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Saturday morning was beautiful down in McBride Canyon and along the river. I wish you could have been there. I joined seven others in a hike along the McBride/Mullinaw trail which follows the river for a couple of miles. Led by an Alibates volunteer, we were birding. The morning was cool and it wasn’t buggy down along the river bottom. A breeze sprang up about 9 o’clock and made a sound blowing through the cottonwoods that was like standing on a beach and hearing the waves expend themselves on the beach in a faint popping of the bubbles in the foam.
As for birds, there weren’t that many and they were hard to see unless they were on a dead cottonwood limb. We retraced our steps and drove back to McBride Canyon where the group again went in search of birds and with similar success. I grew weary of peering at faint specs on tree limbs through my binoculars and wandered off toward the rock house. While walking around it I caught sight of a turkey some ways away and listened to it cluck. The clucking made me wonder if it was alerting the rest of its tribe to my presence or, maybe, it had some little ones it was herding to safety.
I wandered in the direction of the turkey and climbed a little knoll. It gave me a good view of the canyon and I was rewarded by seeing a couple of mule deer emerge from the creek bottom, cross the road and proceed up the other side of the canyon. At one point they stopped and stood still as statues for some time while watching me watch them. Finally they continued on their way and disappeared over the canyon rim.
At the Alibates visitor center our guide showed me how to operate an atlatl. It was interesting but would require a lot of practice before I could hope to hit anything but the ground. The visitor center is very nice with its gardens of native plants, picnic areas and information available inside. That part of the country is about as green as it can get right now and the wildflowers put on quite a show.
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