While doodling around the birding blogs this morning, I came across a very cool link to MSN's Live Search Maps, which has a "bird's eye view" option so that you can view your own property from the air! As an example, here's my parents' house:
That's it, boxed in red. (ed. note: their house is for sale, and it's in Harlingen, home of the RGV birding festival! Hint hint!) Note the fact that while others in the neighborhood chose to build pools in their backyards, my parents chose to beautify by planting all kinds of trees and plants--pecan, citrus, grape, peach, bottlebrush, hibiscus, roses, etc.--that serve to attract many different bird species to the backyard. You'll remember way back from when I started this blog that my mom is a bit of a bird lover herself. She gets tons of hummers, doves, chachalacas (which scared the pee out of me the first time I saw one pecking at the glass patio door -- her babies are nothing if not demanding of regular feeding).
Anyway, so I punched in my address, thinking I was finally going to get a beautiful aerial shot of my house and the marsh.... Yeah--no. No bird's eye option for me! I guess I haven't done enough to merit a spy satellite taking pictures of my house (yet). This was the best I could get:
Black and white, and not too legible. Hmph. Still--I've highlighted some areas of import. The small rectangle up top is my property--you can kind-of see my house and the crazy-uncle house/Kat's office below it. The circled area is Small Pond, where I haven't seen any ducks or anything yet this year. The longish area is Long Pond, where I saw the wood ducks, etc. last week. The dark area to the right of Long Pond is where the marsh owners built the short boardwalk and observation deck last year.
Boy, am I disappointed that I can't get a beautiful view of my area with the bird's eye option. I guess I'll just have to keep working on that rocket-pack.
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