Highs and Lows

I spent about an hour and a half hanging around the pond at the last dam on Lake Creek Trail this afternoon. My goal was to find some of the migratory dragonflies that Pond Watch tracks and report them. (One of Pond Watch's founders said the greatest value of this project in central Texas was to track initial arrival of migratory dragonflies in the late winter and early spring.) Here are some quick high points and low points I experienced.

High Points:

• I succeeded in my Pond Watch goal and found a single male Common Green Darner patrolling over the pond.
• I found a few more odonates including a nice male Ramburs Forktail damselfly, a female Common Whitetail dragonfly (photo below), and possibly a basket-tail or club-skimmer dragonfly that never landed for me.
• After weeks of only Gadwalls and American Wigeons on the pond, I found three more duck species: Northern Shoveler, Redhead, and a pair of Northern Pintails. I've only observed pintails on our creek a handful of times!

Low Points:

• Someone continues to leave cleaned fish carcasses in the creek in the flow that goes under the railings.
• Two guys appeared on the trail driving a golf cart. It turned out they were maintenance workers for a nearby apartment complex and they were looking for another golf cart that had disappeared. One of them walked into the woods along the creek and scared away all the ducks.
• Later, I watched three small groups of ducks fly in, circle the creek, and leave since they didn't see any other ducks there (scared away by the golf cart guy).

Here's the Common Whitetail: