Hunting the Havalina

I'm not necessarily disappointed when I don't see all of the wildlife that a park offers (remember the one with every species of poisonous snake in the US?), but I would like to catch a glimpse of a havalina, or the javelina, or, it's actual name, the collared peccary. So today Chorro and I went off in search of one or more. These animals, about Chorro- sized, are distantly related to pigs and travel in packs of ten to fifty. Our little park does have a band of them so we were hopeful. Here's Chorro trying to pick up their scent!


Does this look like a javelina trail?


I thought not myself. But perhaps this looks like javelina woods.


Or javelina underbrush?


Well, we covered a couple of miles in javelina country and didn't see anything, although we often heard rustlings in the underbrush. Probably the javelinas are shy.

Did we find some signs of spring? You can be the judge. I saw only one of each of these two little blossoms.




But these little pink cluster flowers are blooming prolifically on bushes, so I can only assume it is their time to bloom here in South Texas. Springtime!


Now my task will be to follow springtime back to Montana. That will take some fine tuning of westward and northward movement!

Even though we are sad not to have seen javelinas today, we saw so many beautiful birds here in this bird sanctuary, especially water birds. I can't begin to identify most of these birds, although I wish I could.






These two boldly posed for me. The great white egret.


And this I believe is a white ibis, and the first time for me to see one.


The Bird Chorus this morning was a blending of songs that really needs the word "cacophony" to describe it. The songs were varied and interesting, probably beautiful, but I think we had about two dozen different species of songbird each singing their own song at the same time. Even though it may not have been musically performed, I do love hearing the birds in the early morning. That would be another sign of spring.

Today felt like a beautiful spring day too, the temperature was in the low 80's and the sun shone. Tonight the wind is blowing a cold front in and tomorrow will be a cooler day.

Here are those views of the lake I promised you yesterday.



And tomorrow is a new day.