Medina River Greenway, Upland Trailhead, West

Today's photo's:

The Upland Trailhead on the Medina River Greenway (pdf map link) is on Applewhite Rd. at the intersection with Old Applewhite Rd. The trail east of this trailhead toward Pleasanton Rd, even though it is fairly new, is currently closed for repairs. This morning's walk took me west toward the Medina River Natural Area, El Chaparral Trailhead.

I managed to walk about 1.25 miles (2.5 miles roundtrip), or about a third of the way to the El Chaparral Trailhead. ("…the El…" seems unnecessarily redundant, but since I am writing in English and not Spanish, I'll leave it that way.) This section of the trail meanders through both dense riparian woodland and the upland chaparral.

There are subtle changes in the sky, the air, the feeling of the breeze, and the quality of the light indicating a change of seasons is in its very early stages. I included the two cloud photos as illustration of this. When we start getting these high cirrus clouds, change is on the way, even if it is still hotter than blazes on the ground.

One other note on the photos: there is an intentional lack of scale in many of them. The first lizard, a Texas Spotted Whiptail, was one of the largest lizards I have seen in the wild. It is at least six or seven inches long from snout to end of tail. On the other hand, the second lizard of which there are two photos was very tiny, maybe two inches long at the most. It is probably a Texas Rose-bellied lizard, but I'm not sure about that.

The photos of the insects are obviously very close-up macro photographs. If there are flowers, there are likely going to be insects somewhere close by, especially during a drought.