TEXAS FIRES JUST WON'T QUIT!

These pictures are from Ft. Davis (in west Texas) with McDonald's Observatory in the foreground. Taken about 2 weeks ago.
Just in case somebody reads this (printed out) blog in 10 or 20 or 50 years...I wanted to record something about the wildfires.
They began in March and in the past few weeks have gotten so much worse. Texas has never had fires like this before.
This season 1.65 million acres have burned which is twice as much as usually burns in our state in a year.
Texas has had 30 to 40 fires and with the heat, low humidity and big winds...it's hard going getting them under control. 
Evacuations have taken place from Roatan up in the panhandle to central Texas near San Angelo.  Two firefighters have died.
We have bad...bad...bad..drought most all over the state.
UPDATE: The Forestry Dept. says that 2.1 million acres have burned now.
The fire nearest us is about 200 miles west of San Antonio near Ozona and Pandale. With a switch in the wind today they were hoping the fire would turn and go back over charred ground but that was not the case. The firewall is 30 feet high in some places making it impossible for manpower to fight it from the ground. We are depending on military helicopters and small planes. At least they have plenty of water to suck up from Lake Amistad..... to carry over to the fire.

BEAUTIFUL BIRDS IN OUR YARD IN DEL RIO!

This bird is an Orange Oriole of some kind. It was BIG and on the hummingbird feeder. I think it's a Lichtenstein's Oriole also known as an Altamira.

A male Painted Bunting. All of the photos on this blog I had to get off the internet. My camera doesn't zoom that well and birds are fast critters. They are a member of the Cardinal family.

Another Oriole picture. Ours looked like this. We sure ain't in Pecos anymore! We also have tons of red finches, dove, hummingbirds, cardinals etc. We must be getting REALLY old if we are accidentally watching birds and then dragging out the bird book to identify. Only crispy critters do that.

MEXICAN FRITILLARY CATERPILLAR & BUTTERFLY.

This is an internet photo.

Also an internet photo...I put a picture on this blog last year that I took- asking "what is it?"...because I couldn't find it on the internet...after alot of looking and looking I found it. These are all over our yard every morning.

I took this picture last year..pretty good huh? You can see pollen on the butterfly's wings. (click on it to enlarge) At the time I did not know that it was what the caterpillar turns into. O.K....biology lesson over.