Thursday found us at our fourth ranch, Dos Venadas owned by Steve Bentsen where we had an outstanding day of photography. As the temps rose, so did visitation to the water holes and more subjects filled our viewfinders.
Long-biller Thrasher in take-off mode.
Female Painted Bunting
Eastern Cottontail
Images captured with Nikon D3, AF-S 600mm, TC-14E on Lexar Digital Medai
Day three of my safari has us with over thirty birds from three ranches in our files. We spent the day at the Martin’s other ranch, the Javelina
.
Blue Grosbeak
We were thrilled when a couple of Scissor-tailed Flycatchers stopped by.
And, we all got to practice our panning techniques when this guy came racing by.
Images captured with Nikon D3, AF-S 600mm VR (Grosbeak with TC-14E) on Lexar Digital Media
Tuesday found us at the Martin’s Ranch, The Homestead where we had a chance to photograph some new birds along with some we had already seen and enjoyed in a new environment. The shooting was great!
Plain Chachalaca
Great Kiskadee
Cactus Wren
Images captured with Nikon D3, AF-S 600mm and AF-S 300mm on Lexar Digital media
The first alarm sounded at 1:20am with a piercing shriek, causing me to fly out of bed, heart pounding. I looked out in the hall and saw several other faces peering out in confusion. Figuring it was some prankster I was about to climb back in bed when the second ear splitting shriek sounded. OK, enough is enough. I looked out again and there were even more faces peering out. Only now I could smell smoke. I heard someone say something about the ice machine so I walked down the hall to investigate. The ice machine was fine but there was smoke pouring out of door marked laundry chute. Time to take this one seriously so, I hustled back to my room and like a good photographer grabbed my camera back and my computer and made my way down the three flights of stairs to the street. By now there were fire trucks pulling in (7 in all showed up) and a crowd gathering. McAllen’s finest took control and found the source of the fire…an electrical short and got to work. At 3:30am they had it under control and the smoke semi-blown out so we could return to our rooms. I crawled into bed knowing that darn alarm was going to wake me in an hour to start another day in my So Texas Photo Safari. Life is never a dull moment!
Images captured on Nikon D3, AF-S 24-70mm 2.8 on Lexar Digital Media
Day one of my So Texas photo safari started off with a click…make the many clicks as we had visitor after visitor stop in front of our lenses at the Weavers Ranch. 
It’s just not a trip to So Texas without photographing the Crested Caracara…
or, a Green Jay…
We even had a visit from the normally shy Javelina.
And on our way back in to the Ranch after a great day of shooting, we came across this Scissor-tailed Flycatcher.
Images captured with Nikon D3, AF-S 600mm VR, TC-14E on Lexar Digital Media
Javelina captured with Nikon D300, AF-S 70-300mm VR on Lexar Digital Media