Well, I have landed in Texas for the Rio Grande Valley Bird Fest. I am again helping out my friends at the birdJam booth. I haven't done much birding yet, but some parrots flew over our hotel and I discovered that Denese from birdJam is a little sentimental over great-tailed grackles. She remembers them fondly from the past and almost gets misty when we pass a tree full noisily roosting grackles. Yeah, she's not strange at all.

The Raptor Project family is here in Texas. Some may remember the awesome gyrfalcon story from a week ago. I wonder what kind of hunting the bird will do here? While they were setting up, they perched out their Asian black hornbill and John was kind enough to pose me near it for a photo. What a goofy looking bird with one dynamite beak! And for fun, I googled "hornbill" to see if I could come up with any interesting info and instead found a photo album of some guy vacationing with a hornbill...and let it clean his teeth...yeah, ew is right.

Well, I'm going to get some sleep and try to digiscope the crap out south Texas tomorrow.