The San Antonio River, Concepcíon Park Trailhead, A Small Sample of Bexar County's Biodiversity

Friday, February 10, 2012

Today's photos:

I hadn't planned on doing another series of walks along the San Antonio River until the end of this month or the first week of March, but my experience on Wednesday's walk was a stark reminder of the power of the river, the ferocity of flash floods, the difficulties encountered in restoring a riparian ecosystem in a flood control channel and the awesome, constantly changing dynamics of this environment.

Today's walk gave me additional material for an upcoming post specifically dealing with these issues. But it was also another walk where the incredible diversity of wildlife in Bexar County was on full display. It is going to take some time to sort out and edit all of the photos. In order to get a post online tonight, the series above is a random selection of photos from this walk.

Feb. 11, 2012:  I probably should mention that San Antonio received another third of an inch of rain early yesterday morning. This walk was below the confluence with San Pedro Creek. Both the creek and the river were at a higher level and were flowing much faster than I had expected.

Dragonflies in Winter

Thursday, February 9, 2012

I hadn't seen any dragonflies since the end of November and was coming to the conclusion I likely wouldn't see them again until sometime in March. So, I was a bit surprised to see them on the Salado Creek wetland when I was there Wednesday, February 1. Granted, there was only a single species that had emerged, but they were numerous and very active:

Feb. 10, 2012: As a footnote, there are well over 200 species of Odanata in Texas. I spent a couple hours doing a web search trying to identify this one, but was unable to find any photos that match the distinctive color pattern on this dragonfly's tail. I am wondering if this is a local variant of one of the common species.

The San Antonio River, Mission Rd Trailhead, Not Exactly As Planned, Part 1

Wednesday, February 8, 2012

Today's photos:

My original plan for today was to walk at Eisenhower Park, but for a complex set of reasons those plans got changed at the last minute. The San Antonio River is always the default location for my walks when life doesn't quite go as planned, so today that's where I ended up. Little did I know until I started my walk that "not exactly as planned' was apparently the theme for today.

I walked from the Mission Road Trailhead to just downstream of the large embayment. I was completely caught off guard by the damage to the restored landscaping that had been done in this section of the river by this past weekend's heavy rain and the flooding it caused in the river channel. I will have another post soon with more about this flood damage.

In spite of the damage, this was another photographically prolific walk. The photos above are only a small sample. There will be several more posts from this series. 

And, yes, that is a Texas bluebonnet in the photo between the sparrow and the flying ducks. Spring is arriving early this year.