Driving around Sinking Creek

A friend, Amy, took me home the other day, and she took a road I wasn't familiar with--Sinking Creek Road. What a great place! Here are some photos from there, though I was disappointed that I didn't get any shots of birds. Those little buggers out there in the field are much faster than the guys at the feeders--not weighed down with seed and suet, I guess!

And look at this:

That must be where the water has lapped, frozen, then lapped again, frozen again, etc. I'd never seen that. Remember that in Texas, there aren't a lot of rivers or streams. Or water.

I saw a cardinal who was already beginning to molt; his head was beet-red, but the rest of him was varying shades of red and brownish-red. Is he getting ready to dazzle the ladies? Is he about to enter his first breeding/mature season? That would be my guess. At any rate, he posed just long enough for me to raise my camera, then he hid in a bramble of multiflora rose, and I couldn't get a shot of him.

As I drove down the road slowly, looking for interesting stuff (and places where I could safely pull off), I saw a chain of three or four male cardinals, flying fast! Staking out territory already? Oh, I hope this means spring is right around the corner!

I saw only a few birds: some chickadees, some starlings, the cardinals. I heard some other calls, but nothing I recognized. I need to listen to my Lang Elliot songbird CD (and the cats go wild!) and figure out what I heard.

Look at this crazy tree:


The wrinkles reminded me of Ann Richards' face, that great lady of Texas and national politics; may she rest in peace. She was as tough as this tree, you know--no matter what obstacles she faced, she just overcame them. Texas was still a great state (and in the black) when she was governor. Then, HE came along.... Whoa! look at the tiny "orb" in that second picture, over to the right. Is that Ann?!

It was too beautiful a day to worry about idiots in D.C. so we'll move on:

You know how I love those daytime moon shots. When I was a kid, I wanted to be an astronaut sooooo badly; then I learned that you had to be really good in math. There went that dream.


Here, I was trying to do one of those shots where the water looks all blurry, but I couldn't do it. I don't know if it was my camera's inabilities (all I could change was the modes) or the fact that the water just wasn't moving enough.

There was a little snow-covered island, with lots of little footprints on it:

Little duck prints? While getting this photo, by the way, I did something really dumb: I grabbed onto a nearby branch for support in the shifting snow on which I was standing. Bad move:

Tip: NEVER grab onto a branch before you look at it. Ouch.

I tried to capture the beautiful depth of the trees here; this is the best I got:


Nearer to town (Spring Mills), I found some mallards. I tried to capture some "irridescence" for SusanGetsNative's daughter to see:



"Honey, will you please straighten those feathers?" "I'm trying, dear!"

Thanks to Amy for showing me this neat road and Sinking Creek.