Greetings all!  It has been a bit sparse out of Intrigued as of late and for that my apologies.  Unfortunately, the production is probably going to stay a bit light for the remainder of this month and then into early August due to most of my time being devoted to helping my wife through her medical situation.  Looking forward to when this is all behind her – until then, my activities will take a backstage.  If there is lemonade in this basket of lemons is there might be a significant amount of wait time involved with all her appointments at Mayo.  Will have my trusty Surface to crank out what I can in those wait cycles – probably good for me to keep my mind busy on other things when she is away.

This being the first day of appointments and sure enough sitting in a waiting room waiting for Linda’s name to be called.  How about we turn our attention to a rather colorfully hued member of the Dove family.

The White-Tipped Dove is not a new bird to the blog.  This red-legged Dove was first featured back in February of this year (link here).  If you recall, that post featured an encounter at Laguna Atascosa National Wildlife Refuge back in January of 2017.  Well, guess what, I had the pleasure of meeting likely another specimen of this species at the exact same location on our December 2017 trip.  Now, that may seem like an odd coincidence, but in truth, you are not going to find them in too many other locations.

Hit the jump to see a few more shots of the White-Tipped Dove.

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I have trained myself to look for the loner when it comes to water and shorebirds.  Experience tells me those are the ones that end up being the most intriguing.  In the birding world, it is the intriguing ones that get you excited because those are the ones that end up making the latest checkmark in your life list.  Contrast that with staring at a cover of Coots – if you do not have a Coot you are in luck, already been to any body of water near me, then you typically utter “more damn Coots” and move on.  Although not as diligent on tera-firma, I do try to keep an eye out for those brief encounters.

A few posts ago, I featured the White-Winged Dove (link here).  That encounter at the Laguna Atascosa National Wildlife Refuge is the location for today’s post.  Most of those shots were captured from within their bird blind just out from the visitor center.  While getting that +1 in the tin, another creature came darting out from the ground cover, made an aggressive move toward my subject and then raced back into the shadows.

Hit the jump to read more about this elusive bird.

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