Golf Ball Size Hail Due Tonight But, Quiet Afternoon At the Lake---

even the birds were asleep or otherwise being quiet about their activities . Saw a three  woodpeckers. A few shovel bills, mallards, gulls, pelicans  were sited here and there. Cormorants looked glued to their tree branch. A great white egret that flew in to fish and then disappeared, and, of course, the mud hens were at the ready for hand outs that were far and few between this afternoon. Finally figured it out---it's spring break beginning today.

The one thing that really made a difference today was the light. The suns angle has moved up just enough that it is casting that perfect light on the down wind side. In fact, this is the kind of light that I love to shoot nature images. The harsh shadows are gone. Well, at least until the sun gets back to the same location on its way back south.

It was also a moment of discovery to find thing that seem so out of place. Someone had pitched a make-shift tent in a thicket near the Filtration Building. The other one was much less threatening and even caused me to think about my dad's military service when the Americans were liberating France at the end of World War II. I even remembered some old pictures taken in Paris with my Dad and his buddy in uniform at the Eiffel Tower and another on the Champ outside a pastry shop. So, the joy of discovery can be delicious at times and tug on heart strings that haven't been pulled in a while. I'd love to find those pictures for my younger brother of our Dad. My brother mentioned to me just a few weeks ago that he  would love to see those pictures. It's been years since I last saw them.

We have three days of rain and clouds coming in tonight with the possibility of golf ball size hail sometime around 2 AM tonight. The front will move on out quickly but then the cooler temps will roll back in. Everyone seems to think that the last freeze we had a couple of days ago is it for the winter. Statistically, March 12 is the average day of our last freeze. It was in the 80s today.

I

I use my old friend, Mr. Sycamore to test my white balance from time to time.

A moment that I never expected to observe all alone at the lake with memories of my Dad.

A woodpecker later was pulling leaves off the tree and dropping them to the ground. I was sitting under the tree at a picnic table.

 

Secrets of the Museum

No, not the TV show. This is about the Museum Towers. Remember the one that was reflecting sunlight onto the sculptures at it's neighbor, The Nasher Sculpture Center in the Arts District from the glass panels on the tower. Yes, that one! Well, it appears that it is the only Penthouse in Dallas that has a full 360 view of downtown. Granted, it is situated  on the 42nd floor with a roof top pool and garden, not high enough to keep the 60 and 70 story office towers from looking down on you as you sip your afternoon cocktail.

The secret is, of course, after being built with the Police and Fire Pension Fund, which was a scandal of sorts and police and fire started pulling their money out of the fund before anymore money was wiped out of retirement accounts.  It is just now selling out the units and the price for the Penthouse is  quoted at the pricey amount of $24million. Don't every one rush all at once to do the deal. After all, while the most pricey zip code for homes in the whole State of Texas is right here in Dallas at 75205. That would be the whole of Highland Park and a very small shadow that falls into University Park, not  the 75201 zip code that covers the Arts District in Downtown. There is still one more thing---at 560 feet in the air  you and Wolfgang Puck can wave at each other across town. He, however, can shoot off fireworks from the top of  his dining room.

The Top at $24Million

Can You See The Penthouse?

Seriously, it is a well appointed pad. And, the Dallas Federal Reserve is just across the Woodall Rodgers

Burr!!! and More Burr!!!!

the coldest days of the season have descended on the North Texas area of Texas which happened to have a birthday, yesterday. The birthday of statehood will quickly sink into memories being replaced by the cold. While I have lived in much colder places during the winter season, medications have thinned out the blood. Having learned to layer clothing makes it a no-brainier for me, but for some, who have just moved here from even warmer climes than we are experiencing, they are having a hard time but even as they adjust, you see people running around in t-shirts and shorts and flip-flops!! Hardy and I don't mean the boys in the novels by the same name.
My coldest winter in the Great Lakes was a minus 17 below zero. And the thermometer never moved above freezing for nearly a month. I did manage to get out today and make it to the lake. I could only find about 20 pelicans so they are getting ready to get out of here for another season. The problem is, the weather were they are going is much worse by far than it is here. So, that could keep them here a bit longer. Some 50 or more have already taken off  on the wing  By Friday, it will be in the mid 70s here with little cold seen in the long-term for the area.

While at the lake, I saw a photographer that I recognized out shooting, and I did see a red shoulder and a Kestler hawk in their regular hang out areas. The seagulls are thinning out already and some of the cormorants have hit the road already. So tides will turn and focus will shift to the hawks that are nesting followed by the mallards raising their broods. I saw a pair of mallards up in the estate sections walking in some flower beds where there is ground cover. It's a great place to nest and I noted where and when they were claiming the area.

Love Is In The Air

A beautiful aqua color collar

With the Space X arriving at the ISS today, seeing these commercial grade hoppers on the road reminded me of the space shuttle at Titusville's Cape Kennedy. Funny how things trigger memories of the past.

I'll watch for them to bring the new brood down the road and cross over the lake level road to introduce the kiddos to the water. That will be about a month away. Nature has a calendar of events just like people, ad cycles and fashion cycles maintain. When you shoot wildlife, you need to know what their time lines are and then think like the birds, the ducks, coyotes, bobcats and a few deer here and there. 

The Pop-Up Store Treasure Truck at Amazon Rolling Through Town

It looked like a carnival in the parking lot of the old Buckingham Mall at N.Plano Road and Belt Line Road. It took going through the light, changing lanes, turning into the strip shopping center, coming out at the light on N. Plano a block farther down, crossing into the parameter road that goes around what is left of the Buckingham Mall, where I could come back into the part of the parking lot where the Treasure Truck was parked. It took a lots of maneuvering to get there, but it was well worth the effort.

Visibility was at 2 miles and the rain had just begun

The setup

The product of the day! Thanks!

The Treasure Truck .  Text "Truck" to 24193 to get offer-Day Notifications. # treasuretruck

Click on anyone of the images to enlarge all three images. Then, chlicking on the image will adance to the next image.  

Balmy, Then A 30 Degree Drop With More Cold On The Way

More Pollen For the Allergiers

The T&P Train Trestle with new Bridge over the historic trestle

The  Katy Trail Extension about to join the White Rock Trail shortly after it crosses W. Lawther in the back ground

After clicking on the seat belt, the next  button was to open the moon roof. It was balmy, and the humidity could be cut with a knife. By three-thirty, the temp had dropped to 48 F and the wind that was driving the cold front had arrived. Luckily, I was just getting ready to pull into the driveway, having worn two coats and was ready to head inside the house. Timing is everything and my timing today was right on target. It's going to be about 5 days before we get the sun back and the temps reach normals for this time of year, which is 63 plus or minus a degree here and there. This past 15-months has been relentless with low hanging clouds, heat lasting longer than normal, short fall, colder than normal for winter and although the flowering trees and tulips are up and blooming, the cold has returned. At this point, I don't even know what to think about the heat for the summer. But, right on target, March 1 and flowering trees are swaying in that cold breeze.

Albert E

Albert Einstein once said that, " Imagination is everything. It is the preview of life's coming attractions." Over the years, it comes to me little by little that the mundane and the magical come together blending a mix to bring balance in life. Of course, looking for that balance is an individual experience to some degree. What might be in balance for me may not always be the balance for anyone else. Yet, the law of physics kind of hold the thought on an equal playing field generally.

The American Coot in a rare display of their water dance of mating feather displays.

One of the more unusual use of textures to make a new home really become an eye catcher.

Beauty in a single flower.

Before I retired, I was fully aware of the power of imagination. After retirement, I began to see more examples of it every day. The more that I recognized it, the more that I came to see that Albert was correct. "Imagination is everything." I'm in my second reading of the book, Einstein. It is a rather slow read and a big book, but that is part of the experience of the read. It gives that imagination a chance to brew while in the read. In other words, it gives you practice if you don't have a strong imagination to begin with but if you have a vivid imagination already, it's like a hundred experiments all going off at the same time. Practice makes perfect my piano teacher would tell me at the conclusion of every weekly lesson. That creative imagination was born and I use it every single day as it flows over into photography.  

It's Been An Uneasy Stay For The Visiting Waterfowl.

We had record rains for three months this past year. This year started out with two floods at the lake that displaced the logs that the pelicans like to hang out upon. The high water levels have also brought in shifting sandbars that split Sunset Bay into another world for the Coots and Ducks, Cormorants and seagulls. It became readily visible to those of us that visit the lake almost on a daily schedule that the pelicans were uneasy and were seen in areas of the lake where they normally do not go. Pelicans up White Rock Creek beyond Flag Pole Hill on Goforth is not a good place for them. Especially if they roost that far up. The Cormorants are up in the trees there because their big log was dislodged by the high water levels and floated down  the lake shore several hundred feet.  But pelicans roost on the ground and bob cats and coyotes do feast upon waterfowl as we all know.

And, if that is not enough, there are more kayaks on the lake. More fishing boats. More motor boats for the sailing clubs and the rowing clubs. Even beyond that, there have been drownings there this year and just today, a father and son participating in a sailing event capsized and needed a high water rescue because of the thermal factors with colder than normal water. And some humans just can't get it into their heads that the birds notice things like that more than we give them credit..

Last year the number of mallards that were seen with their young broods was down to only a couple of pairs of mallards. Even the old gal on the east side of the lake that usually raises 8-10 ducklings, when seen, only had 5. It's almost a give me that the happy balance will always be in favor of people before it is wildlife in a dense urban setting. I know this. I  can accept this with reservations, but that is why there are state wild life preserves where the game wardens protect wildlife more than in city parks.  It isn't something that I enjoy agreeing with, of course, but the realization is that we are lucky to have such a vast diversity of wildlife so close to the heart of the city. Still, it behooves all of us to keep an eye more in tune to the nature that is around us and to have parks and lakes like White Rock where we can come and enjoy the wild as it was once upon a time. 

A little treasure for the  birders at the lake.

This old guy has one of the big old style bands on his leg. There were some with the newer wing bangs this year but they have already taken flight back north for breeding season. The big snow storms that are still coming down up there will not last long now.

Here is one of the washed up sandbars that runs for many, many yards in an arch around Sunset Bay