Wildlife & Birdwatching Best RV Parks
Messages posted to discussion group:| Subject | Date |
| texasbirder.net Kathy Adams Clark | 2009-08-08 07:08:00.0 |
Subject: Wildlife & Birdwatching Best RV Parks
From: texasbirder.net Kathy Adams Clark
Date: 08-Aug-09
We pulled into Davis Mountains State Park early one morning and immediately began watching birds at the feeders by the park entrance station.
We enjoyed hearing a Scott's oriole singing at the top of an oak and a spotted towhee nearby singing his song that sounds like drink-your-tea-hee-hee.
From the entrance, we descended into a mountain-ringed, pastoral valley that makes up the major portion of the 2,700-acre park. With an elevation averaging about a mile high at the park, we were comforted by soft breezes as we got out of the truck at the host station where an observation area includes bird and hummingbird feeders.
The station also has benches for people like us who want to sit in quiet comfort to watch and photograph birds. And the birds were abundant. Black-chinned hummingbirds up close, lesser goldfinches flitting in the trees, a black-headed grosbeak sitting regally on a limb and a Bewick's wren poking around the ground.
This is the place to be late in the afternoon when the rare Montezuma quail come to feed. With their desert-brown coloring offset by striking black-and-white harlequin faces they can be surprisingly difficult to spot.
The Interpretive Center building also has a bird-feeding station with a birdbath at the back. A wood wall with viewing portals allowed us to see and photograph birds without disturbing them. Once again, birds were abundant.
A pair of ladder-backed woodpeckers called from the trunk of a piñ on pine, and a golden-fronted woodpecker seemed to favor the big ponderosa pine near the front of the building. A pyrrhuloxia came in to the birdbath, and a Bullock's oriole sang vigorously from an oak.
We drove past numerous campsites to Indian Lodge, a spectacular adobe-style hotel that resembles an old Pueblo Indian village. Cliff swallows had made the place home for the summer. Rock wrens seemed to have found it a good place to find food, and we followed suit by eating lunch at the lodge's Black Bear Restaurant.
Afterward , we drove the winding Skyline Drive to the highest point in the park to enjoy a serene mountaintop vista and watch scrub jays hassle rock squirrels.
To contact college dean Gary Clark or photographer Kathy Adams Clark, visit their Web site at www.texasbirder.net.
