I finally got to scratch an important item off my "basket list". A lot of people have bucket lists, but I think baskets are so much more attractive. Anyway, I finally got to see an eagle in the wild. They are in the category of Winter Texans, spending the cold months down here enjoying our milder temperatures. They nest not too far from here at Lake Buchanan but I have just procrastinated until it was too late to see them each year.
So we will get the excuses and whines over with first. The Texas Hill Country has the most beautiful pristine blue skies, unless I am looking for an eagle - then it is gray and gloomy dripping rivulets of disappointment down the windows. The lake was choppy and the photographer doesn't have the best balance to begin with. The birds were quite a distance away requiring me to zoom as far as possible with a handheld camera without image stabilization lenses. Otherwise I would have had to Photoshop in arrows and "BIRD" onto the photos.
So the photos aren't great, but the cruise was fabulous. Our guide, Tim, was well versed on the history and folklore of the area and shared his knowledge as we went up and back for a couple of hours. If you get the chance, take the Vanishing Texas River Cruise, well worth the money and the time, you won't be disappointed.
Lake Buchanan is one the Highland Lakes, so called because they stair step down to the far side of Austin, where the river flows into Matagorda Bay and the Gulf of Mexico. Although Ladybird Lake in Austin, formerly Town Lake, is not considered one of the Highland Lakes. A series of dams, along the Colorado River, help control flooding downstream, but only Mansfield Dam that is between Lake Travis and Lake Austin was built to hold back flood waters. This Colorado River, unlike the more famous one, begins in west Texas close to the small town of Lamesa, south of Lubbock.
And we are off!! Captain Shawn kept us safe; an our tour guide, Tim, kept us entertained.
OK, confession time....I snapped this sea gull quickly knowing I would never see an eagle and was going to try to pass it off as one....LOL, not really but my sparrow picture from the Oregon Eagle Refuge fooled a couple of people, so thought maybe I could get by with it again.
No history, no story, no real anything, just a place that caught my eye on the shoreline shrouded in gloom.
Above is a heron in the stance of all the birds today, hunkered down keeping their feathers dry. As we got closer they would fly away so we had to look and snap quick if we wanted to see it.
On the right is an Osprey doing just that...one thing Tim talked about was the Osprey being very good fishermen. They have powerful talons that are able to hold fish up against their bellies streamlining their flight. It is a gourmet, and particular in what parts of the fish it eats. The eagles, on the other hand and much to my dismay, are lazy hunters and chase the Osprey trying to make them drop their catch and at the very least get the parts the Osprey don't eat.
Due to the drought conditions and the lake levels being very low, the owners of this ketch have anchored it in the river channel. Tim went into some definition of a ketch vs a sailboat, but it was like Walt talking computerize to me...here is a definition of a ketch taken from freedictionary.com and I still can't tell you the difference.
A two-masted fore-and-aft-rigged sailing vessel with a mizzenmast stepped aft of a taller mainmast but forward of the rudder.
OK......right
Sorry, all the adjusting in the world and this was the best I could get this picture. The house on the hill is the Cowan Home. David C. Cowan came to Texas from Tennessee where he was a prominent surveyor. After a failed attempt to populate a land grant (which is now Waller County), he moved to Robertson County (now a part of College Station - Bryan) and then did surveying for Fredericksburg, Georgetown and other cities in the hill country. During the Fredericksburg assignment he found a family that were all dead of starvation and sickness except for one boy, who was near death. David Cowan adopted him and raised him as a son after nursing him back to health.
David and his brother, Gideon headed a little further up into the Burnet/Llano area and befriended two Indians, nicknamed Cooper and Leroy. One of them in a gesture of friendship told the brothers that there were great hunting grounds on the west side of the river where buffalo and deer congregated to lick the earth. Checking out what they knew was a salt lick they found a business and a home since there was a fresh water spring nearby. The place however was on the Indian side of the river. Settlers could buy land there, for pennies, and those that were smart enough to know the Indian Deadline would move west bought large tracts of land on speculation. After the Indian Deadline was moved west, the Cowans moved across the river to their already constructed, but unlived in, homes and became the first settlers in Llano County and formed the community of Colorado Saline.
Although the bird sightings were limited we did see marvelous trees growing out of the waters. Pat and I both loved the shapes and angles of these trees that are usually submerged. Some held a fuzzy bird image like the snowy egret on the right.
In 1936 timber cutters and skidder machinery was at work clearing the land. In two days 30" of rain fell on the drainages of the Concho, San Saba and Colorado Rivers. On September 17 the rivers collided creating a flood of a Biblical size. The flood and the trees that it carried battered the Tow Bridge until it gave up and "folded like an accordion". Tree cutting was suspended, graves from nearby Bluffton were removed and relocated, and the land t that would become Lake Buchanan was empty and silent. Another flood, greater than this filled the lake, testing the dam and flooding lands below as one after another of the flood gates were opened.
Quite a character in the area during this time was Ok (pronounced Oak) Chestnut. Many stories are told of him, one I like is that he bought a new suit once a year. When he died and they went to his home, his house was wallpapered in the remains of the suits that were replaced. He was buried near a road through his ranch and when the county went to widen the road, they had to cut through the hills beside the grave so not to disturb it. His mother wasn't as lucky, she was buried between two trees and covered with corrugated tin sheets nailed to the trees. Her grave was in the path of the new Lake Buchanan. The crews hired to relocate graves went to Ok and offered to move his mother to the new cemetery. He refused stating “Where a good tree falleth, there let it lay.”
A great blue heron was flying around keeping us company periodically. I turned this into a black and white since it was almost one anyway, and the program put the halo around him. Thought that was sorta nice of PSP actually.
Our next stop on the weekend was the Canyon of the Eagles Resort that we saw from the boat. The little bird is sitting on our cabin's roof to give you an idea of where we stayed. Beautiful view of the lake even if it wasn't full (as you can tell by the brown shoreline that should be under water) and the weather was dark and gloomy.
My friend tease me that I can always find a rusty truck or car where ever I go....with Pat it is a plant she wants, and she saw this weed as we got off the boat and fell in love with it. We both wonder what the bloom looked like.
So that was my Vanishing Texas River Cruise, not what I wanted, but very interesting and entertaining nonetheless. We plan to go back when the weather is what a Texas day should be, and maybe we will get enough rain to fill the lakes again so we can do the four hour tour up the river as well. The eagles will have headed back north, but there is so much to see even without them it will be a fun trip.
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| Lake Buchanan from the Bastrop County Park - 29' down |
Lake Buchanan is one the Highland Lakes, so called because they stair step down to the far side of Austin, where the river flows into Matagorda Bay and the Gulf of Mexico. Although Ladybird Lake in Austin, formerly Town Lake, is not considered one of the Highland Lakes. A series of dams, along the Colorado River, help control flooding downstream, but only Mansfield Dam that is between Lake Travis and Lake Austin was built to hold back flood waters. This Colorado River, unlike the more famous one, begins in west Texas close to the small town of Lamesa, south of Lubbock.
And we are off!! Captain Shawn kept us safe; an our tour guide, Tim, kept us entertained.
OK, confession time....I snapped this sea gull quickly knowing I would never see an eagle and was going to try to pass it off as one....LOL, not really but my sparrow picture from the Oregon Eagle Refuge fooled a couple of people, so thought maybe I could get by with it again.
No history, no story, no real anything, just a place that caught my eye on the shoreline shrouded in gloom.
Above is a heron in the stance of all the birds today, hunkered down keeping their feathers dry. As we got closer they would fly away so we had to look and snap quick if we wanted to see it.
On the right is an Osprey doing just that...one thing Tim talked about was the Osprey being very good fishermen. They have powerful talons that are able to hold fish up against their bellies streamlining their flight. It is a gourmet, and particular in what parts of the fish it eats. The eagles, on the other hand and much to my dismay, are lazy hunters and chase the Osprey trying to make them drop their catch and at the very least get the parts the Osprey don't eat.
Due to the drought conditions and the lake levels being very low, the owners of this ketch have anchored it in the river channel. Tim went into some definition of a ketch vs a sailboat, but it was like Walt talking computerize to me...here is a definition of a ketch taken from freedictionary.com and I still can't tell you the difference.
A two-masted fore-and-aft-rigged sailing vessel with a mizzenmast stepped aft of a taller mainmast but forward of the rudder.
OK......right
Cormorants were plentiful and crowded on the trees sticking up out of the water. Of course as soon as we got close they took off. They are different from other water birds in that they do not have waterproof feathers (there is controversy on this fact) and after diving have to sit and spread its wings out to dry before diving again. I think it is a cool fact so I'm going to believe it.
David and his brother, Gideon headed a little further up into the Burnet/Llano area and befriended two Indians, nicknamed Cooper and Leroy. One of them in a gesture of friendship told the brothers that there were great hunting grounds on the west side of the river where buffalo and deer congregated to lick the earth. Checking out what they knew was a salt lick they found a business and a home since there was a fresh water spring nearby. The place however was on the Indian side of the river. Settlers could buy land there, for pennies, and those that were smart enough to know the Indian Deadline would move west bought large tracts of land on speculation. After the Indian Deadline was moved west, the Cowans moved across the river to their already constructed, but unlived in, homes and became the first settlers in Llano County and formed the community of Colorado Saline.
Although the bird sightings were limited we did see marvelous trees growing out of the waters. Pat and I both loved the shapes and angles of these trees that are usually submerged. Some held a fuzzy bird image like the snowy egret on the right.
In 1936 timber cutters and skidder machinery was at work clearing the land. In two days 30" of rain fell on the drainages of the Concho, San Saba and Colorado Rivers. On September 17 the rivers collided creating a flood of a Biblical size. The flood and the trees that it carried battered the Tow Bridge until it gave up and "folded like an accordion". Tree cutting was suspended, graves from nearby Bluffton were removed and relocated, and the land t that would become Lake Buchanan was empty and silent. Another flood, greater than this filled the lake, testing the dam and flooding lands below as one after another of the flood gates were opened.
Quite a character in the area during this time was Ok (pronounced Oak) Chestnut. Many stories are told of him, one I like is that he bought a new suit once a year. When he died and they went to his home, his house was wallpapered in the remains of the suits that were replaced. He was buried near a road through his ranch and when the county went to widen the road, they had to cut through the hills beside the grave so not to disturb it. His mother wasn't as lucky, she was buried between two trees and covered with corrugated tin sheets nailed to the trees. Her grave was in the path of the new Lake Buchanan. The crews hired to relocate graves went to Ok and offered to move his mother to the new cemetery. He refused stating “Where a good tree falleth, there let it lay.”
A great blue heron was flying around keeping us company periodically. I turned this into a black and white since it was almost one anyway, and the program put the halo around him. Thought that was sorta nice of PSP actually.
Our next stop on the weekend was the Canyon of the Eagles Resort that we saw from the boat. The little bird is sitting on our cabin's roof to give you an idea of where we stayed. Beautiful view of the lake even if it wasn't full (as you can tell by the brown shoreline that should be under water) and the weather was dark and gloomy.
My friend tease me that I can always find a rusty truck or car where ever I go....with Pat it is a plant she wants, and she saw this weed as we got off the boat and fell in love with it. We both wonder what the bloom looked like.
So that was my Vanishing Texas River Cruise, not what I wanted, but very interesting and entertaining nonetheless. We plan to go back when the weather is what a Texas day should be, and maybe we will get enough rain to fill the lakes again so we can do the four hour tour up the river as well. The eagles will have headed back north, but there is so much to see even without them it will be a fun trip.
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