Edinburg Scenic Wetlands

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Our fourth morning at the Rio Grande Valley Birding Festival required us to be at the Harlingen Convention Center by 7 AM for the bus; we were glad it wasn’t earlier! There was an odd cloud or smoke plume that obscured the sunrise; tt was moving rapidly and seemed to have an origination point so I think it might have been smoke.

We headed to the town of Edinburg TX and their wetlands oasis – the Edinburg Scenic Wetlands & Birding Center - about 40 minutes on the bus.

I often revert to taking botanical pictures…and there were a lot of interesting plants ranging from dessert plants to lush riparian type plants.  Click on the image in the mosaic below to see a larger image.

I even enjoyed some artsy pictures!

There were quite a few birds: Black-bellied Whistling ducks (and a mixture of hybrid domestic/wild ducks/geese)

Northern Shoveler

American Wigeon (and a Ruddy duck)

American Avocet

Herons: Great, Snowy, Green

Ladder-backed Woodpecker and Inca Doves

House Sparrow near the feeders

Crested Caracara

Neotropical cormorant

Curved-billed thrasher

There were turtles in a lot of places too – even crawling up the dam abutment! There were Texas spiny softshell turtles on a concrete pad near the boardwalk.

 We weren’t still long enough to do much butterfly photography – but I did manage three!

The trip had been advertised as a place to see Kingfishers, but the banks where they had frequented had been cleaned up (i.e. bushy vegetation removed) and the Kingfishers had moved elsewhere.

Zooming – June 2025

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The images I selected for this month’s Zooming post reflect the places I have been recently: the Butterfly House as the Springfield Botanical Gardens, my neighborhood and my home, the Ed Clark Museum of Missouri Geology in Rolla, the Dickerson Park Zoo, the Schuette Prairie, and the River Bend Nature Center in Wichita Falls TX. That’s quite a lot of variety during a single month! Enjoy the June 2025 slideshow!

Our Missouri Neighborhood – June 2025

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I walked around our neighborhood in early June and noticed juvenile robins and territorial male red-winged blackbirds. The grackles were making the most noise; there seem to be more of them around this year.

The moss on the side of the channel down to our storm water ponds is thicker than I remembered; May was much wetter than average this year and the moss is probably responding to that increase in moisture.

The turtles were sunning on the edge of the pond. I photographed them from across the water. By the time I was on the same side, there was only one left on the shore. They are very quick to slip into the water at the slightest disturbance.

I didn’t see any ducks or geese or herons. There were quite a few people out already, so perhaps they had left for more remote ponds if they had been around earlier.  

Our Missouri Neighborhood – February 2025

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We had a day in the upper 60s in February!!! It was a great day to walk around the neighborhood. The beds planted with native wildflowers at the edge of the pond are new – a next-step in the project to put more natives in the shallow water and along the edge of the pond. The water plants were done first and surrounded my wire mesh to protect them until they are established. This second phase was cardboard covered my mulch and planted with native wildflowers…mostly coneflowers based on the labels I could see.

The turtles were enjoying the sunshine and warmth. There was a group on the small island – primarily facing the bank. All except one slid into the water as I got closer.

There was one on the opposite bank – a little higher out of the water….looking out over the pond. Perhaps it was a different kind of turtle?

I saw a pair of mallards in an area with some downed branches. The female was alert as I neared…but male stayed asleep. There have been ducklings on the pond for the last two years, but the turtles have gotten them. I wondered if the pair I saw was the same as in years past and if they will try again this year. Based on the number of turtles I saw (and their size), I think our pond is probably not be a good place for ducklings.

Our Missouri Neighborhood – July 2024

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There is always something to see in walks around the ponds in our neighborhood…bits of nature thriving even in an area dominated my manicured yards: a dandelion puff (hurray for some deep rooted plants in the turf), a fat robin (there must be plenty of worms here), clover in bloom (making nitrogen available to other plants), and magnolia flowers (the bee had just flown away).

There are always turtles in the pond. One on the bank looked like he was waving at me!

I stop at the bridge to look at the sheet of water flowing into the first pond – runoff from rain or sprinkler systems running too long. I look for ripples and collections of debris to photograph. The feather caught my attention first….then the leaves and green clippings…a background of algae.

The large redbud near the pond was damaged by a storm a year ago. There is new growth from the large branch that had to be removed. I like the way the new leaves start out reddish…turn a light green…they will get even deeper green as they age.

Most of the fish I see in the ponds are small and gray or brown…but there is at least one monster koi (about 2 feet). Hopefully if someone catches it, they will not return it to the pond!

Finally – a fresh feather on the path that had been sprinkled by a neighbor’s automatic sprinkler system!

30+ turtles and a belted kingfisher

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Almost every time I walk around our neighborhood pond there is something I don’t expect. One morning last week, I set out to see the ducklings. I didn’t see them at all. I took pictures of moss growing on the edges of the inflow channel to the large pond (noted some seeds that were accumulating there too). There were some water plants that were beginning to grow. I wondered how much of the pond they would cover this summer.

The first ‘unexpected’ sight was a row of 30+ turtles on a sunny bank. Seeing turtles was not unexpected…it was the large number that surprised me…and, based on the size variation, they are clearly breeding in our neighborhood ponds. .  (Click on the image to see a larger version if you want to count them!)

Some of them might be large enough to pull down a duckling! I think they are almost all red-eared sliders although there was at least one that did not have the red-ear…maybe some other species.

I continued my walk and saw a dove on top of a bird house in a yard. The holes looked big enough that maybe they were nesting there. Another bird that I couldn’t identify was looking for tidbits on the ground…looking frequently skyward. Was there a predator around?

The barn swallows were swooping over the pond. There are a lot of them.But then something flew across the pond that was not a barn swallow. I managed to follow it well enough with my eye to see it alight in a willow…and then used the zoom on my camera: a belted kingfisher (male)….the second ‘unexpected’ of the day.

There is no vertical bank area around our pond where a kingfisher might build a nest…but I found myself wondering if the sinkhole near our neighborhood might be a place that would be acceptable. These birds burrow 3+ feet into vertical banks to build their nests. It would be great to have some resident kingfishers thriving on the small fish in our pond.

Ducklings 2024!

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Last year I saw ducklings on our neighborhood pond on April 14th. This year I photographed this year’s brood 3 days earlier than last year on the 11th (although a sighting was posted on the neighborhood Facebook page on the 9th). There are 14 ducklings this year; no losses so far. The Mom Mallard was wisely keeping them close to shore protecting them from the turtles (turtles can pull a duckling underwater, drown it, and then eat it). Click on the images below to enlarge…see if you count 14 ducklings. When they are close to shore, one or two seem to always want to climb up on the mud and nibble the grass. The last picture has all 14 (I think). Their down make their bodies look out-of-focus, so count the heads!

Zoomed in, the ducklings show how fuzzy they still are.

Mom Mallard took them on a brief loop out into the pond before going back to the shore. The line of ducklings is somewhat easier to count.

I noticed some other things around the pond: robins,

Plastic swans (an attempt to deter geese from nesting near the pond),

And, of course, turtles. Most were red-eared sliders; there might be one that I photographed that was something else. I didn’t see the large snapping turtle. I’m not sure how large a turtle has to be to pull down a duckling. Fortunately, the Mom Mallard was keeping them at the other end of the large pond.

Before I headed home, I saw the ducklings again in the inflow channel of the large pond; there had been enough rain recently that there was still water in it and the ducklings were loving it! They were moving around finding bits of food and sitting down letting the water move around them. I wondered where the Mom Mallard had made her nest since they seemed to be heading up stream.

Neighborhood Ponds – May 2023

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There is always something to notice/photograph during a quick walk around the neighborhood ponds. This month was the first time I saw a turtle outside the ponds. It was on the side of the walkway away from the pond but pointed back toward the pond. Had it already laid eggs?

Further along, I spotted a large snapping turtle swimming just under the water…didn’t manage to photograph it until it stuck its snot out of the water near the shore. I wondered if this turtle decimated the ducklings (i.e. I only saw them once so there was a predator in the pond that got them within a few days). A large snapping turtle could be that predator.

My favorite sighting of the morning was a bullfrog. It was soaking up the sun in some very shallow water. Somehow it still managed to look grumpy and a little intimidating!

Big Lagoon State Park and a Beach Sunset

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Big Lagoon State Park entailed the longest hike of our Pensacola trip. There are still some parts of the park closed for repair from damage caused by Hurricane Sally in 2020 but plenty of area open to explore. While my husband was getting his camera out of the bag and into a harness, I concentrated on a life oak tree at the edge of the parking lot. There was a downy woodpecker working its way around the branches and a butterfly resting in a sunny spot underneath!

The trail was sandy or boardwalk. There was curly lichen and

One of my favorites – powderpuff lichen. There was a healthy community of ground-based lichen among dried live oak leaves within easy zoom distance of my camera from the boardwalk.  

The same was true of some shelf fungus on a stump.

We reached the lagoons. A brown headed cowbird pair was perusing the area.

There were turtles in the water…enjoying the warming morning. There were signs warning of alligators, but we didn’t see any.

There were different kinds of ferns….providing the floor of the live oak and pine forest.

The pines tower over everything else in the park!

Later in the day we went to the Pensacola Beach Pier. There were too many people and loud music to make it a place for bird watching.

We stopped on the way back to the hotel at the Quietwater Beech area. The sun was setting and a laughing gull’s breast reflected the color!

3 mallard ducks (2 males, 1 female) made their way across the sand…kicking up sand with their webbed feet.

It was a good finale to our day in Pensacola.

Zooming – March 2023

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The optical (and then digital) zoom on my bridge camera (Canon Powershot SX70 HS) is used on almost every picture:

  • To do composition in the field rather than cropping later

  • To get close without physically being close

  • To see better than I can with my eyes (using the camera like binoculars)

My favorite image this month is the backlit dandelion puff. Enjoy the March zoomed images!

Our Missouri Neighborhood – March 2023

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The temperature has fluctuated wildly – from the teens to 70s this month. I took walks on two of the sunny days. We’ve had enough rain that the drainage into the ponds had running water on both days, and I stopped on the bridge to take pictures of leaves from last season in the rippling water. Oaks, maples, river birch, and red buds are represented.

There is almost always a pair of mallards about….and lots of robins.

Some branches from a magnolia in a nearby yard are upright in the pond. I wonder how long they will last…..or maybe someone is trying to root them (i.e. start new trees)?

The turtles are more active on warm days. They all appear to be red-eared sliders. Their snouts are usually all that is visible unless they are closer to shore or sunning on some high ground in the pond.

One day I started out in sunshine but there were more clouds than I anticipated. I took some landscape shots….experimenting with backlight and the curving walkway through the trees around our pond.

Some geese were on the walkway (and this time of year I give them space since they might be aggressive) so I went up to the street to complete the loop to my house. I noticed that the stormwater drain is labeled ‘no dumping – drains to river’ with a metal shield; in Maryland the labeling was painted onto the concrete.

The red maples are some of the earliest trees to bloom. The trees along the path don’t have low branches so my pictures of the flowers rely on my camera’s zoom.

Sometimes I photograph something because I didn’t anticipate it…the oak leaf stuck in the chain link of the tennis court is an example.

Another is the mats of algae on lower spillway between the two ponds. They had washed from the upper pond but are doomed to dry out on the spillway if another rain does not come soon. Still – they were ‘emerald isles’ at a time of year where there is still a lot brown in the natural world.

Gleanings of the Week Ending March 12, 2022

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The items below were ‘the cream’ of the articles and websites I found this past week. Click on the light green text to look at the article.

Why soil is a surprisingly noisy place – Wow! A whole new way of studying soil…listening to it.

Gas flares tied to premature deaths – A study done by Rice University environmental engineers with data from North Dakota and Texas. There are currently no limits to flaring, unfortunately. Why can’t we use the gas productively? It bothers me when we hear that we need more fossil fuels to observe the way the industry still is so wasteful and polluting.

Dying for makeup: Lead cosmetics poisoned 18th century European socialites in search of whiter skin – I had heard of lead makeup before…but never is this detail.

Top 25 birds of the week: forest birds – The only one of these that appears in the forest behind our house in Maryland is the Tufted Titmouse.

Study questions the role of vitamin D2 in human health but its sibling, vitamin D3, could be important for fighting infections – The labelling on foods fortified with Vitamin D does not say which type is used – hopefully it is D3. The supplemental Vitamin D I take is definitely D3.

The Prairie Ecologist – Photos of the Week – February 26, 2022 – Winter photography….it’s about over for us. Daffodils are up!

What is the best age to learn to read? – There is more variability that I realized…generally between 4 and 7. There is growing consensus that there is no reason to rush it. Learning language is key and often older children learn to read faster because their spoken language skills are greater.

Effects of noise on marine life – The study was focused on turtles and observed noise-induced hearing loss (sometimes temporarily) which hampers their ability to detect predators, communication, navigation, etc.

Rash-causing moths are spreading in Maine because of climate change – Browntail moths (native to Europe). I thought when I saw the headline that it might be about the saddleback caterpillar which is native to North America and has stinging spines that cause a painful rash. We had a specimen in the Brookside Gardens Wings of Fancy exhibit back in July/August 2018.

Study of algae in Acadia National Park lakes shows recovery from acidification – A success story…the Clean Air Act Amendments enacted in the 1900s are making a difference!

A Walk to Josey Ranch

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Last week I was in Carrollton, TX and decided to get my exercise by walking from my parents’ house to Josey Ranch Lake Park. It’s about a mile each way. I printed a Google map for the walking route since the route meanders through a neighborhood. It was an easy morning walk. And there were some winter-time birds newly arrived for the season at the lake. The first ones I spotted were Northern Shovelers. They are easy to recognize by the bill that looks too big for the head.

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I’d seen American wigeons before…but not often enough that I remembered what they were. I took lots of pictures and then checked All About Birds to identify them when I got back from my walk.

The other bird that winters in this area that I saw at the lake was a cormorant. It was harder to spot because it was fishing (diving frequently) and it was seemingly alone.

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There were birds that are in the area all through the year too: Common grackles

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And American Coots (the two birds in the foreground below…with a Northern Shoveler behind them).

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Now that I’ve identified the types of birds present…see how easily they can be recognized in these mixed group images. They were all feeding together at the lake.

I walked a little further around the lake and took pictures of turtles warming up for their day…I got a little too close and they plopped into the water.

I walked back to where I started the loop around the lake. I had just started taking more group pictures of the ducks when some American coots got into a tussle and startled the whole group….lots of splashing water as birds lifted off and moved to the center – safer – part of the lake.

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As I walked hope I saw a very large katydid on a fence. It was turning brown with the season.

There was also a very dense group of weed flowers growing in a narrow band of dirt between the fence and concrete….a fall floral.

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