of the Rio Grande Valley’s stars. Such beautiful birds.

Of course when we left it was still a bit dark out, but as the morning wore on, I could tell the light was not going to get any better. Thankfully, it was a warm morning, but sadly very overcast skies, which made photography difficult. We did manage to snap a few images, but with the high ISO, the birds had to be close to capture enough light on them, so that the images were not noisy. When the light is tough, and your ISO is high, try having your subject really close, so your camera doesn’t have to work as hard to capture information. The light was enough for me to snap a couple that once I put them in post, I was happy with, but I would of loved more opportunities… and much better light.

Sharp Shined hawk. This raptor swooped down and tried to grab a bird in front of us. It missed then landed on a near by tree. We managed to snap a few proof of life shots of this predator, as he was seeking out a potential meal.

So, it was a tough morning. Even with being at a good bird feeder (It is well positioned, and really good for morning light), the skies did not help us today. We did have the Altamira show up, but the audubon oriole was a no show. To top off the frustrations, a sharp shined hawk showed up, and scared off all the birds. Normally I welcome the predatory birds in. I admit, I do love when they show up. But today was supposed to be all about the song birds, so our hawk made photography a bit difficult. So after a slow, frustrating few hours, we called it a day. Going back out tomorrow to see what we may find?

I managed this portrait of a greenjay. Which is the RGV’s superstar. People fly from around the world for a chance to photograph these beauties. It was overcast skies, but with the bird so close to me, I managed to capture a lot of detail in this shot, and I am really proud of it.