Birding in McKinney

Rolling out of bed at 5:45am we climbed into Joy's car and drove out to a park outside McKinney. Our GPS led us through strip malls and road construction to a fancy neighborhood. We parked along the street and Amanda approached a group of women holding binoculars, but the woman told her they were part of a walking group for friends (and we were not part of their group). This group accompanied us on the bird walk, but they spent their time chatting.

A few minutes later several birders arrived and someone opened a side gate, and we all drove through, parked under the trees, and gathered to begin the walk. Early on, Amanda embarrassed herself by calling out a bunch of kettling nighthawks (they were foresters gulls), but this seemed to break the ice, and by the end of the walk everyone seemed reluctant to go. We spent more than an hour standing the road near our cars, chatting and looking at the same birds.

The leader of the bird walk was an older Asian man named Rodney. He had a Texas accent and he wore a cowboy hat and mud boots with his pants tucked in. A few other participants stood out from the group. Eli had a thick Cuban accent and was more interested in the spiritual aspect of birding. He told Amanda he wanted to write a poem about our walk that morning. He considered this gathering a way to celebrate nature. We met a younger couple that lived in Santa Cruz and Candy, an older SriLankan woman with an English accent. She was chatty and full of recommendations for other places to bird. After I pointed out a distant heron she insisted I was a birder.

As we stood on the dirt road near our cars Amanda repeated our observation that the white throated sparrow sounds like it falls down a flight of stairs half-way through its song (bweeeeee deeeeeee bee, oof! Deee ugh, weedee uh, wee ). I also learned that the weird calls we'd been hearing from local crows, was because they were fish crows, not American crows with a regional dialect. Their call consisted of two croaks (Uh oh!).

We went to Rosie's cafés for lunch. Rosie's is a fast food chain, but the place seemed more bright, colorful, and better than typical fast food. The chairs were painted in bright colors, they had a window where you could watch the Mexican women making tortillas, and there were video screens showing the different meals you could order.

In the afternoon we drove out to the discovery center to see the video game and train museums. It was described as being in downtown Frisco, and I was hoping to finally see a proper downtown space where we could walk and see the shops, but the GPS led us to an isolated building surrounded by a grassy field and parking lot. Texas is a strip mall.

I took a look inside the video game museum ($12 each) from the entrance and decided it was not what I was looking for. I play games, but I'm not a gamer, in that I don't consider it part of my identity. We paid $36 instead and visited the model train museum next door.

Though it made for some good photographs, it was a bit disappointing. The museum consisted of a single room with hard barriers to keep you away from the tracks. To try to help people get more from their visit, they had a variety of scavenger hunt forms to fill out, but there were no rewards for completing the hunt.

Someone in charge of the exhibit bought a peanuts cartoon themed model train set, and these toys were scattered throughout the exhibit. They looked garish beside all the realistic modeled rock work and carefully illuminated buildings. I didn't realize how much it destroyed the illusion you were a giant among the landscape to see them there.

After the model trains, we gathered with a large crowd to go on a tour of the real trains parked out back. The crowd was full of typical train enthusiasts; old people, young children, young men on the spectrum, and Amanda. We walked through an old dining car from 1914. It was pretty nice, with plush chairs and a bar, but I couldn't help thinking we were tourists pining for the opulent mass transportation options our grandfathers enjoyed before it was all destroyed by the auto industry.

The highlight of our tour was a visit to see the 'big boy', the largest steam engine in the world. I snickered each time they mentioned big boys, but the engine was impressive. Each of the large driving wheels (there were 12) was 74 inches in diameter, and at 1.2e6lb (550000kg) it was an impressive amount of iron. Apparently Union Pacific built another big boy, and they will be touring the western states this summer.

One of the men on the tour was wearing a military jacket and I overheard nearly a dozen people telling him 'Thank you for your service' as we walked through the cars. People spoke the words with reverence as if in awe of this man who drove heavy machinery in the Gulf War.

On the way back to the house along the rural paved road leading to Mike and Joann's house, a roadrunner ran out ahead of us and we followed it for a half mile.

That evening while we played with Hunter and Harley, Mike made pineapple and barbecue chicken burgers with baked beans and slaw. He said he didn't finish the bag of jalapeño chips that afternoon because he saw how much I liked them.

He also brought out a jar of pickled jalapeños. Though this jar was store bought, he said he'd been pickling them himself with the sweetest jalapeños in his garden. Apparently he cooks the jalapeños, seeds and all, in a vinegar sugar brine. I took a picture of the jar to try making some of my own. Trader Joe's sells large jalapeños for 0.29 each

It had been a long day, and we went to bed early.