Annual Visit to Choke Canyon State Park

My friend, Natalie was busy getting her house ready to sell- she just closed on it - and was ready to take a break.  Meanwhile, I was stuck in the government closing and not getting to do much work, so I was bored. My summer boss said she would love to have me come up for the Crane Festival and then Natalie started asking several of us if we wanted to camp out a few days in mid February at Choke Canyon State Park, the northernmost of the south Texas parks. It is at the junction of Mexican and American birds, and eastern and western birds, and is the westernmost place to find the American Alligator.  It has javelina also.


It has been a tradition for me to camp and paddle and birdwatch there the third weekend in February, which is the unofficial first day of Texas spring. I started going by myself, then offered it to friends, then even advertised it on line, which netted me several more close friends. When she asked me what dates I could come, I told her to make a date in early to mid February and I would set my leave time so I could get there.

This visit was not quite as wild as some of them have been.  I couldn't paddle and we had some big winds, so no one paddled. But we had a great time looking for wildflowers and birds and visiting.

We always set up oranges and sunflower seeds in our camp. Many species come to them.

Audubon's oriole

We visited Seventy Acre Lake a few times and always found some good birds.  But there are not as many as we have had in the past. The most exciting bird we have ever seen there was a jacana, visiting us from Mexico.

I think this is a juvenile Lincoln's sparrow

A mix of shovelers and blue-winged teal

One of our walks was on alongside the lake, and then on to the group camping area. Wildflowers were just starting to bloom.

Verbena

I think this is Mexican Primrose

Not sure what this is but had very interesting leaves

A pair of pelicans hanging out together

I think this is a white evening primrose 

Blooming yucca

A closeup of its flowers

Nature's own arrangement

I think this is sweet acacia

 I also love to go find the invasive Mother-of-thousands and see how it is spreading. It must cover about an acre now. On one of my early trips, I found it and thought it was a native plant. I pinched off a little cutting. A piece of that cutting fell into a crack in my steps to my upstairs condo. I came back from a long summer vacation to find it thriving in its crack.  THEN I found it was very invasive.

Mother-of-thousands around a yucca

The bloom is gorgeous 

I caught a caracara watching me take pictures of the Mother-of-thousands

Agarito  blooms - this is know as a nurse plant because deer
won't stick their noses into it to get a seedling of another species

I think this might be bristleleaf pricklyleaf

Part of a large patch of verbena

 A young female vermillion flycatcher

The great egrets were already in breeding plumbage

A lovely sunset

On a personal note.  I have arrived and am almost settled in to my little house in Colorado.  I judged a part of a regional science fair this past Thursday and Friday.  Monday will get hectic as we all ramp up get the physical stuff done to be ready to the Crane Festival next weekend. Part of our staff meeting will involve digging out the pullouts along the nature drive. I'm hoping it will rain enough over the weekend to take care of most of it.  But we have so much snow, we had to plow it up so the thousands of sandhill cranes could find the barley seeds we grow for them.