Brown Thrasher, Cottonwood and Enclaves of Million Dollar Mansions

What is common among these three totally unrelated subjects? Our curiosity led us to learn something new or find something unexpected.

Brown Thrasher

While walking in the community, I heard a new bird chirping, looking around I saw this brownish bird, it had a shape of mocking bird, and the its color resembled that of Robins.  I took a few photos of this bird in a neighbor's yard. Curious about what it is, I used Google lens to find out approximately what it is, and then pinpointed its exact name.

It turned to be brown thrasher, in the family of Mimidae, which also includes mocking bird. It lives primarily in eastern and central US, and also in central Texas. So spotting it in North Texas is a relatively rare event.

Brown Thrasher

Cottonwood

While walking around Russell creek pond park, we noticed this snow like white fluffy floats in the air around a few big trees. Those  fell on the ground formed a thin cotton like thin layer.

We noticed this for many years but never really know exactly what it is. Curious now, I described what I saw for Google search. The trees are cottonwood, we heard this name numerous times before, but never connected the name to specific trees. 

Now I know more about cottonwood: Cottonwood trees actually have genders - male and female cottonwood trees. Female cottonwood produces the parachute-like white fluffs, which are capsules of seeds! Male cottonwood produces no fluffs. 

June Snow

Winnwood and Celestial Parks in Addison  

While staying in a hotel in Addison, we looked for places after hearty dinners for after meal walk. I remember seeing a neat small park on Beltline Road, near Beltline and Preston. So the first evening at the hotel we went to look for the park. 

The park turned out to be Winnwood park, but there is no parking along Beltline road, so we drove further to Winnwood road hoping to park there and walk to the park, but two suspicious cars on Winnwood road entrance made us to abandon the idea. We drove a little bit further, and found out that we entered an enclave of million dollar mansions. So we decided to tour the enclave, which includes both Winnwood road and Bellbrook drive. 

At the end of Winnwood road, we reached the Celestial park, which has public parking. We stopped there and had our walk along celestial park and along Bellbrook drive, and eventually to Winnwood park as well, a total of two mile walk. It was a very pleasant walk, few people anywhere along the routes, and beautiful parks and mansions. 

Celestial Park

Winnwood park

The gazebo at Winnwood 

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Bert Fields Park

The next day we chose a larger park on Preston road, Bert Fields Park, which we thought was a community park. When we got to the perceived trail head in the park, we entered another enclave of million dollar mansions.

The park is right next to White Rock Creek, and a has good paved trail. The community and the park, are less elegant an less beautiful than Winnwood, but has more rustic beauty!

white rock creek

Bert Fields Park