Josey Ranch Lake - July 2015

Every time I visit in Carrollton TX, I walk around Josey Ranch Lake and post some photos (February 2015, and August 2014). There is quite a seasonal variation.

The swans are a year round residents. There were adult swans this July - no juveniles (there was a juvenile in August 2014).

They were preening quite a lot - with down feathers stuck on their bills afterward.

I picked up a large white feather; it graces the pencil pot on my mother's desk now.

There are birds to hear and search for in the trees

and the cattails.

The nutrias that were evident back in February and last year were not around at all. Did the city manage to get rid of them somehow? They are invasive and probably made the maintenance of the wetland end of the lake more challenging.

The birds that come when someone throws bread/food to them are not as varied as in February. I only saw ducks, pigeons and the swans (the ducks always beat the swans to the food on land!).  In February there were acrobatic seagulls and coots too!

The ducklings from this year were getting their adult plumage. They tend to look a little scruffy and are doing a lot of preening.

The desert willows were blooming. The color of the flower highlights the light green of the foliage and the blue of the clear Texas sky on a very hot day.

There was a low growing plant with similar colors in the xeriscape garden beside the library and senior center on one side of lake.I was disappointed that I only saw one egret and no herons. In August 2014 there were several different species of herons at the lake. What a difference a month of so makes!

Josey Ranch Lake - February 2015

In my last family visit to Carrollton TX, I discovered that the round trip walk to Josey Ranch Lake was less than 2 miles so I did the walk several times and photographed birds each time. It turns out that during the winter quite a few people feed the birds so there are gatherings of birds near the boardwalk area and at the reed end of the lake where someone always seems to be offering food to the birds (sometimes the nutria too - although I am sure it is not a good idea to encourage an invasive species).

The well-mannered ducks and swans seem to feed with a fair amount of graceful sharing of the bounty. The coots (small black birds on the water with pointed beaks) can get contentious with each other.

If the ring billed gulls show up there are all kinds of acrobatics. They tend catch the food mid-air or just as it hits the water. The coots are the only ones that seem to challenge them! In the incident I saw - the gull always won.

I noted two ducks that I had not seen in the summer and, when I looked them up on allaboutbirds.org they are ducks that winter in Texas…traveling north when it gets warmer in the summer: the lesser scaup

And northern shoveler.

It is a lot easier to identify birds if I manage to take a good picture! My favorite picture from all three times is this last one - the swan with its wings frothed.