Patty and I spent Christmas week in the lower Rio Grande Valley, Texas. It was rainy most of the time, but only one afternoon was a complete washout. Mostly drizzly we still went out and saw stuff, although not as much as had it been sunny.
I guess we'll just have to go back some day.
We did see this.
A common pauraque. See it? It's right there in the center of the image (as always you can click the image to bigafy.)
See it now?
These birds spend their days sitting on the ground, depending on their camouflage to hide them. This bird was less than a meter from the trail's edge, sitting under some shrubbery. We saw another bird similarly situated under a bush on the side of a road. Both in
Estero Llano Grande state park. A wonderful site that we visited three times on this trip.
It is amazing how these birds just sit there, ignoring us passersby, including several bobcat that were seen, although not by us, walking past this bird. And of course most passersby never see these birds. Which is no doubt just fine with them.
