We have continued to be busy, but nothing seemed worthy of a long report due to a number of things:
The fall garden was a total bust as the newly sprouted seedlings from the fall planting were flooded out by torrential rain.
We continued to walk at LLELA when we could, but that was not very often due to repeated torrential rain followed by months of flooding from the heavy outflow from the dam.
We did not take the RV out due to flooding in many Texas state parks and hence closing of the campgrounds, not to mention the continued forecast for more rain.
I think you can sense a common theme. Even though I mentioned the rain in my previous post in September, the rain continued throughout the fall. In fact, this meteorological fall (September-November) with 29.21 inches was by far the wettest on record in DFW. Second (in 2015) was a "mere" 21.82 inches.
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| Totals above are through November. With additional rain in December, 2018, the total for the year was 55.97" or second on the list of wettest calendar years. |
Despite drought conditions during summer 2018, the record autumn rainfall added to record rainfall in February, 2018 (11.31" vs the previous high for February in 1997 of 7.40") resulted in a flooded Lewisville Lake. The lake did not overflow the spillway like it did in 2015 (thank goodness!). However, it did result in closing of Lake Park in Lewisville for an extended period of time. It also meant the Corps of Engineers had to let water out through the outflow at very high rates for months.
Flooding of LLELA. High outflow rates from the lake mean flooding of much of LLELA. The "normal" gauge height of the river under normal outflow rates is about six feet. By the end of October, it had hit a high of just under 25 feet. Much of the Bittern Marsh Trail, the campgrounds, and essentially all of the Redbud Trail have been under multiple feet of water for months.
We did make our way through the mud and yuck along part of the Bittern Marsh Trail on October 1. The picture below is of the high blind from across the marsh. The floor of the high blind (which is just barely above the level of the marsh in the picture) is at least 5 feet above the boardwalk. The gauge height of the river that day was 22 feet or three feet lower than its maximum height later in the month.
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| High Blind on Bittern Marsh on October 1, 2018 from across the marsh, the closest we could get without wading through heavy mud or water. The high water is due to the river backing up into the marsh. The floor of the blind is many steps (at least five feet?) above the level of the boardwalk. |
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| Low Blind on Bittern Marsh on October 1, 2018 from across the marsh. The top of the green screening around the blind is about chest high. The river several weeks after this was about 3 feet higher, which we presume would have put the water near the roof the blind. |
Even today (January 22) Lewisville Lake is STILL not back to the conservation level so the outflow levels are still high. Hopefully the lake level will be back to normal as soon as later this week, meaning the outflow rates will return to normal, the river will return to its banks, and the trails can begin to dry out. Operative word of course is "begin". It will be a very long time for some of the trails to be passable after months under many feet of water.
What have we been doing?? I have hinted about what we have NOT been doing. So what have we been doing??
Turtles. We volunteered to help with the Box Turtle Recovery Project at LLELA. Although probably not typical, three-toed box turtles can live to be 50-100 years old. Despite that, they are becoming increasingly rare in the area. It is not understood why. This project aims to turn around the declining population by tracking the existing turtles at LLELA to better understand their behavior and by releasing new turtles.
We originally thought we would be part of the tracking team and took the training in June to learn how to track the released turtles. At least our small time with that part of the project showed us that the existing turtles at LLELA can cover many miles within the park over very rough terrain. Work elsewhere suggests that box turtles commonly follow a seasonal route connecting known food sources. Time will tell whether that is true here.
Rather than being part of the trackers, we ended up working on the maintenance (i.e. feeding and watering) of some young turtles that are being raised in pens at LLELA and will be released at some time in the future. Box turtles do not relocate well. If found in one location and released they will try to return to their original home territory. Since this typically requires crossing streets and and other man made structures, this usually does not turn out well for the turtles. The idea for the current experiment is to raise the young turtles in pens at LLELA, hopefully establishing LLELA as their home territory. When they are large enough to be better able to survive predation (maybe as much as 3 years old), they will be released at LLELA. We helped release the turtles into their pens in late October.
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| The Frog and others watch the little turtles as they are released into their new pen at LLELA. Notice Frog's tall mud boots. |
We also signed up to feed and water them once a week, but only did that a couple times due to the heavy rains before the turtles went into hibernation (actually brumation) for the winter. I presume we will resume feeding and watering them this spring after it gets warm.
iNaturalist postings. Despite the rain, we were still able to get out fairly often to walk, usually with a camera so we could document our nature sightings on iNaturalist. The end of year summary of our activity on iNaturalist indicated we recorded 2163 observations of 461 different species in 2018. At the bottom of that summary page you can click on the "newly added" each month to see the species we recorded for the first time. BTW, the small pictures at the top of the summary page and all of the pictures that come up when clicking are our pictures (meaning primarily the Frog's). We started posting on iNaturalist as part of the 2017 City Challenge in April 2017. Needless to say, we got hooked and are enjoying even more now that iNaturalist helps us identify what we observe.
Using my new camera. I mentioned in my last post that I had gotten a new camera in September. I am still learning how to use it, but am getting better. With its super zoom it is a great complement to Frog's better camera, but with less reach. It is best in bright light.
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| Goldfinch at the top of a very tall tree. (https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/19730012) I only saw it without the camera because I saw it land. (Nikon P1000: 1/500 sec, f 5.6, iso 220, 1200 mm 35mm equivalent) |
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| Pie-billed grebe on the river. (https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/19729961) (Nikon P1000: 1/500 sec, f 8, iso 320, 3000 mm 35mm equivalent)
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I will never be able to get the great pics the Frog gets, especially of action shots such as birds in flight.
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| Ring-billed gull (https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/18756340) (Nikon D850: 1/1000 sec, f 8, iso 220, 400 mm) |
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| Pelican coming in for a landing (https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/18983740) The pelicans love the large outflow on the river...lots of stunned fish coming through with the gush of water make for easy pickings. (Nikon D850: 1/2000 sec, f 6.3, iso 360, 400 mm) |
However, even in overcast conditions, my camera sometimes turns out to be useful if the subject sits still since it has such a great zoom.
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| Not the greatest picture, but good enough considering he was very far away on the top of a tall electric tower. (https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/18764052) (Nikon P1000: 1/250 sec, f 7.1, iso 400, 2600 mm 35mm equivalent) |
Trip to Santa Barbara. All of the activities above were great, but by far the highlight of the year was a trip to Santa Barbara for Christmas. As usual I usually forget to take pictures even though my phone is always in my pocket, but I still grabbed a few.
The best part of the trip is, of course, just seeing Paul and Gwen and catching up with all of their many activities.. There were also many activities to keep us busy while we were there.
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| There was cookie making, to go along with the fabulous gourmet meals. |
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| Explaining some of the intricacies of medieval garment construction. Both Paul and Gwen were elevated to peerages this year, a very high honor in the Society for Creative Anachronism. |
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| There is always armor to inspect |
But a highlight this year was meeting the new grand kitties.
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| Marlowe, the male flame point Siamese, isn't quite ready to wake up after finding a new place to hang out. |
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| Sidney, a female tuxedo, checking out the water left in the bathtub |
We ended up staying two extra days after our flight was cancelled due to storms in north Texas. I am sure that was a pain for Paul and Gwen (sorry guys), but it gave us some more time to explore the hiking trails in their neighborhood, eat at a fun German restaurant (Dutch Garden Restaurant, which according to TripAdvisor is the oldest restaurant in Santa Barbara), and allow the kitties to get more comfortable with us.
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| 2.19 mile walk according to the gps in my phone. There was more vertical change to the walk than apparent from this view, but we missed the biggest part of that because we wrongly turned around too soon. |
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| By the end of our visit, both Sidney and Marlowe had overcome much of their shyness...especially when there were important things to do such as following a reflection around the room |
