Lake Whitney TX - Another Thousand Trails Preserve

This was our first stay at the Thousand Trails Lake Whitney Preserve and we found it to be enjoyable although there were not too many others in the place. There are quite a few RVs parked on sites seasonally probably owned by folks from Dallas/Fort Worth or other nearby cities.  Unlike Medina Lake there is water in Lake Whitney, but it too is about 10-15% below normal levels due to the extreme drought in the region.  The down side to the lake having water is there are no campsites directly on the water and it can only be accessed by a walking path across Corps of Engineers property maintained by Thousand Trails staff.

Spring was happening in a big way as we neared the end of our two-week stay here. There were lots of birds so we put our feeder out to see who would visit. and we were rewarded by seeing a new to us species, the Black-crested Titmouse, a Texas only bird that is a little larger than the familiar Tufted Titmouse and is characterized by its blackish "tuft" as seen below.

Black-crested Titmouse looking a little angry?

And since Spring was bustin' out all over, we got to see some early Bluebonnets, the Texas State Flower, beginning to flex their buds and blooms.

These are right in the park along the entry road and were not evident the first week of our visit.

We are not sure what the occasional red flowers are.

We found about 4 plants at the edge of one of the campsites and picked a few blossoms Cathy will try to press.

Backyard birds such as the Cardinals were abundant and enjoyed the seed we set out.

And something we do not see often, Crows seemed to appreciate the seed too albeit they are a touch greedy!

Lake Whitney State Park is just a few miles from our park and they have water frontage, but no sites with modern hookups on the water! 

This lake is also less than full as can be seen by the mark left at the normal waterline.

The small town of Whitney doesn't have much of distinction but this house caught our eyes and thought it worthy of a photo.

OK, This is a test. There is a bird in this picture, can you find the Roadrunner?  It is pretty well camouflaged.

Here is a Roadrunner running away from us.

And here is a pair keeping their distance as well.

You will just have to imagine this photo rotated a quarter turn to the left for it to look normal! I cannot figure out how to make Google's Blogger properly handle a vertical format image! Anyway these unknown bushes were beginning to bloom in the woods too.

Not only are the squirrels large, they have an interesting brown coloring to their underparts.

The squirrels could not figure out our squirrel proof feeder so had to content themselves by rooting underneath for fallout.

And finally a keeper photo of the Yellow-rumped Warbler that clearly shows its namesake characteristic!