Good Friday, the 15th

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Good Friday of course, and at the end of the day of birding we were sure to be back at the house at 4 pm, which was 7 pm in Ohio, so we could watch the Good Friday service at Advent. There simply aren’t any churches around here. It was better than nothing, but still sad to be away from our church family.

We left here earlier than ever, out by 7:20, to head up to the top of the big hill again in search of particular birds that like that altitude (about 8000' compared to Portal at 4700’). Funnily enough we didn’t see ANY of them, but ran into someone we’ve seen just about everywhere, who was scoping out a camping site. These people are HARDY! Camping might even be free up there, but most are $10 a night. Of course hardy is relative – most are in campers. It was interesting to hear about his “shower in a box,” which is virtually on demand hot water. We didn’t ask how where you stood naked to use this lovely hot water though.

We will produce the photos of the FOUR new birds we saw today, but the find of the day was the GRANITE SPINY LIZARD sunning on a rock. He seems to have lost part of his tail.

Also, we figured out the extra thing on the Merlin App, which allowed us to record the bird songs and get a “best guess” on the type of bird that was making it. This makes identification that much easier.

We were told about a spotted Mexican owl over the hill in a campground, but that was the narrow road we traveled before that was so scary - no, Marie, no owls. And no dark skies, because the moon is still too bright.

One more day only, and we still haven’t seen a Road Runner to photograph – just the one speeding by in Texas.

Still on this trip we have gained about 60 lifers (a few more than the 28 I had guessed we’d get) and think we have seen about 100 species (some from before in TX, and some because they live in the East too).

Did anyone notice those crazy Minions I posted yesterday? Those are on display at the ranch on the other side of the street this AirBnB is on, so we pass them every day and finally took photos. Sorry there were so many photos yesterday: evidently I grabbed them all instead of the one’s David named.

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