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.
No comments:
Post a Comment