A Holiday Greeting

Today the holiday schedule finally caught up with me and I wasn't able to squeeze in a walk. When I had jury duty early in June and wasn't sure how that would affect my walk schedule and posting, a friend told me, "All you have to do is post one photo and write something."

I have only missed three walks and haven't missed a single post since beginning this blog on May 15. Since then, I have taken 10,417 photos of which 2,538 have been published here in 162 posts. If all goes as planned, both the walks and posts will resume as usual on Monday.

So, heading into this special holiday weekend, take time to celebrate all that is truly meaningful in life:

Great Blue Herons In Flight

If the egrets are described as sheer elegance, then the Great Blue Heron has to be described as sheer grandeur. According to whatbird.com, they are the largest heron in North America, which isn't very surprising because they are enormous birds. They aren't anywhere near as common as the ducks, cormorants and egrets along the San Antonio River, but they do occasionally make an appearance.

On my walk this past Friday, December 16, there were at least two, possibly three, flying near the river channel:

The San Antonio River, Museum Reach: A Lot of Flowers, A Few Birds And a Squirrel

Wednesday, December 21, 2011

Today's photos:

For those not familiar with the San Antonio River, the Museum Reach is the concrete channeled, urban section of the river extending from the Park Segment downstream (south) to the Downtown Riverwalk segment. This section of the river is landscaped to enhance the tourist appeal of the area.

Once again, I needed to walk fairly close to home today, and realized I hadn't walked the Museum Reach since Friday, June 17. Given the late hour I am getting this posted, I will let the photos tell the rest of the story.

The Double-crested Cormorant

I haven't actually done a head count to see if there are more ducks or more double-crested cormorants on the San Antonio River, but my impression is there are a few more cormorants than ducks. There are definitely a lot of both.

Cormorants swim very low in the water, usually with their backs just barely above the waterline. They primarily eat fish and can swim for long distances underwater to catch them without coming up for air. Cormorants actually spend most of their time, though, standing on top of weir dams and rocks. They can stand almost completely still for long periods of time, frequently with one leg raised.

On my walk this past Friday, December 16, there were five cormorants lined up along the top of one of the weir dams, all five with there bodies facing north into the wind. There were three larger ones in one group and two smaller ones in another group (with a little sandpiper in between):

Other than the ripples on the surface of the water, the only thing that changes position from one photo to the next is there head positions. They were putting on quite a show of synchronized head movements, but it struck me as quite funny that they couldn't quite get the synchronization coordinated. One cormorant was always out of synch with the others:

The closest of the smaller two had turned its head briefly to glance over to see what I was doing. So, to conclude the series, it gets its own cameo close-up: