A Few More Birds Along the Salado Creek Boardwalk

Tuesday, January 29, 2013

Here are a few more birds that I photographed on my walk along Salado Creek yesterday (Monday, January 28, 2013).

As I mentioned in yesterday's post, one of the major complications I had to deal with was the fact that the overcast sky combined to produce both a dim light and a pronounced background glare. It made it difficult to see, much less photograph, especially, the smaller birds. I think this difficulty is more pronounced in this series than it was in yesterday's:

The first three and last two photos in the series are a loggerhead shrike. From the time I started the walk until I returned about an hour and a half later, this shrike was still perched in the same location on the wire.

The fourth, fifth and sixth photos are a Audubon's yellow-rumped warbler.

The seventh, eighth and ninth photos are the State Bird of Texas, the northern mockingbird.

And the tenth, eleventh and twelfth photos are a northern flicker.

It's Complicated, Yet Phenomenal (Really)

Monday, January 28, 2013

Salado Creek Greenway, Lady Bird Johnson Park Trailhead
upstream along the Morningstar boardwalk

Today's photos:

When I returned to my car at the end of my walk this afternoon, I was thinking the photos I had taken would be relatively easy to divide into two sets and set up for publication. Later, when I began going through the photos to begin the editing, I discovered I had a wider range of material than I had remembered taking.

All of the photos from this walk are of birds. I will explain the "complications" in tomorrow's post. For now here is a bit of information about the photos in this series:

The first two images are of a red-shouldered hawk. These are actually from the same photo. The first image is a slight cropping of the original photo. It gives a good indication of how far away the hawk was flying. The second image is an extreme cropping of the first image. Even though the resolution is fairly low, it is still recognizable as a red-shouldered hawk.

The next five photos are of a great egret that flew by low overhead.

The last three photos are a pair of cedar waxwings. The dim light and glare from the overcast sky made it difficult for me to see when I was taking these photos if these were really cedar waxwings or if they were black-crested titmice, but the correct identification was obvious when I saw the photos on the computer monitor. 

All together, there will be at least two and possibly three or four more posts of the photos from this walk. In many ways it turned out to be a very similar experience to the one I had at Crescent Bend Nature Park on Monday, December 14, 2012.

Leave Only Footprints, Take Only Photos; A Sunday Special Edition

Sunday, January 27, 2013

Leave Only Footprints, Take Only Photos

"There is nothing in which the birds differ more from man than the way in which they can build and yet leave a landscape as it was before."  -  Robert Wilson Lynd

The first and most fundamental rule of nature hiking is to "leave only footprints and take only photos." It occurred to me when I was editing the photos from my walk in Mud Creek Park Friday (January 25, 2013) that vultures are the epitome of this maxim: "leave no trace."

I am very tempted to climb on the soapbox and go off on a tangent here, but I suspect I would only be preaching to the choir. Put very simply, carelessly discarding plastic beverage bottles and cans is disgraceful. Tagging is abhorrent.

Anyway, I could never have imagined referring to anything related to vultures as "cute", and maybe that isn't quite the right word here, but this pair makes me think of a couple that has been together for a very long time sitting on a park bench. The interaction between the two says more than I could ever hope to write. I will let the photos of this pair of black vultures tell their own story. 

Soaking In Some Sights Along Mud Creek

Friday, January 25, 2013

Mud Creek Park

Today's photos:

The next park upstream along Mud Creek from McAllister Park is Mud Creek Park. Mud Creek Park is a 67 acre flood control retention basin and Edwards Aquifer recharge site with at least 1.4 miles of nature trails (pdf). This was the first time I have been to this park and I only walked a portion of the trail along the eastern most part of the loop trail.

The flora and fauna in this series of photos are too numerous to list all of them, but here are a few of the highlights: Whitethorn Acacia, Huisache, Live Oak, Ashe Juniper (a.k.a. Mountain Cedar), an Orange Sulphur butterfly, Spanish Dagger Yucca, Sotol, Twisted-leaf Yucca, a Black Vulture, Bluewood Condalia and Wafer Ash seeds.

There is one additional set of photos from this walk that will be featured in the upcoming Sunday Special Edition