Texts and Treks

       Over the course of this semester, I have grown extremely fond of walking the trails by the Trinity river in the early hours of the morning. It tends to be more peaceful in the morning and as a result, more wildlife can be observed from the trails. I was on my walk this weekend and I noticed a large, white bird standing on the bank of the river. As I walked towards the bird to get a better look, it dipped its head in the water and flew a few hundred yards down river. I decided to continue walking, in hopes that it would cross my path once again.      I continued walking and eventually found the bird, perched on the riverbank like I had once seen it before. I slowly walked toward the bird in an effort to get a better glimpse and a picture of it. As you can see below, I was much luckier this time. As I was taking a picture of the bird an older gentleman approached me and said “those things are so cool.” I said “yeah, I know right?” He then went on ...

              I went down to the trinity river this weekend, similar to last, but I decided to walk the opposite direction. I was curious to find out what I would be writing my weekly blog on and quite frankly, I was genuinely surprised to gather as much material as I did. Once again, I saw two turtles perched on a log, basking in the sun in the middle of the river – see photo below. In addition, I came across something I have never seen occur before, or at least never noticed to this degree. I would not have guessed that going a different direction would have brought such a different, unique form of nature.             As I walked and continued searching, I stumbled upon a section of trees that seemed to lean away from the Trintiy at almost a 90-degree angle, parallel with the ground. It is not uncommon to see trees lean slightly, in one direction or another, but I have never seen trees ...

     I found a stream close to campus last week and decided to follow it on my walk this morning. Eventually, I found myself walking next to the Trinity river and was honestly surprised to see so much wildlife in and around the river. At the beginning of my walk I even saw a fish jump out of the water just for a brief moment. The most interesting part of my walk was when I noticed a few turtles perched up on a fallen log. I started walking down a steep hill to get closer to the turtles and hopefully catch a more detailed glimpse at what they look like. I got to the bottom of the hill and as I was about fifteen feet away, the turtles dropped off the log, one by one, into the Trinity river.       I’m not entirely sure what type of tur tles these are but I assume they would be snapping turtles. I was so shocked by the fact that I actually saw turtles that I didn’t get a chance to look at them up close. From what I could tell, however, they were both about...

     I went for a walk on Saturday morning and wound up at an intersection between McPherson and McCart avenue. I stood there and looked around for a few minutes, wondering if I could spot something interesting to write my weekly blog about. I quickly came upon a creek, tucked away off the side of the road that was about fifteen feet wide. I climbed down to the creek to see if there were any animals inside and unfortunately, the only living thing I saw was a blue dragonfly. I was lucky enough to snap a picture of the dragonfly - it can be seen in the photographs below, perched on top of a rock.          I have nev er really examined a dragonfly in Texas up close, they are considerably larger than any other dragonfly I have ever seen. Aside from the dragonfly, I only really noticed trash scattered throughout the surrounding area. Granted, this was water runoff pouring out of drainage pipes so I can’t say my expectation of finding living creatu...

                         On Sunday August 30th, I was in my backyard and I noticed a small lizard scurry across my feet. I had seen lizards in my backyard before, but usually they were too fast and too afraid of humans to even get a decent look at them. However, I followed this lizard for a few minutes and eventually froze in my tracks as it perched itself on a tree about twenty feet from the door leading out to my backyard. I snapped a photograph of the lizard and was thoroughly impressed with my ability to remain calm and still enough to get one.                 The lizard I normally see in my backyard lives underneath the grill on our back patio and I know it's the same one because it has no tail. Many lizards tails will break off when they are facing a dangerous situation, a makeshift defense mechanism. However, I have known many lizards to do this but grow th...