January Paddle on White's Bayou

January 19,2020

When Natalie asked me to save six weeks to be on call to  house-sit for her, I immediately blocked out my calendar, but told her, of course,  I'll have plenty of time to hold lots of wild parties. I sent out the invitations to schedule some time visiting me. Winnie took me up on that and planned to spend a few days up here. She asked for a paddle.

Natalie ended up staying - I said it was because  she knew we would have too much fun without her  - because here grandson was still unborn.  So she was on this trip.  We invited Bob, and another friend, Ann to go with us. Bob came down to our house for a lasagne supper the night before and was on hand to to help load the boats.

We decided to paddle White's Bayou from the Fair Park at Anahuac, Texas. It is a very natural, winding bayou that empties into Turtle Bayou, only yards north of the put-in. So this put-in gives us access to an upstream and downstream paddle, on Turtle Bayou as well as to White's Bayou.

Getting ready

Our token man, Bob

Underway

Ann with Ellen and Natalie

Bob and Winnie, wielding a camera as usual

Ellen was an enthusiastic paddler

Bob stopped to clear a tight spot 

Breaking overhead branches away

This is a very protected bayou with high banks along much of it

The final log jam is our end of the journey

Turning around

Winnie and Ann 

Ellen in her happy place

Two holdouts

Winnie's picture of me - so happy to get to do this again- even poorly and with some pain

Back at the put-in

On a personal note, I'm Colorado dreaming. About to set a leaving date for a few weeks away. And I'm finally housesitting.

Birding with Laurel: A Paddle on the Trinity River

January 6, 2020

Natalie invited Laurel and me to join her on a trip from Lake Charlotte out to the Trinity River and down to the I-10 bridge.  Since both of us are paddlers, we quickly accepted. Natalie also has plenty of boats and can haul a few.  Natalie and I decided to share her canoe, since she is used to paddling for her daughter  and could get me back, if I found I was unable to handle wind on the river. This was only my second paddle since I damaged my neck and shoulders in the accident that totaled my car and destroyed my canoe, canoe trailer, bike, bike trailer and other possessions inside the car. So I'm still finding out how much of my old activities I can still do.


Our leader, Tom is active in the bay conservation and was preparing to give a talk on where the water in the Trinity went when it flooded. He had paddled it when the water was so high, he could paddle over the natural levy and then paddle in lakes/streams behind it. On this trip, he wanted to find the places where pour overs had occurred and take pictures of what the land looked like in non-flood conditions.  He has a group of cohorts, mostly also my friends,  that paddle with him on these missions.

We met up at a gas station on the intersection of I-10 and the highway to Charlotte Lake. We decided to make the trip easy and run a shuttle, starting at the park on Lake Charlotte and taking out under the I-10 bridge over the Trinity. Otherwise, we would have taken Lake Pass back up Lake Charlotte and crossed it over to the east side where we put in.  I was glad we only did the shuttle because my neck and arms still lock up from my accident and I get both very tired and start hurting. Natalie keep us going when I needed a break.

As usual, we saw very few birds. But we noticed a bird not like the others in a line of grackles sitting on a wire by the gas station. It is a leucistic female great tailed grackle.  It was the only bird I photographed on the trip.  We saw only a few snowy and great egrets, a couple of great blue herons, and a cormorant or two as well as a lot of resting terns, we saw at a great distance but which included either Caspian or royal terns. I took no other bird pictures.

Leucistic female great tailed grackle 

A beautiful little cove reachable just past our shell beach put-in

Getting ready - I'll be paddling bow in the green canoe

Leader Tom telling us our trip route and that we'll be relocating several pour overs from the Trinity

Tom had to take a requisite group picture - we may end up in his talk

Starting across lake to Mac Bayou entrance - visiting friend Laurel is leading the pack

Turning into Mac Bayou

After we turned into the sulfur cut, we had a particularly beautiful sky

Laurel looking happy in Natalie's kayak, Miss Piggy 

Natalie and Tom on way to look at the paddling route in flood waters

Joe and I joined them

Loved the palmettos along the natural levy before we got to a meadow

Hiking down a road that had been a stream in flood

Tom explaining what it had looked like in flood - looking at a ditch with a big motor boat jammed into it

Joe wanted a pic of Natalie/Marilyn - and no, we don't look alike but our friends and their friends keep mixing us up

Meanwhile back at the river, Laurel grabbed her favorite lunch - soup

Tom checking out another pour over spot - none of us volunteered to go with him  around this water to look further inland

Ken taking a rest at one of the stops

Joe managed to catch all of us on one of the check spots  - we elected to hang out in our boats while
the rest explored that pour over

Fun all done 

Nice to have guys to help carry boats to vehicles and load them.  WAY
easier than fighting to get ours on top of Natalie's van. 

Laurel and I still have two days left to go birding. Stay tuned

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.