Birds and Beasts on a Friday

I’m in a funny place in some ways. The scenery isn’t much to write home about, lots of late winter brown, dead downed trees from past storms, and a lake that’s way down from drought so you see a lot of dead tree tops. It’s classic Texas bramble or whatever they call it.

However, the Choke Canyon area is teeming with wildlife. This part of the state is really wild. All the scary creatures in the state roam here. I haven’t seen a mountain lion or coyote, but it seems like I’ve seen the rest, along with a big portion of the birds of south Texas, which are both beautiful and loud.

The peccaries were all over the place. You just don’t get too close to them and all is well. For example, I came up to a group as I rounded a corner on my hike today, and just crossed to the other side of the road. They glared at me as if to underscore that I was on their turf.

I saw evidence (poop) of raccoons and coyotes, who also got to howling earlier this evening. And if I’m good at judging holes, there are armadillos digging up the dirt as well as the javelinas. I haven’t seen any armadillos, but squirrels are around. I have photos of one, but we’re having issues downloading pictures from the fancy camera so I will share later. I will spare you my picture of a very large alligator way across the lake. I will tell you this lake has huge gators!

The most fun I had today was looking at birds. I also had wonderful conversations with campers at the bird blind. It’s conveniently located near our campsite, but not too, near, because the morning blackbirds are almost deafening.

Also loud were Green Jays. Somehow I managed not to get any good views of them when I was in McAllen in 2023, but I’ve made up for it this time. These are pretty spectacular birds and I got good images on the camera, but they won’t download.

The bird blind had other visitors, too, like Cardinals, Lesser Goldfinches, Yellow-rumped Warblers, and of course a lot of doves. I really enjoyed the small flock of Inca Doves that were at the blind.

We found more birds at the recreation area, which has a fish-cleaning area herons and egrets love. I also heard a new bird, the Olive Sparrow, but only briefly glimpsed it. These guys posed, though.

Later in the day I walked down most of the trails, which didn’t have many birds, other than one Great Kiskadee that shouted at me but mostly hid behind branches. Here’s what they look like.

I did see many deer, who stay out of the javelinas’ ways. A few deer were very thin. Most looked fine, though.

It was a good day for birds (50 species in total) and beasts, though rather warm for February. The evening was pleasant, however, and I enjoyed the sunset.

I’ll try to share more thoughts tomorrow. The heat has wiped me out!