The First Week of December in SMA

Here are the other two studies that I did not attach to the last post. These are scenes along the highway in Michoiacan as I remember them. Lots of imagery like this is in my memory bank. I have the colors a bit too green for this time of year. Any finished painting will have a lot more yellow ochres.
A birding note: while I was in the Zihua area the one bird that I did not see was the common house sparrow!! I have seen that bird everyplace else that I have gone in this world, but for some reason it was absent there.
At any rate, life is good. Am in a really nice apartment in Colonia San Antonio, with a great view if the western half of SMA.
Lots of pigeons in this part of town. Someone must have a pigeon coop around here or otherwise encourage those darned birds. They do get rather nervous when a raptor is working the area. Makes me think of the homing pigeons back home that they sell and race out of Quality Feed Store in our neighborhood. There is a small group of Homer enthusiasts in the Houston area and they race their birds almost every weekend. They will take them out for 50 to 175 mile races. It is amazing how fast those birds return home (of course some don't make it back - killed enroute or enticed into the feral pigeon population). It was a big sport (gambling) back in the old countries of Europe not too many years ago - still is. There are other breeds of pigeons, just like chickens, that are bred for show (fantails for example) or meat (white kings, for example). As a yoiung teenager, Ray Loomis (married to Pamela Woods Loomis, twin sister of Cynthia Woods Mitchell) built large pigeon coops or cages for each of us boys in the neighborhood and gave each of us a breeding pair and a 50# bag of feed, with the intent that we would raise squabs for the restaurant market, thereby learning business skills and keeping us occupied with worthwhile activities. I was different, as I wanted to raise quail and pheasant, so I was provided with a long run pen for my birds. I had bob white quail and silver pheasants. The project did not keep us occupied for very long, unfortunately. We all lost interest when we realized how long it would take to get any payout. It was a neat idea, though, and it did teach us a lot.