The Wild West of Texas

We saw so many different kinds of animals and birds during our little weekend in the country.
Here is our shed.



The very first sign of wildlife we saw was in our own sink, where this guy was waiting patiently in the sink for help going home from the party.

 

We travelled around in a royal limo, inspecting the property and looking for road runners.

Part of the duties was to post signs and inspect the fence.

That's a good days work done!

It was time to sit back and look for animals. One of the first ones we saw ws this hawk.

We also saw this guy ...

 

 

The first day I made sure to get up early so I could watch the "deer" feeder go off. Out there, just about everybody has a deer feeder which shoots a small amount of corn off at a time you get to set. We were told our time was 7:28 in the morning, so about 6:40 we started intensely watching out the window so we wouldn't miss the event of the day. After about an hour of intense scrutiny we decided we must have misheard and the time was probably really 8:30, so we watched intensely again, but finally we decided we had better go check things out. We did a test and got thoroughly pelted with the hard kernels of corn and only then discovered that the timer was set for PM instead of AM.

It didn't matter so much since we had done a test discharge and eventually the animals figured out that there was food available. 

Of course the first thing we saw was a stampede of invasive European domestic pigs.

 

The little ones hung back until they were sure it was okay, and then they sped in too.

 

later the pigs left and the deer came. 

On a walk we got to see this little gut. (Close up below)

 

What follows (in no particular order) are other things we saw during our visit.

This quail was a bit camera shy.

I know my sister won't love this picture - especially since she isn't smiling, but I just love her "look" and the way her snake boots match her shirt. I had to put the picture up (at least until she makes me take it down.)

The organic design of this thicket fascinated me.

 Classic deer pose.

 

This was the first time I'd ever seen a tarantula in the wild.

 

And this was what I was most hoping to see. It took a little patience and a lot of  shots, but I finally got a decent image of a road runner.