Robins. Robins everywhere. I have literally never seen so many Robins in all my born days. This park, Pedernales Falls, is chock full of them. Every tree is loaded with the harmony of their little calls. Flocks explode from a tree when they suddenly are startled. This must feel like the end-times for the insect world here. Birds are having a Falstaffian banquet every day. Millions of small blue berries from the Ashe-Junipers are being devoured by the minute. I know this to be true because the poop from the Robin feasting is festooned with them, though digestion turns them an orange/reddish color. Not surprisingly, everything around here is also festooned with the semi-digested droppings. If you park a car under a Juniper you will regret it in short order. And, the droppings are very difficult to clean off your vehicle. I had to use a special store-bought bug and tar remover on our Jeep to clean it up.
I haven’t gotten a good reason yet as to why there so many Robins here. Perhaps this area is the wintering grounds for the little things. Additionally, my favorite bird species, the Cedar Waxwing is the second-most abundant bird species hereabouts. They fly around in great flocks as well. This prospect makes me almost giddy since I so love the delicately, yet orchidaceously colored waxwings. We used to see them in small flocks passing through our backyard in Kirkwood, MO in the fall. They loved the bright red honeysuckle berries that come into harvest at that time. They would pass through for about a week give or take. We’d look forward to the migration all year long.
Occasionally, we see Scrub Jays. I love their coloring of blue overcoat with soft, grey bellies. Pine Siskins show up now and again. The fussy Mockingbirds are here is decent numbers dive bombing the wayward camper who too closely approaches their haunts. A mating-frenzied Cardinal follows me around the camp as I drive the Ranger Mobile. When I stop to clean a campsite he will peck away at the mirrors on the cart, thinking he is driving away a rival. He is nothing if not rabidly insistent on keeping his mate for himself. Seemingly single-minded he is. Mourning Doves along with White-Winged Doves hang out in our camp site which makes those quiet times towards evenings ever so sublime as they coo away during sunset. Their restful expressions bring peace to day’s end. It is a simple thing to forsake the past and future during their concert.
Of course, the rackety Crows and occasional rueful Raven do their best to portend a dangerous situation is looming. Crows are so ubiquitous in movies. Watch and listen as a crow will nearly always warn you of a dramatic scene involving danger in the movies. I think it must be an unwritten rule taught in film classes. “You need a crow call in your scene if someone is about to be done in”.
The weather here lately has been nice, though extremely dry. The river is running very low. Most of the creeks and rivers hereabouts are low and the creek beds, where water is not running fast, are fairly covered with a bright green algae. This gives the water itself a greenish tint, pretty, but belying the fact of how long it’s been since normal water levels have washed out the algae. We need a good storm or two to flush out the rivers and creeks and clean them up so to speak. Nonetheless, we’ve been enjoying the creeks a lot with our grandkids, Ella and Jack. They have been visiting with us several times for extended periods. We fill their days with hikes and river walks which they love. A couple of times, when the weather was very warm, say in the mid to high 70’s, we’ve taken them down to Trammel’s Crossing here on the Pedernales. Trammels Crossing is a low water crossing area where the original settlers in this area forded the river. It’s a great place to wade around if you’re a kid, or a kid at heart. The river runs fast through there and it’s very low so there is no imminent danger of drowning. Have mercy, the kids had so much fun there running around and exploring the rapids. The entire time we were there the kids seemed elated, and the joy on their faces was so very heart-warming to see. We were just like that when we were kids. That much has never changed over the centuries, I’m sure. Norman Rockwell would feel intimately at home sketching here as kids of all ages hold tightly to their innocence exploring the shallow wonderlands of riverine life. We floated leaves and sticks down the river to see if our little “boats” could make it through the rapids without getting hung up and capsized by the rocky shoals. The joy they got out of that little outdoor play experience is far superior to the joy of a plastic toy in the playroom. Several times they exclaimed,” I love it here so much!” Reclaiming them to head back to the motor home seemed a sin.
Hiking through the woods here is an adventure for them, too. There are “Wishing Trees” to climb up on and make wishes. Holes to poke around in and guess who or what lives in there. Trails all over the place lead us on great adventures to sights yet unseen. Vines to swing on. Critters to see and talk to and eventually give names to. "Fluffy Tail", the Grey Fox, and her offspring young-un’, "Fluff", are seen often. These foxes are so beautiful to see...and they are very curious, often craning their necks towards us to size us up before they amble off into the deeper woods. They most probably are checking to see if we are going to leave the tail end of a hot dog on the ground.
Of course, the deer are super-plentiful and acclimated to campers so this makes them seem friendly to the kids...which in reality they are. Hence, one has the kid-assigned name, “Friendly”. “Tusk” and “Spikey” are two of the males who have been given names by the grandkids. They all come to our backyard here to eat the little pieces of bread the kids leave for them on the grass at evening time. Slightly more menacing, the feral hogs here stir up a lot of trouble, literally. They arrive by dark of night and root around the campsites looking for acorns that lie buried under the oaks. They are big, these hogs. They will snort and growl at you if you approach them, but so far no one has ever been attacked by one of them yet. I did hear a story of an elderly woman not far from here who was killed by a group of feral hogs but that is a rare exception. The kids don’t name the hogs. They’re apparently not quite cute enough to earn the honored “kid-name”.
We’ve taken the grandkids to other parks around here as well with the idea of giving them more outdoors education and an overall appreciation for the Texas Hill Country. One park within the city limits of Austin, McKinney Falls, is a nice place to take a day trip. Onion Creek runs the length of one side of the park and it’s limestone cliffs and bluffs make for two very scenic water falls of ten feet or so. There are very nice hiking paths as well and a large “cave” or limestone overhang where ancient peoples once took shelter. Parts of the original settlers house remains as well, built by slaves. Not much is is posted about the lives of the slaves who lived and worked here. Slave lives never seem to earn a place in written history. That’s a deep shame. It would be very interesting to know more about their lives I think.
For a State Park within the city limits of a large metropolitan place like Austin, the Park has done a great job of holding its own versus the mass of peoples who visit. There are evidences of the urbanity of the area within the park, though. Litter is much more prevalent here than other parks in the area. Onion Creek itself seems somewhat polluted, not so much by factory discharge of sewage, but more so seemingly by the neighboring golf course. It seems obvious to me that chemical runoff from the fertilizers used on the course are having a direct impact of the water quality of the creek. Algae blooms are abundant in the water and creek bed. Still, the vibe and scenery are well worth the visit and we had such good times there with the grandkids.
One of the aspects of the creeks and rivers around her that I so enjoy are the Cypress trees. Where in the Ozark stream banks you see massive Sycamores holding court, here they have been supplanted by imposing Cypress trees. Their massive roots appear as tangles of statuesque, intractable Burmese Pythons lying about the riverbanks. A little poetic license here, but that’s the image I get sometimes. I find these trees, like Sycamores, to be so prehistoric in nature...a throwback to the days of the dinosaurs. Some here are downright ancient, tracing their birthdays back hundreds of years. Some have endured everything nature can throw at them including flash floods. Still, they stand resolute, the veritable silent witnesses to hundreds of years of history, flood, and drought.
We are now in the early throes of a killer cold front that will envelope most of the nation, including here. On the 11th we had a sleet and ice storm that downed limbs from the Ashe-Junipers all over the park. The low temperatures have been in the high 20’s, but...the weekend of Valentines Day threatens to reach down to single digits of arctic cold. I think this cold front is pretty much inescapable in most sections of the country. We’ll just to hunker down for a while and deal with it, I guess.