rockyfort

Return to the Scene of the Crime

January 31, 2020 rockyfort

Let’s face it…last Saturday’s pics were bad. They were so bad they were criminal…sort of. So, yesterday I returned to the scene of the crime to see if I could get some good pictures. Well, I had another plan as well, but that didn’t pan out too well. The Suter Wildlife Refuge has trails going two ways from the parking lot. One is to the gazebo by the bay where I took pics Saturday, the other is through the trees down to the shore. Since I had gone to the gazebo area before, I started out going to the trees. In the past, I’d seen a lot of songbirds and gotten good pictures along this path. On this day, I saw two birds and didn’t get a chance to take the picture. They were too small, too fast, and rushed for cover.

One reason I didn’t see many birds, I believe, is that the city is doing some work on the Refuge, seeking to create a more native environment. It was pretty noisy. It should be good in the long run. When I got close to the shore, I didn’t see any birds, but I saw a few where I took long range shots. This double crested cormorant, I think that’s right, flew to join his buddies sunning themselves on a rock. Even with cropping, this pic looks a long way off. One of my dreams for this year is to get a longer range lens to use for these shots. I got a few other shots, but they weren’t crisp and clear. So, I walked back to the gazebo. Of course, since I could see the water around the gazebo, I walked quickly. I had seen a whole flock of white pelicans close by!

One of the things that struck me was the beauty created by God just using black and white..well…maybe with a bit of orange accent. In this picture, you can see black skimmers, sea gulls, American avocets, black-necked stilts, and white pelicans. I thought the pelican scratching behind his ear was interesting…thought about my dog when I saw this. While looking at this picture, I noticed the green wing teals behind the pelicans. I looked for them, hoping for a better pic than the other day, but couldn’t find them, that I know of. I wished I’d noticed them while I was there so I could have gotten a better picture.

One of the most beautiful birds on the coast is the black skimmer. It’s black and white, with an orange accent around the beak. It feeds by fying just above the water and dipping it’s beak in the water as it flies along. According to All About Birds, “Possibly the best description of the Black Skimmer’s bounding, head-down foraging style came from the great seabird biologist R. C. Murphy in 1936. He said they look like ‘unworldly… aerial beagles hot on the scent of aerial rabbits.'” I usually see them in large flocks, like those flying to your left, or at the bottom of the picture above. As much as I love the picture with the whole flock rising up in the air at one time, I wish you could experience the beauty yourself.

One of the more humorous, to me incidents of the day was when a brown pelican caught a fish. If you can see the brown pelican, he’s just swallowed the fish. When he first caught it, the seagulls swarmed him, trying to get anything he might drop, or, make him lose the fish. The white pelican came over to help out his fellow peli….or so I imagine. Then, once he swallowed the fish, the other birds pulled back and later he was seen swimming with the gulls following behind like ducklings following their mother. (They attacked any time the pelican found something else to snack on.

Then, finally, this bird. I’m beginning to recognize some birds again. I thought this was either a godwit or a willet, and research leads me to believe that it’s a marbled godwit. (Willets have shorter beaks and longer legs, I think.) He just kept searching the shallows for invertebrates and plant tubers. (See what a little research will tell you!)

All in all, I had a great time on a beautiful day. I plan to do three of these Bird Brain Chronicles posts a week. I’m also trying to work a way to show the full pictures at a larger size so you can see the beauty of these birds. Please feel free to correct anything I said that was wrong, ask questions, or request a site or a bird for me to check out.

Note: I was just about to post this yesterday when I did something stupid and burnt my hand, making it hard to type. Sorry for the delay.

Bird Brain Chronicles, Bird pics and story

And the Fog Lifted

January 27, 2020 rockyfort

Just a note before I get into today’s version of #BirdBrainChronicles: As I was setting this post up,I checked to see how the pictures were fitting together. I wasn’t happy. I need to find a bettwer way to line up the pictures. Until I do, please forgive the wonky formatting.

The day began with fog. We’ve had a lot of that lately…I wonder if God has a trip to London in mind for me. Just kidding of course…maybe. We had fog until about 9:00, and when I got paged to go to the church and sign checks (which I should have done yesterday) I headed over there.

We usually drive by Middlecoff Park when we go to church, it avoids some of the busier areas of traffic. Today was no different. Only today, I saw these two beautiful sandhill cranes, feeding in the grass right by the road. The two cranes at the park though, just kept eating as I drove up and didn’t bat an eye, so far as I could tell, when I rolled down the window to take pictures. I took the two together and then isolated one of them. I should add that when I downloaded these pics to my computer, I lept for joy because they weren’t blurry. The two flying cranes were later, but I wanted to keep all these pics together

Sandhill Cranes flying

After I signed the checks at church, I headed to the Oso Bay Wetlands Preserve & Learning Center because it’s a wonderful place to look for birds. Today, it seemed like the overall bird population was down, but I still had a great time walking and looking at the beauty of the area. Of course, starting the day with the Sandhills already had made the day successful, but the scenery along the walk and the birds I did see added to the enjoyment. Walking into the sun, the plants were filled with water drops from the fog. I started off taking a few pictures of the drops. They looked like God had given the plants diamond necklaces to glitz up the place.

Wait, what’s that I see in that last picture? A cardinal’s hiding in the brush. My limited photography skills don’t always capture the beauty I see, especially with birds hidden in the midst of branches and brush, but seeing this cardinal brought a smile to my face.

I love Cardinals, well, except for the St. Louis variety, and this was the first one I’ve seen this year. Then, I got a few better cardinal pics. The picture of the female came after I went to the overlook, but I wanted all the Cardinals together.

I experienced my lack of expertise in identifying birds today with the next few birds. One, I only knew because I had seen other people identify similar birds as ruby-crowned kinglets. (I still haven’t ever seen the ruby crown displayed!) They’re small, and this one was flitting around the branches. I never got a good look from him, this is the best of the lot.

These next two were hard to identify because they were backlit by the sun, and it was hard to see the colorations, but the duck looking one appears to be a Northern Pintail and the other one a Lesser Yellowlegs.

And this one, I thought at first was a brown thrasher, but it doesn’t look like it after research. The song was beautiful, but I didn’t record it. Do you know what it is?

As I began walking back to the car, I heard the honking of the sandhill cranes, and that’s when I snapped the pic of them flying. I saw a number of mocking birds, and explained what kind of bird ockingbirds are to a young child coming out of the learning center with his family. He said that he wished that they ate bugs, and I told him that they do…lots of bugs.

Bird Brain Chronicles, Bird pics and story

Return of the Bird Brain Chronicles!

January 25, 2020 rockyfort

I began a series of articles on birds in Corpus Christi, and anywhere I visited last year that I called the Bird Brain Chronicles. When my mother died, I put things on hold, and never got started again. Today, I decided I needed to get back to taking pictures of birds again, which I did at the Suter Wildlife Refuge in Corpus Christi. Then, I did a bird brain thing and didn’t realize that I had changed a setting when I too full moon pics a couple of weeks ago. So, these pics aren’t as sharp as I expected they would be. If you were to talk with my wife, she would tell you I whined about the pics the whole time I was picking the best of the bad lot I took. Still, I’m posting these because the birds are beautiful and I’m trying to document the birds I see. Be gentle as you look at these pics!

As you enter the the walkway over the wetlands, there’s a holding pond and outlet to the bay. I’ve seen a number of different birds there, but I almost always see this beautiful bird, known as a Norther Shoveler. This one was swiming in the outlet area after leaving the holding pond earlier. The Shovelers were flocking in the holding pond. I had the chance to talk with a couple from Fort Worth as we both watched. I enjoy talking with other birders, although putting myself in the class of a birder might be overstimating my ability as a birder. I saw a few Northern Coots mixed in with the Shoveler flock, but didn’t get a good picture of one.

I love black necked stilts. Their legs are so long that they do look like they’re on stilts. There’s an elegance to their awkward walk that makes me smile. This was the first bird I really noticed when I got to the farthest end of the boardwalk. He was slowly walking through the shallows looking for his brunch. (Brunch, of course, being served after ten and before noon.) I looked away some other birds when I heard a couple of real bird watchers talking about them, and when I looked back, he had disappeared. I usually see a stilt or two any time I come to this refuge and quite often in other parts of the city. I think they’re beautifu birds.

These are the birds that I overheard a couple of real bird watchers talk about. They’re beautiful green wing teals. They must have been doing lunch because they swam together, ducking their heads under water for whatver food they could find. (No pun intended.) I took a lot of pictures trying to get a good view, and I won’t continue to beat myself up by saying that I messed up the settings on the camera. That bothered me because this was the first time I’d ever seen a green wing teal. I am reminded though, that even more important than a great picture is seeing the beauty of God’s creation in person. I continue to be amazed at the beauty and diversity of God’s creation.

If you know me, you know that I’d have a brown pelican in the picture mix somewhere. I love watching white or brown pelicans, but I’ve come to realize the beauty and variety among brown pelicans is amazing. I’ve often said that Steve Spielberg must have been thinking of these birds when he designed the flight patterns of the pteradactyls from Jurassic Park. This one was a little farther out in the water, but in some places they’ll walk around within a few feet of people.

As we were looking at the birds spread out in the bay, these little birds cae running up the shallows looking for food. An old guy like me got tired just watching them running around. They don’t look too small in this cropped picture, but they were tiny little birds. They were so fast that when I looked away, they disappeared and I saw them later way off in the distance. These were new birds for a life list, if I kept up with one. If you think about diversity and variety in the bird world, you have sea birds like pelicans and great blue herons who are large, and then you have small birds like sanderlings – all of those beautiful birds playing an important part in our amazing ecosystem designed by God. I have a few other pictures that I could share, but I’m going to stop tonight. I plan to share more pics, and I hope that I get the settings right in the future. Look around as you walk about this amazing world and enjoy the beauty of God’s world.

My writing

Free eBook Offer…and Maybe More!

November 23, 2019 rockyfort

I will be attending Word Fest 2019 at Teas A&M Corpus Christi today from 9-3. I will be giving those who attend a chance to sign up for a free eBook copy of my January-February Devotional series. I will also have a drawing from those who sign up today for a full set of the devotionals in Paperback. If you would like to be a part of that list that gets a free eBook and be in the drawing for the full set of devotionals, sign up today!

https://forms.gle/V8X6JvMucWTR4o9y8

My writing

Kanye Dig it?

October 29, 2019 rockyfort

Obviously, from the pun above, you can tell that this post is going to be about Kanye West. Let me apologize in advance for saying that, and I’ll explain my apology later. Much has been made about Kanye’s conversion to Christ and, with the dropping of his latest project, Jesus is King, his situation is being debated by Christians and non-Christians alike. The dirty little secret about Christians, and I’ve made no secret that I am a Christian, and what happens when a celebrity converts is that most Christians cheer it immediately, but then we put them under the microscope and any mistakes they make are magnified. We don’t give them time to grow and then we attack them for being immature Christians. Or, we assume that they’re “converting” for ulterior reasons. So, when my pastor mentioned a couple of weeks ago that Kanye West had professed faith in Christ, I raised my eyebrows and smiled. Then, I did some research.

Maybe I was behind the times in hearing about Kanye’s conversion, but as I researched, I got the impression that what my new brother did to ground himself in the faith was amazing. He’s spent time with his pastor. He’s been having private worship services at his ranch. He’s worked to grow in the faith and get a strong grounding in God’s word. I was flabbergasted. While I hadn’t followed Kanye much, I can tell you that he didn’t impress me. But what I’ve read about how he’s responded as the grace of God has moved in his life puts tears in my eyes. While my opinion isn’t worth much in general, if someone were to ask me how a celebrity should respond once they come to Christ, I’d have given a road map much like the one Kanye followed.

Many of the people who’ve been negative about this conversion have brought up sins from his pre-conversion days to make the case that this conversion couldn’t be real. I guess because God can’t forgive sinners who go over a certain threshold? Perhaps they forget Paul’s claim to be the chief of sinners? So, if we accept Paul at his word, perhaps we could make Kanye’s pre-conversion days the lifestyle of the second worst sinner of all time – which would then force us to acknowledge that if God could forgive Paul, maybe He can forgive Kanye? Does Kanye have a checkered past? You betcha! I don’t think I’d want people to go back and listen to his old music, for example. That being said, all those past sins are forgotten by God. They’re thrown away as far as the east is from the west. He’s forgiven. His sins, like mine, were nailed to the cross and God’s mercy is more than enough to bring forgiveness.

A friend of mine, Lori Twichell, wrote an excellent post about this story and included some great videos. She noticed two things about him that caught my attention: 1) This man had peace that radiated in his face and through the answers to questions. He had no trouble with tough questions and seemed to welcome them; and 2) Kanye used to be all about himself and now he describes himself as a servant of God. He talked about Jesus and about what God had done in a couple of interviews Lori mentioned and included links to in her post. And that’s why I apologized earlier. I think Kanye, were he to be sitting here commenting on this post, would chastise me for saying so much about him. So, any of the praise I’ve given to him, make sure you realize that Kanye would probably deflect it to Jesus.

So let’s get down to his recent project released the other day: Jesus is King. I’m going to be honest. I’ve listened to most, if not all, of the album and I’m not a fan. It’s not bad in any sense of the word, it’s just that my ear isn’t tuned to the cadences of rap/hip hop and I have a hard time making things out. From what I could understand, it’s on solid ground theologically. I’ve had one friend who noted that it’s very sound theologically, moreso than many worship songs we all seem to enjoy. I’ve had another friend say it’s the best Christian album of the year. It may be, but it’s not my cup of tea. But here’s the thing: it doesn’t have to be. From what I could understand of the music, I wouldn’t be ashamed if anyone found out I listened to it, and will listen to it again. I wouldn’t turn it off if it came on the radio. That being said, though, Kanye will reach people I could never reach with this album. A number of people commenting on his songs mentioned their need to go back to church. I hear a lot of paise for Jesus coming through the music. I would have no problem recommending that someone who likes that style listen…and I would add, old geezers like me need to be willing to listen to it and hope to understand that God can use music like that to reach people I could never reach.

The conclusion of all this is that I believe that Kanye’s conversion is real and that he’s already exhibiting a vibrant faith that some of us older people can learn from. I also believe that somewhere along the way, Kanye will stumble and sin – which sin will be magnified beyond measure because of who he is and the number of spiritual vultures waiting for him to fall. When that happens, I hope and pray that i’m the first one to extend God’s love and forgiveness to him as he gets back on track wth his growth. And, even though Kanye would never read this let me just say, “Brother Kanye, welcome to the family! Walking with Jesus is an amazing ride that will never boring and will never get easier. I’m excited for this change in your life and I pray that as you go forward and grow in your faith that you’ll experience God’s presence and grace in the best of times and the worst of times.” I praise God that Jesus is being preached.

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