Josey Ranch Lake After a Heavy Rain
/I headed over to Josey Ranch Lake (Carrollton, TX) late in the day when the heavy rain finally stopped. Lots of water was still running off into the storm drains on the streets during the short drive; I avoided the curbside lane when I could. My goal was to see if the nesting mute swans at the lake had a cygnet.
When I got there, one of the swans was out on the lake – doing a lot of preening.
As I got closer to the area of cattails where the nest was located, there was a sheen of water running over the sidewalk and part of the boardwalk was under water. The white blob in the cattails is the second swan.
I zoomed in on the blob. The camera focused on the cattails, but the second swan is identifiable. There is a second bird in the picture too…more about that one later.
I walked further around on the paved bike path, stepping around the drifts of silt and trying not to splash water into my shoes. I found a little better vantage point to watch the second swan. The bird was picking up soggy sticks and dried cattail leaves…trying to pile them up again…frantically moving about as the vegetation sank into the water. Oh no! There must have been about 6 inches of water where the nest had been. The nest had been flooded. No cygnet…no egg…no nest.
The bird that had been on the lake moved onto the bank still preening. The two birds were responding to the stress of the nest flooding very differently. I wondered which one was the male and which was the female. Was it early enough in the season that they will build another nest and try again?
Now for the other bird that was near the swans’ nest – a juvenile Little Blue Heron that I had seen previously at the lake. It was standing in the cattails…observing the scene. It had more blue feathers since I saw it a few weeks earlier. The color of the beak and eye ring looks very striking on this young bird. As I looked at my pictures of the bird on my larger monitor, I wondered if the bird had a damaged wing or if it was simply wet. I’ll have to go to the lake again before I leave Texas to find out.
There were a few Mallard Ducks. It appears they already have 4 young with them….juvenile size rather than ducklings! They were on the shore rather than in the water the whole time I was there.
Rounding out the birds I noticed but didn’t take time to photograph - pigeons and grackles. There were people venturing out for exercise; some had already made it around the lake and commented about the water gushing from the dam on the other end. Others arrived while I was there. It was a quick outing. I was sad about the swan’s nest…. felt privileged to observe the birds’ response to their tragedy from a distance.
