Walking Along the Lake

Just after breakfast, Ken was looking out at the lake when he saw a very large number of birds all flying the same direction along the lake near the shore. Most were medium size dark colored birds, but some were larger, with white undersides. A couple of the larger ones were sitting in the water a while. We could see them pretty well through the binoculars, but they were too far away for our cameras.

We decided to take our morning walk along the lake to see if we could spot them again. On the way down to the water, our path took us through the tall weeds. Ken got a shot of this deer looking at us. We've seen several deer, and they all seem to be rather small.

We have seen lots of different kinds of butterflies. This tiny one posed for me. It was only about half an inch across.

We walked eastward through the mudflats, which are mostly dried out now. We spotted lots of tracks, including deer and raccoon (probably) and birds and one human. Pretty much the only birds we saw were killdeer running along the shore. Here's Ken checking out the stump and root structure of a tree that was previously submerged.

We did finally see more birds--lots of them. The incredibly large group of birds we had seen earlier, or another similar group, was flying along the far shore. The flock extended as far as we could see, again strung out along the shore. They just kept coming and coming. Wow!

We also saw some other birds, like these black vultures. We saw three herons feeding along the shore, and one solitary little shore bird in the water.

Sadly, we also saw another bird. It was splashing, and at first Ken thought it was bathing. Then it became clear that it was struggling to free itself. Evidently it had gotten snared by something underwater at this stump. Unfortunately it was too far from shore to reach. Ken called the park and reported it, but most likely it was doomed.

When we got back home, the GPS indicated that we walked for a bit over an hour and we were stopped (birdwatching and photographing) for just over an hour too. Ken has been congested for a couple of days, and we thought it might be allergies, but this afternoon he started feeling worse and became more congested, so he spent the rest of the day resting.



We stopped to talk to the camp host to ask about laundromats. She gave us directions to a laundromat near Brookshire's. We'll go into town to pick up our mail, do our laundry, and get some groceries tomorrow.