Outdoors
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Birding at Sportsman Road | Galveston
Last Saturday Chris and I drove down Sportsman Road on the west end of Galveston Island to scope out the birds before we went home from a couple of days on the island for a conference. We are familiar with Sportsman Road as it was a place Chris fished regularly while in college (we went to TAMUG) and a place I went to for a few field labs. It is a popular place to not only fish but to launch kayaks too. There were quite a few birds out in the marsh that morning and a few of them let me take their photos. These were all shot via our…
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Sprite Lake | Enchantment Lakes & Wenatchee National Forest
After we found ourselves at Perfection and Inspiration Lakes we wound our way around the north end of Perfection back down towards the much smaller Sprite Lake. We took a few minutes here for a snack and photo break. There were several wildflowers along the path that I won’t even try to identify, though I did briefly look online. If you are familiar with alpine flora in Washington state please help me out! I do think these are some kind of phlox though. These little flowers are reminiscent of blueberries so I wouldn’t be surprised if they were in that family. Sprite Lake was a pleasant resting point before we…
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Loggerhead Shrike & Roseate Spoonbills
I’m not usually a big bird photographer but there’s a lot of bird activity these days and they can be fun to photograph. I don’t have the right lens for any decent shots of the little-brown-jobbers but I thought it would be fun to shoot some birds when we were in Galveston last week for a conference. We had a field trip during one of the days to Galveston Island State Park, a state park that Chris and I are both familiar with since we went to college in Galveston. We were driving along the main road on the back side of the park when we saw the loggerhead shrike…
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Backyard Nature
Sunday was a gorgeous day and I spent some time wandering our yard looking at the flora and fauna in it. The turtles started gathering at their usual spot for a morning sunbath. I noticed a Rubus trailing down by the pond. The rattlebox (Sesbania) mesmerized me for a few minutes… so much so I took two different photos. The sky was the color I always wish I could just roll in, a stunning blue that puts a smile on my face. I tried to get closer to the turtle but it saw me move and dashed under the water never to return. Some resurrection fern was rehydrated, others were…
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Inspiration & Perfection Lakes | Enchantment Lakes
I know, I know, I haven’t finished writing about our trip to Washington State. My excuses are a: laziness, b: a crappy computer that has on several occasions shut down when I’ve had photos open in Photoshop thus leading to loss of interest in processing photos, and c: other interesting things that have been going on. But, I’m hoping to remedy this soon and finish the photos and writing about the trip. When I last left off, I was talking about goats. The goats were still prevalent for the rest of the trip and were definitely a source of entertainment! On our second morning of being in the Enchantments we…
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Texas Wildflowers | Clematis texensis
First we were into passiflora (still are), but now we’ve found clematis! This is another game of once you see one plant you start seeing them everywhere! These were shot at Lost Maples State Natural Area in November. +Information via the Lady Bird Johnson Wildflower Center. They say blooming time is March through July….well, November is quite outside of that window so I don’t know it if was a freak of nature or what for them to be blooming at that time of year. +There are some cultivars of this species apparently, Duchess of Albany, Princess Diana, Gravetye Beauty were a couple I saw online.
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Texas Wildflowers | Maurandella antirrhiniflora
How ’bout those pearly whites, there? Chris had heard about snapdragon vines before and I *think* maybe we have seen them at a nursery or something, but we were walking the trails at Lost Maples State Natural Area a couple of months ago when Chris bent down to check out a plant that he thought could be the snapdragon vine. Well, all it took was verifying that it was indeed the plant for us to realize that it was *everywhere*. Funny how plants blend right in and pop out at the right moment only to be seen everywhere you look. A pretty interesting native, don’t you think? +Information from the…
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Morning Along Can Creek | Lost Maples State Natural Area
We got up early from our campsite in order to take our time driving back home, a good five hour drive without stops. On our way into Vanderpool we had seen several plant nurseries and other random places we wanted to stop, so in order to do that we arose early while the fog was still lingering and the crowds were snug in their sleeping bags. It would be an easy hike out along mostly flat trail once we descended the bluff. Our exit route was via Can Creek and the West Trail, merging with the East Trail and dumping back out at the main entrance road. We arrived at…
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Poking Around Campsite H | Lost Maples State Natural Area
Since our hiking mileage wasn’t large, maybe six miles or something, we took several breaks during the hike to campsite H. We got behind a slow group of hikers on a very narrow trail, stopped to check out a clematis, and refilled our water at the last place before climbing up the bluff. It was the furthest campsite out at the park and I thought maybe we’d be alone….which of course was dumb of me to think. The campsite is up a bluff and we took the long way around to see what the rest of the trail in that area looked like. Unfortunately we were mostly socked in with…
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Along the West Trail & Dry Can Creek | Lost Maples State Natural Area
Missed a post? See these: Along the Sabinal, Hale Hollow Creek, The View, and Monkey Rock. I had thought that perhaps when we left the main area of the park and embarked on the West Trail that we would leave the crowds behind. There was a slight incline as we hiked up the trail which I thought might deter folks, and for awhile we didn’t see anyone. Then we saw one family, then another, and another until we knew this was not going to be our time for peace. Perhaps we’ve been spoiled by going to so many natural areas and not seeing a soul, or very few at least.…