Some of the Characters That Surround Me Everyday.

I see this sign almost every time I visit the lake, but until today, I had never stopped to realize that one is a German Shepard and the other is a doberman. But, also, the sign is one of the best security positing that I have ever seen. My brother had a German Shepard that was trained to be a police  dog and Baron could cover ground!! Hats off to the property owners!!!  Well done. 

 

 

 

In the course of life, everyone meets a character here and there that sticks in their  memory for good or for bad. It's one of those things that make us all human, I suppose. But what about those characters

Blue Jays are Comical 365

that make us laugh and we can't communicate with them on a verbal plain? Well, for me, I tend to remember them as pretty special and I carry them in my memories and in my heart.

But this little guy which you can talk to, is so comical that I will always stop and talk to his kind.

Two Fluff Balls Way Up Top.

Palm Blooms

Two Barred Chicks Branching

Field of Wild Poppy Blooms

The owl season has been an amazing year. It seems that the Barred Owls had another species this year raising their chicks, too. A pair of Great Horned Owls were in the same grove of trees and hatched and branched their chicks early. The Barred owls have two chicks that are just now branching and are so cute. They are a pair of fluffy grayish white chicks.

While there has been watchers camped out at the foot of their nest tree, This is the first time this year that I have chased the barred owls. And, while I could not get a good shot of their faces and profile like I got in years past and profile shots of the Great Horned family this season, I could only get a shot from directly underneath  upwards. It came out a bit abstract in view, but the fluffy down that they have now while waiting for their feathers to come in is very evident. The clarity of the little guys is yet another look at the life of a barred owl chick.

Later, I found a patch of wild red poppies growing above the lake. These were good size blooms and the patch caught my eye. It would have been nice to get into the underbrush and get some better shots but this is May in North Texas and it's mating season for snakes, which are more aggressive now than at any other time of the year. Coming from a spot along the lake near where the owls are nesting, I was talking to a group of fishermen and while we were standing there, we saw, and counted, no less than a dozen snakes.

And, one thing that I enjoy shooting here in Texas is when the palm trees bloom. The displays are so big, and always unusual. The spines are sometimes more photographic than the blooms but in this case, I could shoot both. These were not that far from my house and while I go by there several times a week, I had never noticed the old palms until today when the blooms caused me to turn around and go back to shoot them.

Never To Old To Learn

Dad puts himself in between himself and his chicks as mom escorts them to safety.

Snake paces back and forth along shoreline for a reason.

Dad Duck Watches Out For Snake

While I have always loved wildlife and being outdoors, looking back now, the last twenty years of my life have been a new learning experience with a triptych of cameras by my side. In the course of events during that twenty years, going to zoos has been fun, but this isn't about going to zoos. It's that red tail hawk that you first notice by its shadow that it cast on the ground as you walk a trail. It's about seeing fluffy little owl chicks poking their heads out of a hollow of  a tree hole, seeing this world for the first time. Discovering a couple of dozen of Rocky Mountain long horn sheep living less than the number of fingers on one hand from me turned out to be a WOW experience. Or finding not one but two houses where a pair of burros roam a side yard. Kestrel hawks, great horned owls, ospreys, bald eagles, are now spotted on a regular basis as I have learned about their habits and how they go about their days as I take time out of mine to watch such majestic beauty for the majority of the days in a year.

But the most amazing thing that I have always heard about, but never had  observed in detail has been the colorful and sometime funny, wood duck family. This season, I have seen no less than ten pairs, observed how the male and female are seldom seen alone but when you do, its because the males are keeping watch over the females and their chicks.

Yesterday and the day before all the pieces of the puzzle came together and my eye spotted unusual places where wood ducks go. Never observed  in those places observations became answers. For example, the male was seen coming out of the water and flying with the female up into two separate trees. Animals, especially birds, have diversion patterns that they fly when going to their nest. They never go direct to the nest with people around. But why did the female go here and the male flew there?The answer was the nest tree up the side of a old oak  more on the short side of 20 feet rather than the short side of 15feet. That lead the following day to more answer. The female watched as her 12 chicks jumped out of their nest to the ground below and collected around mom on the ground as dad called to the chicks from the branch of the tree where he had been seen the day before flying up into the different tree than the female.

But the big event was yesterday as I observed a big water snake swimming along the shore where I had seen it and another in areas. I have never seen them at that location before. They had been hanging out at the edge of the lake and then a mallard built a nest and was sitting on the nest. She later disappeared. after about three days on her nest, as did the snakes. The sighting of the snake swimming back and forth along the shoreline just a couple of feet offshore gave way to my sighting of the male wood duck on a dock. After a while when he had determined that all was well, he flew from the dock to where the shake had been seen earlier. Shortly after that, mom and her 12 chicks headed across the channel toward the marina  with dad in patrol of the shore back and forth between where the snake had been seen an where the chicks were following closely behind mom. It was nature at its best right here in the middle of 7.5 million people.

Blue Flowers

Nature has more blue colors that are showing up this spring. Blue flowers are regal.

Free Shred Day Was Impessive!

Saturday was the 9th annual free shred day at Iron Mountain's facility in Mercer Business Park (luckily, I knew where it was from shooting the complex when it was under construction). It was an impressive operation and I left completely satisfied that my documents were shredded right before my eyes.

The event was co-sponsored by Fox News and Comerica Bank. They, in turn had also supported their community food pantry, the North Texas Food Bank. I had medical, old tax records, old bills paid 15 years ago (before the days of electronic billing known as going paperless).

The lines went fast. It was a stay in your car type thing. The volunteers brought a bin-cart right to the car, dumped the paper into the cart and then pushed the cart to the the big truck that lifted it to the top and dumped it into the shredder. It was out to the road where the Farmers Branch police stopped the I-35E service road traffic and I was on my way!

I've already started a box for next year! And this time, I'll bring some food cans for the North Texas Food Bank.

The line, the big shredders.

The dumpster carts, the big shredders

Lake-a-Palooza! This Weekend

Spent the afternoon keeping an eye on the Hawks and watching the stage being built for the Lake-a-Palooza at the Cultural Bath House at White Rock. Also had a chance to talk to the ladies from the Dallas Master Gardeners as they put new markers on the plants in the water-wise garden about the new flowers in the Water Filtration Garden. They were as I had explained what they looked like. The women had gone over to the filtration building. Today, they had their report and I am so glad that they had and ID on the blooms. 

Peony Poppy

This Weekend at the Bath House Cultural Center at White Rock Lake

The stage is under construction. The fence is going up where beer sales will be available and the weather is going to be sunshine and 85!

Storms,Torrential Rains, 70 MPH Winds, Flooding,

Getting to the Dock Might Be  A Little Bit Of  A Problem.

Humor Situation

Last night was a nail biter. The rain came down in barrels,not buckets. Winds hit 70 MPH, power was off for over an hour and flooding was everywhere. I'll do a couple of post with the damage. Some of it was a bit funny (as there is always some humor in the worse of situations).

One of Several Big Trees Down

A Deck Fell Into The Street.