Brackenridge Park, Part 1

This morning was a challenge. There was a chance of rain, although my gut feeling with forty years of living in San Antonio was that rain would be a long shot. Not that there wasn't high humidity. One could ring the water out of the air with a towel.


Anyone who has lived in South Texas for any length of time knows (or should know) not to be in a gully (i.e. creek bed) if there is a reasonable chance of a "gully washer" upstream. Drowning in flash floods is the leading cause of weather related deaths here. With that in mind, I decided to play it safe and head to higher ground for my walk today instead of going on one of the greenway trails.


I haven't been to Brackenridge Park in something like twenty or twenty-five years, so I decided to make it today's location. While the San Antonio River flows through the park, it is close enough to Olmos Dam that flash flooding isn't a major risk even in a heavy thunderstorm. As it turned out, rain didn't become a factor at all.


I began my walk along the Wilderness Trail walking south toward Mulberry Avenue and returned to the parking lot on the Wildlife Trail. Those trail names may seem a bit of hyperbole, but about two-thirds of the park is urban forest right in the middle of the seventh largest city in the U.S. The San Antonio Parks and Recreation Department is making a concerted effort towards restoring this part of the park to as natural a South Texas ecosystem as is possible given the circumstances.


I am dividing this post into two parts with the photos along these two trails in this first part. Next week, probably on Thursday, I will post the second part. After I returned to the car, I decided to spend a half hour or so along the river. I think it will be obvious from the photos why I am dividing them into two entries.


So for today, here are the Brackenridge woodlands:

 Photos like the one above really need to be seen as large prints to do them justice.

These last two photos are reddish cattle egrets.* There is a very large colony living in the park.

"While on a Walk" will be taking weekends off, so be sure to stop back by Monday evening for the next entry.

*My bird identification source was in error and these are, in fact, cattle egrets. Cattle egrets have an orange tent on the wings and orange on the top of their heads.