Our second kayak trip with Emma was at Lavon Lake near Brockdale Park.
Brockdale Park is about 3 mile north to Collin Park, where we kayaked on Lavon lake for the first time. What a change the 3 mile make, less populated, less visited, there are a lot more wild life on the shore in this section of the lake!
We started from Brockdale launch point paddling north along the shore (red line), and returned in straight line (yellow)
We met a solo kayak shortly after leaving the shore
Then we saw this turkey vulture on the tip of a post and many more on shore nearby
Quite a few vultures flapped open their wings, showing off to attract mates?
see solo egret frequently standing patiently by water waiting for fishes to come by. I saw a Egret caught a fish many years ago but not since.
The egret flew away when we got too close for its comfort
A grey heron stood by water edge. The reflection of trees on shore made the water green.
As we turned into the first cove on our route, we saw many egrets on trees and on the shoreline!
Egrets like to rest on dead tree branches. I wonder if it is easier to see water. If you look carefully you should see a grey heron on the tree as well at the upper right corner of the photo.
A turkey vulture was also on a tree with other egrets
Another group of egrets
A solo kayak paddled much closer to shore than we did. Emma has a guide fin at her bottom, requires deeper water to navigate. So we did not get paddle too close to shore to avoid being stranded. We met the kayaer a mid-age woman, face to face later, and greeted each other.
A close up of egrets on the other two trees.
After the first cove, we continued northward, to the north side of a bridge, into a big cove. There are many dead trees in the cove, and many egrets (again!) on the northern end of the cove. A couple were fishing on a kayak. We said hello to them on the way back.
A soaring turkey vulture or red tail hawk?
On the way back. we saw many turkey vultures were standing on the roof of this shelter. Then a red tailed hawk flew by, the vultures, though larger in size, either flew away, or stepped away from the hawk's landing spot.
Our kayak was too far from the shelter for my camera to get a close view of the hawk. Upon zoom in on this photo, we saw that the hawk looked exactly the same as the one saw at our community a couple months ago. The hawk stood there, preening, and looking around. After a couple minutes, it took off, flew away without doing anything else.
There was no speed boat on this part of the lake that morning, but the wind was blowing, and the waves were not small. We paddled hard on the return trip.
The kayak Emma was steady, stable and broke waves!
No comments:
Post a Comment