Mary P Williams

We begin the New Year, 2016, with a trip to the overgrown, mysterious, Frontera Thicket. It is quiet as we wend our way down the path to sit at a bird feeding station. Soon several people rush by us and we shout, “What are you looking for? What have you seen?” One person turns, cup her hands around her mouth, and calls back “It’s the female Crimson-collared Grosbeak!”

We leap to our feet and follow them to a fence where a Brazilian Peppertree is loaded with red berries and two dozen pairs of binoculars are trained on the tree. “Oh, the Grosbeak must have flown away,” one person says with disgust. Everyone dribbles down the muddy path looking right and left. I stay, hoping the bird will return to the luscious berries.

And then she does! She teases me by perching in the backside of the tree so I struggle to focus through the tree branches, I get a lucky shot of her with her plain, greenish-yellow body and black head. Five years earlier I succeeded in recording a male Grosbeak with his splendid red (crimson) collar and now I have a matching pair of photos of this rare bird. Rare to the United States that is … it is more common in eastern Mexico.

A disconsolate group comes back up the path and are overjoyed to hear I saw the prize at her favored spot. They settle down for another try.

Home we go with happy hearts as the light rain stops and the sun breaks through the drifting clouds. A wonderful start to a New Year.

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