Greenville, TX - June 4

Roy and I went to Greenville, TX for our anniversary weekend. Although the weather was stinkin' hot (as Roy would put it!), that didn't keep us from birding. We just did it from the comfort of our air-conditioned car! We drove out to a prairie we had read of online, but that was kind of a bust. So we kept driving, especially looking on the wires where the birds like to perch.

We saw several barn swallows. Nothing too exciting as we see them all the time in Dallas, but they are still fun to watch. This one made me think of myself as I'm always stretching out my neck!


We saw a TON of dickcissels... and this was a new bird for us! Although we'd heard of them and seen their pictures in our birding books, we'd never seen them in real life! Apparently they migrate in large numbers. We sure saw a bunch of them!



One of our favorites is the scissor-tailed flycatchers. We love watching them fly, tail split open.


As we were driving slowly down the gravel road, I spotted a bird flying alongside of the car, just in front of us. It landed in a bush on the side of the road. Roy and I were shocked when we saw it was a painted bunting! Now you have to understand, we planned our first anniversary trip based on a place that has a high population of painted buntings because we wanted to see these beautiful birds. We did see them last year at bird blinds, but we had never seen one out in the "wild." Those bird blinds don't really count as "in the wild"... food, water, etc. set up just for the birds. So we were pretty stoked!

This little guy just sat there, letting his feathery hair blow in the breeze.