A Year's Worth of Nature

Before I get back to a discussion of more projects around the house...and they keep appearing faster than we can cope with them...I thought I should talk briefly about one of the truly fun things we have been doing, i.e. checking out the flora and fauna while walking/hiking near Lewisville Lake.  Despite having lived here for so long, I had absolutely no idea of the huge number of birds and other things that lived nearby.

Daily walks.  Weather and trail conditions permitting and without other commitments, we try to walk at either Lake Park or LLELA in Lewisville or Doubletree Ranch Park in Highland Village every day.  At Doubletree the focus is more on walking, but at Lake Park and especially LLELA the focus is more on photography, although we still get in several miles of walking...just with lots more stops for picture taking.

The Frog "shooting" waterfowl at Lake Park on the first day of this year's City Challenge.  Lewisville Dam is in the distance.  It is not a great pic, but one of the few I have showing him with his current setup to carry two cameras.

What is so great is that both of these photography locations are very close (no more than a 10 minute drive even during "rush" hour).  Even better, the wildlife and plant life are plentiful and constantly changing.

Documenting our observations with iNaturalist.  We started to hike at LLELA in earnest last April as part of the 2017 iNaturalist City Challenge.  That introduced us to using iNaturalist, which we now use to document our nature observations. The recent advances in iNaturalist and most notably its built-in artificial intelligence to immediately suggest an identification based on any pictures we upload, has made this a very powerful and fun learning experience as the plants and animals have changed with the seasons.  Seeing other people's iNaturalist posts in the locations we frequent also gives us ideas for what to look for when we hike.

The competition aspect of iNaturalist adds some fun, too.   As of now, we are fourth in total number of iNaturalist posts at LLELA with 2016 and second with total number of species, 450.  More recently, iNaturalist has begun to track similar data for the entire City of Lewisville.  For us, that includes LLELA, Lake Park, and home.  We are fifth in number of observations, 2295, and first in number of species, 472.

So what do we actually see?   It varies tremendously from season to season and even from day to day. Even though the particular observations vary tremendously, we can almost always count on seeing a huge variety of things any time we go out.

One snapshot in time was the recent four day City Challenge this spring, April 27-30, 2018.  We posted 349 observations of 188 different species of plants and animals.  (Click here for our 349 observations with the Frog's pics of each.)  The 188 species were as follows (pics in theses links are not our pictures):  62 species of birds, 1 amphibian, 3 reptiles, 2 mammals, 4 ray-finned fish, 4 arachnids, 47 insects, and  65 plants, and all were at one of the three parks listed above or in our backyard!

 A map of our City Challenge 2018 observations (April 27-30, 2018) Blue are birds and other animals, red are insects and arachnids, green are plants.  Click here for an interactive map:  https://www.inaturalist.org/observations?order=asc&order_by=observed_on&place_id=any&project_id=city-nature-challenge-2018-dallas-fort-worth&user_id=alchemist2000&verifiable=any

Big creatures and little creatures.  Over the past year we have seen everything from bald eagles to tiny damselflies.

The bald eagles are often on the dam or sitting in a dead tree someplace.

Bald eagles chilling out on the Redbud Trail at LLELA, 4-28-18.  They were a very long ways away, but still readily identifiable.

However, very much to our surprise, one of the eagles even sat for twenty minutes in our front yard last October!

While bald eagles are easy to ID even at a distance, tiny (1-1.5" long) damselflies can be a real challenge, especially since many species look very much alike.  Knowing nothing about them a year ago, we are slowly learning to identify many of these beautiful little creatures.

Ebony jewelwing damselfly on the Blackjack Trail at LLELA, 4-28-18

Springwater dancer damselflies (blue are males, gray are females) on the Bittern Marsh Trail at LLELA ovipositing (depositing their eggs) into the creek, 4-18-18.  See the female on the left with her abdomen in the water.

Lots of dragonflies.  Some of the most fun creatures to learn about and identify have been the many different dragonflies.  Some are everywhere, like this common whitetail.

Male common whitetail dragonfly, 4-27-18.

Others are somewhat rare but make beautiful pictures, at least in the hands of the Frog.

Wandering glider dragonfly, 7-14-17

Beautiful butterflies.  Some of the most beautiful creatures are the many butterflies, especially when they perch on the colorful wildflowers.

Gulf fritillary, 10-6-17

Eastern Tiger Swallowtail on a thistle, 5-25-17

Birds, birds, and more birds.  Of course there are birds everywhere.  In the winter, the osprey (aka seahawks) are plentiful over the river.

I especially liked this picture of the osprey with his outstretched talons, 3-8-18

Osprey with a fish over the Trinity River, 2-1-18.

This spring, when the Army Corps of Engineers was letting lots of water out of the dam, there were pelicans everywhere that were grabbing the fish being flushed out of the bottom of the lake into the river.

A double-crested cormorant and three American white pelicans all scramble for the same fish, 3-20-18

Pelican with a fish, 3-12-18

Very common birds that make great photographic subjects are the great blue herons and the great egrets.  A bit more rare, but fun to see are the little blue herons.

Little blue heron, 4-29-18

Little birds are harder to photograph since they tend to hide in the foliage, but we stood one spring day and watched two blue-gray gnatcatchers (a totally unknown bird to us prior to that encounter) work on building their nest.

A blue-gray gnatcatcher building its nest on the Bittern Marsh Trail at LLELA, 3-31-18

Although there are relatively few ducks now, there were lots and lots of ducks of many different kinds during the winter.

One duck comes in for a landing.  Most of the pond is frozen, with only a small circle of liquid water--Beaver Pond on the Cottonwood Trail at LLELA, 1-3-18

A few mammals.  We see many fewer mammals, but we do catch sight of one every once in awhile.  Last summer we saw a doe and her two fawns.

One of two fawns we saw with their mother on the Redbud Trail at LLELA, 6-21-17

We had a close encounter with a coyote that started howling when he heard sirens in the distance.  Unbeknownst to us before he started making noise, he was only a few feet away from us in the heavy brush beside the trail.  Unfortunately we got no pictures, but it was quite a shock to hear and then see him so close.  Depending upon the time of year, we have also seen armadillos, several rabbits, and even a skunk.

One of the biggest surprises was the nutria (large water rodent), which we saw both in the water and later on the ice when the marsh and ponds were frozen this winter.

Nutria at Bittern Marsh, 1-25-18.  Notice the orange incisors.

Of course some frogs.  We have seen several kinds of frogs, including lots of cute little green tree frogs.

Green tree frog on a cattail on the Bittern Marsh Trail at LLELA, 10-12-17

Of special note.  During our recent City Challenge adventures we caught sight of a tom turkey strutting his stuff for his lady friend

Wild turkey, 4-29-18

and we finally saw one of the resident alligators.

Alligator at LLELA, 4-29-18

I have not done justice to all of the many things we have seen over the past year, including many many things I had never known even existed, such as robber flies.  Nor have I done justice to the Frog's great photography.  However, this at least touches on some of the great diversity of creatures we have encountered.

It is an understatement to say that I continue to be stunned by the vast array of wildlife we see.  At the same time I am also stunned by how few people we encounter at these locations, particularly on week days.   It is not uncommon to be the only ones on the trail.  We are truly blessed to have all of this practically at our doorstep.

Multiple Projects Around the House this Spring

It has been a very long time since my last post.  That is mostly because we have been focused on things around the house rather than traveling.  Our activities this spring have focused on nature hikes at LLELA (which will be the topic of its own post) and multiple projects around the house.

Among the more routine things at home has been gardening, but even that has not been all that routine this year.  The garden production is way behind what I had at this time last year because of lots of intermittent cold weather.  The last freeze in 2017 was January 8, the earliest last freeze on record by almost a month and well before the average last freeze of March 12.

This year we were worried about cold weather several different times in April.  Of course that ignores the fact that these cold snaps were interspersed with periods of hot weather.  Neither the cold weather or the hot weather plants were happy.

Evening of 4-6-18:  preparing for a possible freeze/frost the following morning although the temperature was in the high 80's at the time of this picture.  The small palm tree in the front of the garden is a kale plant left over from last spring...a continuing source of kale leaves for Bun

The plants are finally beginning to come along.  I harvested broccoli earlier this week and plan to pick the first of the lettuce and kale tomorrow.  Now if I could only keep the squirrels from digging the plants up as they dig in the dirt.

Garden is beginning to come along, 5-4-18

Another reason for so much focus on home has been the need to fix or replace multiple things around the house.  It has seemed as if this spring there has been an appliance of the month which needed replacement.

Printer.   First was my printer.  The old one was many years old so we had gotten our money's worth from it.  I have to admit that it is very nice to now have a color printer.

Icemaker.  Next was the ice maker in the freezer.  The little sensing arm was obviously broken (in the down position).   It was a little expensive to replace, but not a big deal for the experienced repairman.  We cleaned out the refrigerator and put the items from the freezer into a cooler.  However, much to our surprise, he did not even have to pull the fridge away from the wall.  All he needed to do was take the door off of the freezer.  I am not sure of the normal lifetime for icemakers, but this one lasted about ten years.

Washing machine.  Next the washing machine died or at least stopped spinning.  This left the clothes sopping wet since it could no longer spin them dry.  Needless to say, washers have changed a lot in the 15 or so years since we had last looked at them.  This one is more water efficient, since it uses only the minimum amount of water needed for any particular load. 

Yes, that is a window in the top.  The towel in between the washer and the dryer is my low-tech solution to keep them from clanging together since the washer seems to move around a lot when it spins

Best of all, it displays the time remaining and plays a little song when it is finished.  This makes it audible throughout the house and distinguishable from the many different sounds from other electronics.  The Frog refers to it as our singing washing machine.  It can also interact with an app on my phone, but I don't have that working yet. 

Microwave.  We had the replacement washing machine operational within about 24 hours of the old one failing.  However, the next appliance to fail was not so quick to replace, the microwave.  We were without a working microwave for almost six weeks, which seemed like forever.  We had to order one which would fit into the built-in enclosure in the kitchen, then schedule the installer.

Here is where it will go. 

Installing part of the trim kit

All finished

The long wait was primarily to get the correct unit shipped to our local store.   The actual installation was easy and took a very short time, even with a bit of remodeling of the box around the edges to accommodate the screws for the trim kit. 

I did not realize how much I depended on the microwave until it was not here.  It is amazing how integral it has become to our cooking since I can still remember getting my first microwave for Christmas when I was in grad school...probably 1977.  They were very novel at the time, but we were early adopters.  I remember how impressed my fellow grad students were that I had gotten one.  I don't have any idea of what the cost was back then, but I know it was not cheap.  That original microwave is obviously long since gone, but the stand we got for it (there was certainly not enough counter space for it in our kitchen at the time!) is in my office functioning as a stand for the printer.

Roof repairs completed.  While we were fixing or replacing these various appliances the construction company finally finished the last of the house repairs and associated improvements which were required after the hail storm in March, 2017 (shingles, roof vents, skylight, attic insulation, patio roof, gutters, etc.) Most of the work was done last fall, but some things drug on.  If I have the dates correct, I think the final repairs were finished a couple of days shy of one year after the storm.

The new shingles go on, 10-16-17

New shingles and the new venting system above the loft

Garage.  We thought we were finally finished with home repair and appliance replacement for awhile, but then it became apparent that the sheet rock on the ceiling in the garage needed attention.  We walked out one morning and discovered one of the panels looked as if it was going to fall.

We made some emergency repairs, but the long term fix will not start until May 16 (date may be tentative).  All the sheet rock on the ceiling and the walls will be replaced and painted.  While doing that, we will replace some shelves and install new pegboard for the tools.

Of course, to do that work everything must come out of the garage first.  That is not trivial.  A lot of stuff has accumulated since moving in nearly 37 years ago.   We have made at least one pass to remove disposable items, some of which (like old paint) had to go to the city's once a month toxic recycling.  We have boxed up most of the smaller loose items.  We are hopeful we can put a temporary storage unit (pod or similar) in the driveway to hold everything during the 4 or 5 days that the garage needs to be empty.  Unfortunately the overhanging limbs from the trees may be a problem bringing in the pod.  That is yet to be worked out.  We will see.