Zooming – November 2025

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The week at the Rio Grande Valley Birding Festival was a big one for photography. It was hard to choose from almost 5000 images for the month. I finally managed to select 26 favorites…birds dominate but there are a couple of dragonflies and three reptiles (a lizard, a snake, and tortoise). I’ve included a picture of Reunion Tower in Dallas as my husband drove us through the city (I opened my window) and a tiled bench at one of the rest stops. We had our first frost at home.

Ten Little Celebrations – November 2025

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A lot happened in November…a birding festival and my first visit to my dad’s new memory care place…and then Thanksgiving…so many little celebrations! Here are my top ten for the month:

Laguna Seca. My husband insisted on a photography-oriented field trip and I acquiesced. It was great. I celebrated seeing a coachwhip snake….and lots of cardinals…at close range with great background.

Trekking poles.  Hurray for trekking poles! They help me avoid back pain while I am hiking. 

Chachalaca. I celebrated seeing the pink neck/check pouch come/go in the one video I took of chachalaca drinking from a water puddle…and listening to the flock for warnings.

Sunset on the mudflat. The last evening of the birding festival we were on a South Padre Island mudflat photographing the sunset. It was a great way to celebrate the winding down of the festival. I will post about it soon.

Bobwhites. We had been expecting to see bobwhites on several of our field trips in the Rio Grande Valley….celebrated when we finally saw them when we were on the last field trip!

Dark chocolate. I am celebrating the season with specialty dark chocolate first thing in the morning!

Aurora. I celebrated my small collection of pictures of the Aurora as seen from the Springfield MO area.

Cooking a big pumpkin. There was one pumpkin left from son-in-law’s pumpkin carving event and I celebrated it multiple times: that the flat side made it an easy fit in my oven to cook whole, that the seeds were large (great for roasting and then used to top salad and soups), and that there was a lot of pulp and I made custard, a cake and a frittata!

Seeing a great blue heron from my hotel window. I celebrated seeing a great blue heron on the pond below my hotel room window when I first opened the drapes on my second day in Dallas. What a great way to start the day!

Thanksgiving at memory care. The memory care facility held a special meal for the residents the Friday before Thanksgiving. My sister and I enjoyed it with my father. He cleaned his plate and enjoyed the live music. It was wonderful to celebrate with him.

Laguna Seca Ranch

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Our first afternoon at the Rio Grande Valley Birding Festival was spent at the Laguna Seca Ranch doing songbird photography from a blind. We met our guide at a Love’s near the ranch and caravaned on better roads to get there and through the gate. We stopped at an area for facilities and to sign in…then went to the area where a blind was set up. There were folding chairs and we all had a space to look through the curtains at a small pool with enhancements to make more interesting photographs: logs, freshly cut branches with green leaves, a tree near the pool, a branch rigged to drip water into the pool from a few feet above the surface. The guide spread nut butter on the logs (out of direct line of sight). I used my Canon Powershot SX70-HS (bridge) and my monopod.

The first picture I took was while the guide was putting out the nut butter – a dragonfly on a nearby branch. It was pink! I think it was a Roseate Skimmer.

A green jay made an appearance.

And then there was a coach whip snake that came for a drink. I made a short video.

Over the course of the next few hours, I took a lot of northern cardinal pictures.

The queen butterflies frequently enjoyed the mud at the edge of the pool.  

The pyrrhuloxia were around as well but not as numerous as the cardinals.

A couple of female red winged blackbirds stopped for a drink.

The black-crested titmouse was a new bird for me. They are only found in far south Texas. Hybrids of this bird and the tufted titmouse (the one I see in Missouri) are found in the San Antonio area.

The golden-fronted woodpecker thoroughly inspected the branch that was rigged to drop water into the pool!

Just as we were losing the good light on the pool, a couple of crested caracaras arrived. It was a good finale for our time at Laguna Seca.