Paddle on Champion Lake

I wanted to go paddling, and since my right arm is still not up to my old paddling standards, I asked Natalie to take me in the bow of her canoe.  I also reminded her that she needed a set of cypress tree pictures showing fall color. Natalie decided to go to Champions Lake, which is really swampy lake full of cypress. I told another friend, who told two more, and on November 11, Natalie and I arrived at the boat launch to find three friends waiting on us and a fast moving storm just arriving. We all ran to the covered open area at the front of the restrooms and did a little catching up with each other. 

The blue dot is the boat launch

Waiting out the storm

Champions Lake is now part of Trinity River National Wildlife Refuge.  Natalie printed out the duck hunting map.  I always paddled it without a map. I just go up obvious trails, then either bushwack to the next trail or just go back to the open area. 

The on-line map for duck hunters

Cypress trees draped in Spanish moss

The three kayakers, enjoying the view

There are many little open areas, as well as thick forests and streams within the lake

 

The Spanish moss glowed silver under the lightening sky

We loved the dark and somewhat mysterious views of the cypress forest, but soon saw the sky getting blue patches and then turning a bright blue. 

We found a lot of black vultures drying their feathers after the storm ...

... As well as many anhingas

Milling about, looking for trail numbers

Tracy got us on it

After all that strenuous looking and picture taking, plus paddling a little over two miles, we stopped for lunch in our boats. 

Natalie getting her serving of tuna salad and spoon. She eventually got her crackers

I  got distracted by the reflections while turning back around after lunch.  Picture by Natalie

Great blue heron drumsticks

A tree full of white ibis

My shoulder, although recovering from overusing my scuffle hoe on weeds around the Discovery Center - part of my duties at Brazoria National Wildlife Refuge, did fine until we hit a patch of water hyacinth, mixed with alligator weed and duckweed. I'm still icing it down. 

A nasty mix of water hyacinth, alligator weed, and duck weed made paddling ten times harder

After about a quarter of a mile of slogging through invasives,we had another short, easy stretch back to the landing.  Everyone but me helped each other load their boats. Natalie and I killed another hour or so walking down to the dam.  We had to continually stop for butterflies, caterpillars, birds, a young buck and 

the only alligator we had seen all day. 

The requisite 'gator picture

This paddle was a record for me - the slowest and shortest paddle I've ever done. It was three and a half miles of paddling. The paddle, including lunch, took four hours.  I took about 300 pictures and then had to hold the canoe for Natalie to take hers. 

I have written about Champion Lake before.  Check out this link if you want to see more of this gem of a lake.  A Birdy Paddle on Champion Lake

Please leave your questions or comments below. I love to hear from you. 

Tormented by Butterflies

November 4, 2016

Paddling buddy, Dave invited us to go paddle at Champion Lake, another of my favorite swampy places in Trinity River NWR.  He even offered to paddle both me and Ellen in Natalie's tandem canoe, while Natalie paddled his kayak.  I declined because I'd rather hike then sit and I have spent many happy hours on land there.

I immediately started checking out all the distant birds by taking pictures and then blowing them up in the camera.  A pair of white dots in a distant tree turned into wood storks, a most coveted species in the late summer and fall, when Mexican juveniles sneak across the border and wander along the Texas coast.

Natalie and Ellen enjoying the put-in views

A long view of a pair of wood storks

After the paddlers left, I started walking the mowed path on the levy that forms the lake.  It goes all the way to the Trinity River but I got ambushed by thousands of butterflies and only managed about a half mile of it.  Every step caused twenty to forty butterflies to jump out of the grasses and forbs. The sun was bright and the air was warm. so the butterflies quickly flew out of camera range, while others caught my eye.  Most of the butterflies were less than an inch across their wings so I couldn't even see them on my camera screen. I spent a lot of time trying to capture them, getting ever more frustrated until the sun got too bright for pictures. Then I just enjoyed their bright movement while listening to the hum of honeybees and syrphid flies.

Queens were the most abundant and cooperative 

But only occasionally showed me their monarch-like undersides 

Migrating monarchs were resting in grass.....

Or among willow leaves.....

Or feeding on the abundant fleabane

The waterway narrowed along the trail and I was able to ambush
this pair of white ibis feeding on the far side

Metalmark species?

Think a different species of metalmark

I also checked out a side trail that went through wet woods full of little, mostly dry sloughs.  Finally I turned back so I wouldn't make the paddlers have to wait on me,  I had time to compile my bird list and then add a pair of roseate spoonbills before I caught sight of the returning paddlers.

One of the very few signs of fall

This little slough had enough water to make pretty reflections

There were lots of palmettos,  one of my favorite plants

This comma sat quickly on a tree trunk

There were cloudless, and I think, dogface sulfurs but most were too fast to capture -
this cloudless was in the butterfly garden

The last bloom of marsh mallow - it was across the lake from me

Great blue herons are hard to see against the trees

Returning paddlers

A pair of roseate spoonbills were the last birds on my checklist

Their flight starts with free fall

By the time we were ready to leave - around 2:00 PM, we were starving and had to make a stop for hamburgers. Another beautiful day.

I'm linking up to Wild Bird Wednesday.  Click on the picture to see bird blogs from around the world.

A Birdy Paddle on Champion Lake

October 21, 2015

One of my paddling buddies, Pat Cox, retired this year and can now paddle midweek.  So he organizes paddling trips most Wednesdays. When I asked about getting together, he invited me to go paddling on Champion Lake,  in the Trinity River National Wildlife Refuge.

This is a very easy paddle, because the area is small,  and you can only paddle in particular channels through the swampy lake, but it is amazingly full of birds. Even that day, when most of the summering birds have left and only a few species of wintering birds have arrived, we saw lots of birds.

My orthopedic doctor has decided I only have a cyst on a tendon on my right wrist. He was about to give me a cortisone injection the day before this paddle, but I told him the wrist was getting better and that I would be paddling today.  So he gave me a new prescription - go paddle as hard and as long as I possibly could.  Then if my wrist flared up, come back for the shot.

So I went to the site early and paddled an extra hour.  But those birds made me take so many pictures, I hardly paddled. I did paddle some extra loops around the group, with no effect on my wrist.

When I arrived, several royal terns were fishing in front of the pier.  Sometimes, the birds would fly directly toward me.  I played with catching them with my lens, but the light was so low - we were cloudy with a chance of rain - that the pictures are really terrible.  I heard grunting and looked towards the sound and found a tree full of neotropic cormorants. Great blue herons, tri colored herons, and  great egrets were hunting.  A male cardinal flew near the pier.

Tri colored heron

A very poor picture of one of the royal terns against the white sky

This white ibis was right at the boat launch

A little neotropic cormorant getting his fish turned into position to swallow it

A wood stork and an anhinga

This little guy was probably three or four years old

I got my canoe off the car and in the water and started my paddle. White ibis and roseate spoonbills were feeding together while a belted kingfisher flew overhead giving its rattling call.  I found a spotted sandpiper bobbing along a sand bar.

I decided to paddle up through the cypress trees and saw a tree with several anhingas sitting in it.  Then I noticed something white with a dark head move, and realized there was a woodstork in the tree. I also saw a juvenile little blue heron in the same area.  It was mostly blue, but still had a little white on it.

In some areas, there is mostly cypress, in others there are other trees and shrubs,
including lots of buttonbush

The very low light made for very soft pictures  - this is an anhinga

Roseate spoonbill

After the rest of the group arrived, we paddled some of the duck trails (this is also a duck hunting area) and then went back into the cypress.  We kept seeing lots of birds and hearing bluejays, a huge flock of grackles and a flock of red-winged blackbirds. We also saw a few little green herons and several black-crowned herons.

Linda and Pat

This picture was too poor to keep as it was, so I made it into a silhouette so you can see the body shapes and poses of the anhinga on the left and the neotropic cormorant on the right

Pat and Linda in the cypress

Little green heron

I got real excited when I glimpsed this tree full of wood storks and roseate spoonbills

Roy

Lunchtime on the pier

Part of the nineteen loafing royal terns

After the paddle, we walked to the butterfly garden and found several  species of butterflies.  We took a short walk and found more butterfly species. All in all, it was a great time.

A cloudless sulphur butterfly on Turk's cap

Gulf coast fritillary

Thanks, Pat for leading this wonderful paddle. 

Pat and I just before he loaded his kayak

Another friend, Dave, had never seen a wood stork and wanted to go look for them.  So, two days later we paddled there again, much harder and longer.  But we still had the dark cloudy skies and no good close looks at the wood storks.  Here are a few more pictures.

All who wander - purple lines - are not lost

Dave's picture of me trying to capture the racoon we chased up a tree -but he was
hiding in a junction of branches

The water was too low, just at the back end ofthe wading bird rookery,
to go further but this is my favorite landscape picture 

I loved getting this picture because cormorants are often hard to tell apart. The trio are
the smaller. thinner and cuter neotropic cormorants and the big guy is a double crested cormorant. 

Hopefully, I'll get to do some paddling in Louisiana where I'll be when this blog comes out.