Our last field trip of the Rio Grande Valley Birding Festival was to Cactus Creek Ranch – thorn-scrub woodlands and coastal prairie.

As we entered the ranch, there was a big pond to the left of the road…..and it had a resident alligator!

I took a few macro pictures of cactus as we got out of the vans near the house. The public rooms of the house are full of art and Cactus Creek Ranch conservation signs.

Around the house are bird houses and feeders…pots and sculptures…structures covering ant hills to protect the horned toads feeding on the ants!

A little further away from the house – there was a Vermillion Flycatcher and deer.

We drove around in the vans and the host’s golf cart. There were several good views of Belted Kingfishers.

I made a video of a female eating a small fish! It is handheld so not great – but it captures the 17 seconds of action!

A pair of Crested Caracaras were in a treetop – turning their backs to us!

There was a snake in one of the ponds. My picture is not good enough to determine the type although others in the group saw rattles!

We stopped at another place and I did some macro photos of a dragonfly, a succulent, and a busy wasp nest.

In the distance there were Wood Storks and an immature Little Blue Heron….3 sandhill cranes flew overhead.

At another stop, our host spread some corn on the ground, and we stood back to watch the Bobwhite.

On the way back to the house, there was a road runner beside the road! It was the only one I managed to photograph this trip!

We enjoyed the barbeque at the end of the trip and headed back to the Harlingen Convention Center and headed out on the first leg of our drive home. We stopped in San Marcos TX before driving the rest of the way home the next day.

The items below were ‘the cream’ of the articles and websites I found this past week. Click on the light green text to look at the article.

Top 25 birds of the week: Green Colours! – So many beautiful birds…

150-Year-Old Boxwoods Lost To Blight At Carl Sandburg Home – My daughter and I visited the Carl Sandburg Historical Site in 2003 when we were on our way from Maryland to meet family members coming from Texas for a Georgia vacation. It was the first time I had driven a car with a nav system! We enjoyed walking the grounds and touring the house more than we expected. It’s sad that the boxwood there will be cut down.

What early-budding trees tell us about genetics, climate change -- ScienceDaily – Our plum and cherry trees are the ‘fruitless’ kind but they were in full bloom when our temperatures dipped into the mid-20s. I wonder how many orchards are going to have less fruit this year.

Hope and Peril for North America’s “Snow Parrot” – A parrot that lives in pine forests. Their range once extended into the US from northern Mexico, but they’ve been gone since the 1930s.It’s only in the past few years that their migration and winter grounds in the Mexican state of Durango have been discovered. There are efforts to safeguard the free-living birds and continue captive breeding programs in zoos (like the San Diego Zoo) with the plan to begin reintroducing birds into the wild in the future.

The Kodak Brownie: The Camera That Made Photography Accessible – My mother was taking pictures of her siblings in the 1940s….with a Brownie. There is one of her twin sisters (maybe 4 or 5 years old) peeking over the windowsill of the bathroom window (they were standing in the bathtub!); I always wondered if she had help on the inside positioning them while she got outside to get the picture. It must have been a warm day since the window was open!

Dangerous landfill pollutants ranked in order of toxicity -- ScienceDaily – The technique can help landfill managers mitigate risk for a particular site rather than taking generic actions that might not address the biggest problems.

For the First Time in 75 Years, a New Invasive Species of Mosquito Was Found in Florida | Smart News | Smithsonian Magazine - The mosquito that can carry yellow fever and other diseases was found in Florida last year. That does not bode well for keeping tropical diseases at bay in the US as the climate continues to warm.

Scythian people weren't just nomadic warriors, but sometimes settled down: Varied diets and limited mobility challenge stereotypes of ancient steppe populations -- ScienceDaily – Not all Scythians were nomadic. The majority of them might have remained local…farming millet and raising livestock!

Lessons from Darwin's "Mischievous" Birds | The Scientist Magazine® - The striated caracara of the Falkland Islands…we’re familiar with the crested caracara from the south Texas.

Newly Restored Pompeiian Frescoes Capture Hunting Scenes in Vivid Detail | Smart News | Smithsonian Magazine – Part of an ongoing conservation initiative funded largely by the European Union launched in 2012.