Chasing the Animals at Choke Canyon State Park

It was time to roll on down the road, so we packed up the motor home and drove 141 miles to our next Texas state park. We had a nice parking spot close to the large lake at Choke Canyon State Park.

We camped here last winter, and we learned that this is a great park to find birds. In fact, it was here that we chased after the "rare spotted rail" that we didn't even know existed before we arrived here a year ago. That one spotted rail was the first ever seen in the United States, and caused quite a stir among birders. He didn't return this year, so it was much easier to get a camping spot at the state park. It didn't take Denisa long to visit the bird blind near the campground as she started chasing animals here again. We see a lot of cardinals, but these were especially good at posing for the camera. While their back feathers are more muted . . .

their breast feathers are brighter. It's fun to chase them up in the branches.

We are far enough south now to start seeing and hearing the noisy green jays.

While green jays obviously get their name from their back feathers, their colorful blue and black faces look like they are masked.

This Golden-fronted Woodpecker usually feeds on insects it finds on the trunks and limbs of trees. But today it came for an easy snack and drink at the feeders. 

This Golden-fronted bird actually has three colors on his head--bright yellow above the beak, red on his forehead, and golden orange on the back of his head.

It's fun to watch the birds up close at the bird blind, but Denisa walked down to the lake to snap some pictures of the ducks in that bigger habitat. She was lucky to spot this pair of ducks in the distance. The male has some unusual markings, so she decided to sneak closer to the water's edge to get a better picture. She was so sneaky that the ducks didn't notice how close she was getting. What luck--they stayed perfectly still so she continued to snap pictures.

Man, Denisa is really good at sneaking up on wildlife! They were still in the open and only moving enough to gently bob in the waves. It's about that time that Denisa realized that she had been sneaking up on plastic duck decoys. Sheesh! She looked around to see who was watching (and laughing) at her.

Maybe Denisa would be better at sneaking up on mammals. She saw this rabbit heading into the brush.

She was pretty sneaky, and this rabbit isn't even made of plastic!

We found that Choke Canyon State Park has miles of trails and nice flat paved roads for biking. We also found that they have a geocache along one of those trails. It's a microcache, and Denisa was the one that found that little turquoise tube hanging in the trees.

She's the leader in our game of finding geocaches, as Mark couldn't even see that little tube from his side of the row of trees.

We remember seeing a great egret hanging out at the fish cleaning station when we here last year. It looks like the same bird is hanging out in the same location a year later. 

We biked all over the park, and then stayed at the boat dock to watch the sun set over the lake. We're going to like it here! But now we're in a hurry to get back to the motor home before it gets dark.

But Denisa had to stop and take a picture of this caracara, checking out the possibilities for a twilight snack.

The light was getting low by the time we saw this buck out for an evening stroll.

We are hurrying toward our campground, when a flock of turkeys showed up beside the road. That delayed us again, as Denisa had to chase them down to get a picture.

We continued to bike further down the road, right beside the entrance of the nature loop named the Owl Trail. Denisa put on the brakes hard when she saw a large bird at the top of the tree next to the trail. She was taking a picture of that dot in the tree in the upper left corner of the picture below.

It was almost dark by the time this picture was taken. We lightened it up to better see the big owl hiding in the branches.

It should be called the Owls (plural) Trail, because there were actually two different birds at the entrance of the trail tonight. They were both happy to pose for a picture in the twilight.

It was a slow ride back to the campground this evening. But we love taking life slow when it allows us to see more of God's wondrous animals. It was the end to a nice day of chasing the animals at Choke Canyon State Park.