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.