New Birds in Backyard Today

Since my winter birds departed here at the end of March to make their way back north to their Summer homes, bird watching has been a little slow around here. I've had birds in the backyard, but, with the exception of a few Harris's Sparrows who, for whatever reason, have not yet begun their trek back to Northern Canada for the Summer, it's been the Cardinals, Titmice, Chickadees, Mourning Doves, House Sparrows, Woodpeckers and Eastern Phoebes that I see year round.








But today, that changed. Earlier this morning, I walked into my kitchen dining area and looked out the back window and immediately spotted a Painted Bunting, one of my favorite Summertime birds, at one of my backyard feeders.



I usually have two or three that come to my feeders each year, but this was my first sighting this season and was happy to know I would have some again this summer, however, it suddenly dawned on me that there was another bird at an adjacent feeder that I had never seen before, but thought I recognized. I ran to get my camera to get some pictures, but as I did, our dog, who was lying on the backporch suddenly decided it was time to chase a couple of squirrels that were feeding on the ground below the feeders and his actions caused not only the squirrels to take off, but all the birds as well. I wasn't too concerned about not getting a photo of the Bunting since I already have several from years past and feel confident I'll see more as the Summer sets in, but I was concerned I might not get another chance to see the other bird who is not normally found anywhere in Texas and may have just been passing through on his migration north. Fortunately for me, several minutes later, the bird returned to feed some more and I was able to postively ID it as a Rose-breasted Grosbeak whose normal range doesn't extend south of Northern Oklahoma.





I hope this one stays around for a while, but doubt it will, and figure this might have been a once in a lifetime sighting since only two of these were sighted in the entire state of Texas back in February during the Great American Backyard Bird Count conducted by the Cornell Lab of Ornitholgy. In any case, it was an exciting event for me.

Day One of LJT Texas Music Festival

This past Tuesday, Becky and I made our annual April trip down to the 22nd Annual Larry Joe Taylor Music Festival and Chili Cookoff at Melody Mt. RV Ranch north of Stephenville. We started attending the festival when it was moved to Melody Mt. from Meridian back in 2003, so this made our eighth time to attend. The year it moved to Melody Mt, Larry Joe held a pick your campsite party a couple of months before the festival. At that time, Melody Mt. only had around 100 campsites with water & electric hookups, but several hundred others for dry camping. Tickets were given to each person entering the park that day with a number and later in the day, a drawing was held to determine the order in which people got to select their sites. We ended up being 72nd in line to get our campsites, and since people could select and pay for as many sites as they wanted when it came their turn, it soon became apparent that the electric sites would be gone long before it came our turn. Fortunately for us, we were able to find someone who was the 5th person in, and, with a little cajoling and begging, were able to talk them into selecting sites for us along with their own. Good thing too, since all the water/electric sites were taken by first 17 people to pick along with the right to renew the same sites each year from that point forward which has allowed us to have the same spot each year since.

We arrived at the front gate at 11 AM in hopes of being one the first in when the grounds opened at Noon, and we ended up being eighth in line, and were able to get our trailer into it's spot without a problem. Our friends who camp next to us, Doug and Debbie Martz, from Corpus Christi, came in right behind us and we both had our rigs set up, the water & electric turned on, some lawn chairs out in no time, and sat around for the next hour or so visiting and having a few cool ones.

Around 2:30 PM, someone told us that people were gathering backstage to watch the dedication and unveiling of a sculpture of Rusty Wier that Larry Joe and some others had commissioned to be created by a local artist.



We walked over where several other friends and acquaintances had gathered next to the artist ramp leading up to the stage where a sculpture was attached to the concrete wall covered by a black shroud along with Rusty's hat and guitar which sat in front of it.


Eventually, the ceremony began with Larry Joe telling everyone about wanting to do something to honor Rusty and deciding to have a sculpture made of him. Doug, of Texstar Ford, who, along with others, contributed to paying for the sculpture and a couple of other people spoke about their experiences with Rusty over the years, followed by the unveiling.








After some more visiting, we returned to our campsite and had something eat before walking over to the stone stage where the Tuesday night campfire was to be held starting at 7 PM. There was a rope across the entrance into that area with a sign saying NO ADMITTANCE until 6 PM.





It was 5 PM at the time, but we went ahead and took our chairs in and sat them up front and center with intentions to leave and come back at 6 PM, but some of the artists playing that night began to arrive, including Deryl Dodd and Marc-Alan Barnette, and those in our group decided to visit with them and just stayed where we were. As a result, we got to watch Deryl, Marc-Alan, Larry Joe and Joe Ely do their sound checks. We also visited with a few others who came in early including Richard Leigh who didn't perform until Thursday aternoon, but came early to just hang out.



The show didn't get started until almost 8 PM with Joe Ely playing about a 45 minute set.






After his set ended, Larry Joe, Marc-Alan, Deryl and David Perez of the Tejas Brothers all came on stage and passed songs back and forth for the next hour or so.



All in all it ended up being a great night of music under clear, cool skies. After the show Becky and I decided to pace ourselves and called it a night and headed back to our 5th wheel to get a good night's rest and be ready for the second day of the five day festival

Five Days of Great Texas Music

Heading down to Melody Mt. Ranch this morning to attend Larry Joe Taylor's Texas Music Festival. Five days of great Texas based music, both acoustic and electric. Becky and I have been going down now since 2003, so this will be our eighth trip down. Looking forward to seeing Joe Ely perform tonight since I haven't seen him play in about five years. Also looking forward to hearing Max Stalling, Roger Creager, Ray Wylie Hubbard, Michael Hearne, Cross Canadian Ragweed, Brandon Rhyder, Larry Joe, and a host of others during the week. Will be offline until Sunday, but will post some photos and give a report when I get home.

A Great Night with Michael Hearne at Nocona Nights

One of my favorite singer/songwriters as well as friend, Michael Hearne, came to Nocona yesterday to perform at our April Nocona Nights dinner/music show. Becky and I drove up from Decatur around Noon and hung out at her mother's house until it was time to go down to Daddy Sam's Saloon to help set up for the show. Michael arrived at the venue around 4:30, and I got a chance to sit and talk with him while he put new strings on his guitar and to catch up on what has been going on since we last saw one another in October at Gruene Hall. He talked about some of his recent shows with Shake Russell and with Davin James and Chuck Pyle down in the Houston area the past couple of weeks and about the new CD he's working on in Nashville.

Around 5 PM, Carmen Accioli and Zeke Severson, the other members of Michael's band, South by Southwest, arrived. Zeke had driven from his home in Santa Fe and picked up Carmen, who lives in Amarillo, earlier in the day. He said it had rained on them all the way from Amarillo. They all began hooking up their amps and microphones with help from Dennis McBroom, who does the sound system for our shows and finally did a sound check to make sure everything was to their liking before going to their motel to hang out before the show.

During the next hour, several people from out of town who are not season ticket holders, but follow Michael, began to arrive. Judy Mays, our good Parrothead friend from Plano, was the first to show up about the same time as Zeke and Carmen. She visited with Becky and I and even helped set up some of the tables.

A little later, Michael's father, Carl and his wife came in. They live in Preston Hollow in Dallas, but have a small ranch between Nocona and Henrietta that has a house they drive up to and stay when Michael plays in Nocona. A little later, Diane Gentry and Don Burke, two more Parrothead friends from Dallas, arrived and were followed a little later by Dave Hensley, a really good photographer, who lives in the Metroplex and attends shows and festivals all over the area and often posts photos on Facebook . There was also a couple of Michael's old classmates from his time at R.L. Turner High School in Carrollton who also made it up, though I didn't catch their names.


Another friend of Michael, from his high school days, Tom Faulkner and his wife also made it up from their home in the Lewisville area. Tom is a talented singer/songwriter in his own right and, became friends with Michael back in the early 70's when they both had bands that played around Dallas, and has played at Michael's Big Barn Dance Music Festival out in Taos several times.



By 6:30, most of the crowd had arrived and we started serving a meal of BBQ brisquet, sausage, cold slaw, potato salad, beans with sopapilla cheesecake and peach cobbler for dessert.

This ended up being our largest crowd of the 2009-2010 Nocona Nights series. We can seat a maximum of 126 people in the showroom at the tables if we really pack them in, but limit our season ticket sales to 120, which means we can only accomodate six additional people for any of our shows for nonseason ticketholders unless some of the regulars don't come.

We can, however feed additonal people out on the back patio or next door in the sitting room at Daddy Sams for those don't mind standing or sitting in a chair at the back of the room to watch, and last night was one of those times.

Michael, Zeke and Carmen finally took the stage around 8 PM and put on a great
two- set show. The band was tight despite the fact that they haven't played together as a trio in quite some time since Michael decided to move to Nashville last year and now splits time between living there during most of the Fall and Winter while spending some of the Spring and Summer in Taos where he has his festival the first full week of September.

The band started the show with a song I had never heard SXSW play before, "The Edge of Texas" which was written by Rod Taylor of the Taos based band, The Rifters, and is one of my favorite Rifter's songs. Michael knows that many of the regular Nocona Nights crowd are big Western Swing fans and the band included three Western Swing songs including Bob Will's "Right or Wrong" and a medley featuring Carmen on the fiddle playing Faded Love and Maidens Prayer. Of course, during the course of the night, they also played many of the great songs Michael has written over the years and a few from some other great songwriters including Van Zandt's "If I Needed You", which he recently played at actress Julia Roberts request at a show in Taos, Shake Russell's "Acadian Angel" and Mentor Williams, "Drift Away" which has become an encore song at many of Michael's shows. The show ended around 11 PM to a standing ovation by a really appreciative crowd.

After the show, most of the crowd headed home while those of us involved in putting on the show spent some time cleaning up the room while Michael, Zeke and Carmen loaded up their equipment. Afterwards, we visited with some of those who had come in from out of town to see Michael, and then some of us drove out to the Veranda Inn, where Michael and several of those from out of town spent the night and visted some more.

While the owner of the inn gave a tour of the new motel to several people in the group, Michael asked me to go out to his car, an we sat and listened to two tracks from the CD he's working on in Nashville. One of the songs was "Evergreen" which he wrote with Monica Smart and Susan Gibson who wrote the Dixie Chicks big hit, "Wide Open Spaces". The other was a song I'd never heard Michael play before, "Black Eyed Susan" which was written by his friend, Jed Zimmerman whose song, "Texas New Mexico Line", Michael sang on his last CD. He's using Nashville studio musicians on this CD, and the two songs really sounded great, so expect the new CD will be a good one. After going back inside, Michael called it a night, because he had to get up this morning and drive down to Plantersville just northwest of Houston to do another show with Shake Russell.

Becky and I visited for a little while longer with Don Burke and Diane Gentry who spent the night and Zeke who says he's become a night owl due to having a graveyard shift job as a night auditor in a hotel in Santa Fe. The party finally broke up and we said our goodbyes at about 1 AM. Zeke and Carmen were headed back to Amarillo and Santa Fe this morning to work and are driving back down again on Thursday to Melody Mt. Ranch to play with Michael at Larry Joe Taylor's big music festival on Friday. Becky and I will be packing up our 5th Wheel tomorrow and heading down that way on Tuesday morning to attend the entire five days of music. Can't wait.

Last Nocona Nights Show of the Season and Some Photos of This Year's Shows

Photos above include: Elana James & Hot Club of Cowtown; Larry Joe Taylor with Becky and Patti; The Nocona Nights Show Room; Larry Joe Taylor Band; Deryl Dodd; Davin James, Tommy Alverson & Brian Burns; the Quebe Sisters.

This Saturday night, we will have our last Nocona Nights Dinner/Music show of the current season. Our guest artist for the April show will once again be Michael Hearne and South by Southwest. Michael, Zeke and Carmine have been doing the April show every year since we started the series, and it's always one of the highlights of our season. We will be serving BBQ brisquet and sausage with beans and potato salad for the meal, and as always, the event is BYOB.

I attended our last planning committee meeting of the year on Monday and discovered we have 25 on the waiting list including Michael's dad and step mother, my good friend from Plano, Judy Mays, and Dave Hensley, who I'm sure will be taking some great photos of the show. At the meeting, we also discussed our 2010-2011 season which will include seven shows starting with Ray Wylie Hubbard in October. We will once again be selling season tickets with sales limited to the first 120 people which is the seating capacity in the show room. This year, a season ticket will be $180 which is a $30 savings for anyone wanting to attend all seven shows, and is the only way one can guarantee being able to attend any of the shows. Anyone interested in purchasing a season ticket needs to contact the Nocona Chamber of Commerce at 940-825-3526 and the sooner the better. Last season, all tickets were sold by the end of June.

Our Garden, the Deer and Blaze

Becky and I have put in a garden again this year. This will be the 12th year we have done so since moving out to the country. There is just something really satisfying about tilling the soil, planting seeds and cultivating the plants once they push up through the soil and eventually picking fresh vegetables and eating them at the dinner table during the summer months.

Some years, we have planted more than others, and some years we have been rewarded more for our efforts than others. Our first year, along with everything else, we planted three rows of black-eyed peas, and they really looked nice when they first pushed out of the ground. They had gotten about four inches tall and a healthy looking dark green color when we decided to take a weekend trip to College Station to visit our son at college. Upon our return home, all that was left was about an inch of stem sticking out of the ground. It looked like someone had taken a lawn mower and gone down the rows. It seems our neighborhood deer herd, which numbered around 15 or so at the time, also liked tender pea and bean plants, and they came to visit while we were gone. Needless to say, we didn't pick peas that summer, however, later that year, our neighbors bought a Black Lab puppie named Blaze that grew into one of the biggest Labs I've ever seen, and he loved to chase the deer and was relentless in doing so all over the east side of the Seven Wires subdivision we live in. During his seven or eight years of life, we didn't have to worry about deer in our part of the neighorhood and, needless to say, during that time we had some pretty good gardens.

Unfortunately, Blaze has been gone now for a few years, and the deer have returned which has led to several hit and miss growing seasons that usually depends on how hot and dry it gets. Last year, during one of the hottest, driest summers we've had in several years, the deer decided for the first time that the tomato plants looked pretty good and, one night in June, they destroyed 18 large plants that were loaded with tomatos that were about to ripen, so we didn't get a single tomato all summer. Regardless, we are giving it another go this year and have come up with some new strategies for trying to keep the deer out of everything including the tomatoes, but sure do miss that dog.

A Few Bird Photos I Took Today

Still have a couple of White Crowned Sparrows hanging around. They usually migrate north by now, but saw this one late this afternoon below the feeders. Looked out earlier today and observed one of my many squirrels helping himself to the seed in one of my feeders. I'm always impressed with their ability to find a way to get to the feed. They are very persistent and ingenious. Also had several of my Northern Cardinals in the yard today. Won't be too long before I should start seeing some of their offspring joining them.

Have also started seeing more Brown-headed Cowbirds in the past couple of weeks than I usually see in my backyard. Here's one of three males that were feeding on the ground this afternoon.

The Eastern Phoebes have returned again this Spring and added on to their old nest under the eave of my front porch and are already roosting on eggs that will hatch in the next couple of weeks. Snapped this picture tonight with one of them on the nest.

New Larry Joe Taylor Festival Fans

Over the past year or so, my daughter and son-in-law have become Texas music fans and often drive up to Hank's Grill in McKinney from their home in Plano to see acts like Max Stalling, Eleven Hundred Springs, Charlie Robison, and Granger Smith perform. They were at my house last weekend for my birthday, and, after looking through my Larry Joe Taylor Festival booklet that I got in the mail a few weeks ago and seeing the list of artists and groups performing, they decided they want to attend this year's festival. I offered them a place to sleep in my 5th Wheel and Michelle called Zack today to buy a couple of backstage passes so they could be backstage with us and not have to fight the crowd in the Mosh Pit in front of the stage. Nice to know Becky and I are finally passing our passion for Texas/Red Dirt music on to our kids.

Everything around my House is Green

Has anyone else noticed all the green dust like material coming off of the newly leafing oak trees. It has covered my patio and the cushions on my brand new outdoor furniture as well as all of my vehicles. I just don't remember it ever doing this in the past and I've lived here for almost 13 years.

Migration Time for the Birds

I've been watching the past two or three weeks as my Winter birds have begun to leave my backyard and begin their annual migration back to their summer homes to the north, and, at the same time waiting for the return of my summertime birds that spend the winter to the South of here. I am always amazed at how, as if on cue, all of some species decide to leave at the same time. For most of the Winter and early Spring, I had between 60 to 100 Goldfinches and around three dozen Dark Eyed Juncos that came to my backyard and feeders each day. Then, a week ago, I took a weekend trip to Hot Springs, AR, and when I returned two days later, they were all gone. I also had about as many Chipping Sparrows this Winter as Goldfinches, and, while most have left, there are several still coming to the feeders. Same thing with the Harris's Sparrows which wintered here in larger numbers than I have ever had. At one time, I counted as many as three dozen feeding in backyard, but now see about four or five.

With the departure of the Winter birds, my backyard isn't nearly as crowded as it was just two weeks ago, but I am starting to see signs of my summer birds return from the South, so numbers should increase soon. Becky put out a Hummingbird feeder two weekends ago, and we saw the first Ruby-throated Hummingbird of the season on the last Sunday of March. I also have a pair of Eastern Phoebes that have built a nest underneath the eave of my front porch and are already sitting on eggs which will hatch within the next couple of weeks. What I'm really looking forward to is the return of the Painted Buntings, Scissor-tailed Flycatchers and Mississippi Kites which are among my favorite summer birds. Haven't any yet, but thinking I will very soon. I've also been watching pairs of Downy Woodpeckers, Red-bellied Woodpeckers, Cardinals and Mockingbirds, which are here year round, going through their annual mating rituals, so expect to start seeing seeing some young recently fledged offspring in the next month or so.

Now I'm a Blogger

Never thought I'd have a blog, but my daughter-in-law says my posts on facebook tend to be a paragraph or two and look more like a blog than what most people post on that social network, so she took it upon herself to set this one up for me for my birthday. Not sure what I'm going to post on here from time to time, but figure it will probably have to do with birds for whom I have gained an interest in the last couple of years, the Texas music I listen to and the various music festivals I attend each year, Texas A&M football, for which I have season tickets, or any of a number of things that might strike my fancy at any point in time. Whichever, I hope I don't bore you too much.

Happy Birthday PawPaw!

Happy 63 Gary! We made this blog so you could have one place to post your bird pictures, music festival pictures, and any other ramblings you might have along the way. Can't wait to read them!