Gone to Texas, baby

It's Sunday morning, and I've been here at my parents' home in San Antonio since late Friday night. It's been wonderful seeing my family, some of whom I haven't seen since about four years ago!

Here are a couple of photos:

From left, big bro Ricardo, me, Raquel's daughter Lilia, Mommy, Ricardo's daughter Olivia, Raquel's daughter Bronte, and big sis Raquel (photo by Daddy). Note the shorts! It was probably in the mid-60s, though it cooled off a little later when a cold front blew through.
This is everyone again, with Ricardo taking the photo so you could see my daddy.

Saturday morning found me outside in the driveway with Lilia, who likes birds too, watching a strange little warbler-like bird fluttering among the oak leaves. I thought I'd gotten at least a cruddy picture, but now it's just all leaves and no bird. ? So it had a distinctly yellowish tint to its buff underparts, with a white eye ring, a skinny pointy warbler beak, and one wingbar--perhaps two, but it was hard to tell. I thought it might be an Orange-crowned Warbler--but they don't have that little wingbar, do they? Then I thought maybe female Common Yellowthroat. I wish I'd gotten a photo.

Next, I had to photograph one of the ridiculously abundant White-winged Doves fluttering and calling in the neighborhood; they're everywhere!

Not a great photo, but at least you can see the white parts of the wings. These guys are much larger than MODOs, and much noisier!

The only other neighborhood birds in abundance were Common Grackles and Northern Cardinals. No photos there, you know. I'm planning to visit several good birding spots here in San Antonio. Before I left PA, I googled around and found a list of San Antonio winter birds, with letters indicating the probability of seeing each bird during the winter months in Central Texas; I put it into a spreadsheet and sorted it; after marking (in red text) all the potential lifebirds among the common and fairly common birds, I then tabbed every page in my fieldguide that had a potential lifer on it. I'm sooo ready!

After the morning birding and photography sessions, I had to go see my old friend Charlie in Austin, who had asked me come over and record the guitar parts for a demo he's working on. This girl writes and sings her own songs, but her guitar-playing is less than stellar. Here's Charlie and me working in his little "studio;" I'm plugged directly into a thing called ProTools by DigiDesign. It's amazing; you just plug right in, and it records everything like in a real studio, only just in a little room; it's all computerized:
This is Charlie's "give me the information, old man" face.
More recording.
Just a leeeeetttle bit more....
me, all focus-y. (All photos by Mary Guzman)

After a loooong day of recording (much longer than I'd expected, because I've only had the songs for a few days so I had to learn them, make up guitar parts for both rhythm and lead guitar, and deal with the many screw-ups and foibles of recording), my sister Mary brought me back to San Antonio and I went to bed.

Tomorrow, we're planning to do some birding in McAllister Park, which my mom says is full of birds! Until then, friends, Remember the Alamo!