Time to head back to Fredericksburg, but not before we met a couple of interesting people. A young doctor from El Paso, who had patients in the area. And a "snake catcher" from Africa, whose snakes (and his hand) can often be seen in the movies (think Snakes on a Plane).
Our first stop of the day was at Balmohrea State
Park which is under renovation, but we saw at a few birds including the largest American Coots we have seen. Leta correctly id'ed it while we all struggled.
After we left the park and headed into the town of Balmohrea, we spotted a smaller hawk with a bright orange breast on a fence post, we believe it was a red-shoulder hawk. E-bird isn't as sure....
Next we headed south of town to the, where we saw a few scaled quail, another hawk, and flushed a road runner along with a few other birds.
Our next stop was at the South Llano River State Park, where we saw lots of birds, including displaying Tom Turkeys and an armadillo that was foraging for food.
Woody and I got off the path a bushwhacked it a bit trying to get to a second feeding station, when Woody had his close encounter with the armadillo. It gradually figured out that something was near by and trotted to get away, but instead it kept getting closer and closer. Finally it got right up to Woody, stood up and started sniffing the air. It was close enough Woody could have reached down and touched it, but instead he was talking gently to it saying something like "I don't have to worry about you, do I?"
After several long seconds the armadillo realizes Woody is human and suddenly LEAPS straight up in the air about 2 feet high and bounds away with surprising speed. After our initial shock, we all had a great laugh.
Oh yeah, I got 1 life bird there, the field sparrow.
We raised back to Fredericksburg and had a great dinner at Bella Sera!
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