TEXAS:

• Northern Cardinal - seven males in June’s Bradford pear
• Field Sparrow
• Dark-eyed Junco
• Ring-billed Gull - flew calling over June’s
• Eastern Phoebe - one singing as I filled up my tank
• Great-tailed Grackle
• European Starling
• Rock Pigeon
• Black Vulture
• American Kestrel
• Turkey Vulture
• Red-tailed Hawk
• American Crow

OKLAHOMA:

• American Crow
• Red-tailed Hawk
• European Starling
• Black Vulture
• Turkey Vulture
• American Kestrel
• Pileated Woodpecker
• Ring-billed Gull
• Double-crested Cormorant
• Mourning Dove
• Eastern Meadowlark
• Rock Pigeon

MISSOURI:

• European Starling
• Red-tailed Hawk
• American Crow
• Mourning Dove

DALLAS, TEXAS — Mission aborted. Frozen overpasses sent cars into the ditches, and after watching a pickup fishtail past a serious wreck, we turned back just shy of Oklahoma.

Cardinals, Field Sparrows, Mourning Doves, Blue Jays, juncos, and chickadees fed busily at June’s feeder, as one might expect on a cold day like today. The Downy Woodpecker returned repeatedly to his suet block as a boisterous game of Scrabble proceeded behind the glass.

I looked up to see a Harris’s Sparrow sitting quietly on the wooden fence, and it stayed long enough for June to see. It came back later, giving her a better look, but I had gone upstairs.

After everyone else had left, gingerly braving the roads, June and I indulged to celebrate her lifer. It was ice cream of course — chocolate chip cookie dough with raspberry chocolate topping.

Thank you, Harris’s Sparrow!

ARLINGTON, TEXAS — I walked into my room with a frustrated glance at piles of details on the floor. One of the boxes had to be emptied and repacked, and some of the bathroom still needed cleaning. The tomato soup on the stove wasn’t hot enough yet.

Bleah.

I’d put the screen back on my window and left the window ajar. A bird called — was that chickadee? I stopped singing and hurried to the window to listen.

Yes! It called once more, and after a moment of silence, I saw a tiny bird flutter over and disappear.

A new yard bird on my last day here.

Four hours later, I was gone for good, out into the gray and blustery afternoon. Highs didn’t even reach halfway to yesterday’s unbelievable 85, and ice is forecast for tonight. What that will do to travel plans I’m not entirely sure.

THE METROPLEX, TEXAS — For a moment I thought the garrulous House Sparrows sounded different, but then I realized it was just the way I felt. I’d just left the office for the last time, and I wasn’t going back to the apartment for the night. Another little phase of life is over now, and my stomach sort of churned.

By the time I reached I-20 and Matlock, the grackles had begun to swarm. I rolled down the window to listen to them, and the air outside was warm.

I love to hear their cacophony: slide whistles and rapid-fire exclamations that made me think of Wuvulu’s kingfishers. Everything about the birds is outlandish.

I’ve never shared a home with Great-tailed Grackles before, only with their less dramatic cousins. There’s hardly been a day on which they haven’t demanded I take notice, swooping over a parking lot with wings spread and tails unfurled or hollering from the tops of distant trees.

It’s a bit of a hazard on the road, if a shiny male catches my eye as he struts, glinting blue and exuding confidence with his tilted bill and little golden eye. I have to remember where I am and where I’m supposed to be looking.

And there’s something else about them too: They’re scrappy enough to play our games. Sure I love elusive birds who are barely hanging on today. Who doesn’t dream of a Golden-fronted Bowerbird?

But the grackles thrive in our most miserable places, warily edging around pedestrians to pick at grimy bits of starch that somebody ground into the pavement. They seem right at home on our power lines and highway signs, and they treat light poles as stages built just for them. At night, they gather in hundreds or thousands, blackening trees and creating a din.

And does anyone appreciate them for it? Hardly! Just look at the papers for a hint at the malice they incur. I wouldn’t like to be the shopkeeper whose sidewalk gets defiled, but I’m secretly rooting for the grackles.

They’re tough, they’re loud, and they’re gorgeous. Humans resort to absurdities in attempts to drive them off. But the grackles are thriving in the world that we’ve created.

Rock on, great-tails. Give ‘em … well ….

Anyway, I’m going to miss the grackles.

ARLINGTON, TEXAS — A Mourning Dove’s song was the first sound I heard today. It woke me gently, whooOOOwhowhowho. So I got up before the nasty alarm, and I was thinking of spring.

The afternoon was one like I have loved since I began to remember. To be immersed in the warm and provocative air, feeling it on my skin and in my nose, fills me with desires I can’t fulfill. Not with my car in the shop for days and I in the middle of 5 million people.

I heard a House Finch singing as I went to get my laundry, and later another melody slipped through my window. I silenced the powerful human voices I’d been playing and listened as a robin soloed, effortlessly bubbling with rich and varied phrases.

Now the sun has dropped behind the other buildings, and the robin has stopped its song. I still hear its calls, just occasionally. Are the buds just outside my window a little bigger today? Or is it just my state of mind?

I’ll be gone before the extravagant little cloudbursts erupt from furry, clasping scales. And where I’ll be, it won’t be spring. Sacred Kingfishers will be returning from the south, where they’ve bred and raised their families.