Gene Hikes the Appalachian Trail

Tag: birding

  • McKinney Falls State Park

    On the twentieth of June in 2025 Governor Greg Abbott signed Senate Bill 2232 establishing October 21 as Unplug Texas Day. In 2026 we observed the second Unplug Texas Day, when Texans are encouraged to stop doomscrolling and visit their local parks and recreation centers. Conveniently for me, this year the date fell on an off-day between the end of the League Championship Series and the start of the World Series. So I decided to celebrate by planning an overnight trip to McKinney Falls State Park.

    Situated only a few miles from the airport and under 15 miles from downtown, McKinney Falls State Park is like a 700 acre oasis surrounded by urban blight. Multiple campsites and cabins are available to reserve every day right from their website, or you could pretend it is 1997 and call them. Although it can get crowded on weekends, during the week I had no trouble reserving a site only a couple of days before my check-in.

    I hiked up to the main gate and they handed me some maps and showed me where my camp was located. A spot with some flat ground, electricity, water, and a picnic table runs $24 a night. And for that price you can have up to eight people and two cars stay there. A great deal in my opinion. A day pass to just hang out in and around the park costs $6. However I didn’t have to pay that because I acquired a free Parklands Passport due to shamelessly cashing in my veteran status.

    McKinney Falls has a huge tangle of different trails, and I figured I would try a couple of smaller ones before hitting my campsite. Armadillo Trail and Cactus Garden Trail both branch off from the main trail, Onion Creek Trail, and are about a half mile long each.

    Both trails were unpaved and had loose rocks strewn about, exactly the kind of trail I want to find more often.

    I didn’t have to traverse Cactus Garden for long before finding out why it has that name.

    That many prickly pear cactus can lead to an unlimited supply of bloatfly sliders. Sadly, there were no armadillos on Armadillo Trail, before you think to ask.

    Onion Creek Trail is the main trail that goes around most of the southern portion of McKinney Falls. It is paved and accommodates bicycles and all that sort of stuff. If McKinney Falls is an organism, Onion Creek Trail would be its aorta.

    As nightfall approached I finally made my way to the spot I would be calling home. As promised, it was essentially what I described above. The bare necessities. If you consider electricity a necessity, which might be the case in 2026.

    My main reason for coming here in the first place was to stress test my gear, so the first thing I did was get my tent set up. Since it was a clear, cloudless, windless night I decided to forego my rainfly.

    Once I got the tent set up and had some of my humanitarian daily ration, there was nothing left to do but wait for sleepy time. Sitting at my campsite at dusk I was overcome by memories of being a kid and enjoying many an early autumn evening just like this one forty odd years ago. All that was missing was a bunch of fireflies. And my family.

    Not setting up my rainfly turned out to be a bad idea. I had left my bulky winter sleeping bag at home and only had my lighter one with me. I didn’t freeze like a meat pop but I definitely felt my toes get noticeably cold during the last few hours before sunrise. It only got down to the mid 50s too, so I need to carry my bulkiest sleeping bag and use my entire tent whenever I go out from now on.

    One thing I was worried about was whether or not I needed a sleeping pad. I had not planned on buying one and never needed it. I don’t have or plan to get a pillow either, and the night at McKinney Falls justified that decision as well.

    Now seems like as good a time as any to talk about my backpack. I am using a 60 liter pack I bought from Walmart. That makes not bringing my warmest sleeping bag even more annoying, I absolutely had room for it and just left it at home because I’m lazy. This pack is great so far; it fits me well, is adjustable, has tons of pockets, and cost well under $100. I might make a post about it later, it’s that awesome.

    Once I woke up and packed up it was time to head out. I cleaned up a little at the cabin that acted as a shared bathroom for all the different camps in the area. The bathroom was incredibly clean and had more than enough toilet paper. Perfect time for a gallery.

    I spent most of the morning meandering around along Onion Creek Trail with no particular purpose. That wound up being a great thing because it led to some pictures of some northern cardinals.

    These are obviously not great pictures, but you know to expect that by now. Maybe once winter comes and all the leaves fall from the trees the birds will stop hiding behind them so much. Just trust me, those red patches in the shots above are cardinals.

    Now for some facts about northern cardinals. Their scientific name is Cardinalis cardinalis. When an animal has the same genus and species name it is called a tautonym. There are, surprisingly, a lot of animals that are tautonyms. Here is a small sample of some of my favorites:

    • Gorilla gorilla (Western gorilla)
    • Dives dives (melodious blackbird)
    • Iguana iguana (American iguana)
    • Anthrax anthrax (bee fly)
    • Lactarius lactarius (False trevally)

    False trevally is a pretty interesting story. It is a fish that looks like a trevally, but is not actually related to them. It belongs to an entirely different family (Lactariidae) of which it is the only member. And yes, I am aware that whole story has nothing to do with cardinals.

    The northern cardinal is the state bird of seven U.S. states, more than any other bird. They are also very defensive, known to attack their own reflection in a window. Maybe that is why so many teams use them as a mascot. Cardinals also love eating sunflower seeds, so you should use them in your feeder. Maybe I need a feeder, maybe then birds wouldn’t actively avoid me while my camera is in my hand.

    I also saw the remains of this old horse trainer’s cabin. Now is the portion of this post where I regale you with a tiny bit of central Texas history. McKinney Falls is named for Thomas McKinney, who built his homestead there in the mid-nineteenth century. McKinney was a businessman and entrepreneur who helped fund the Texas Revolution in 1835-36. He then became a politician and served in the Texas House of Representatives. He enjoyed raising and riding horses, which explains the horse trainer’s cabin on his property.

    McKinney sided with the Confederacy during the Civil War and ultimately got ruined when the South was defeated. He lost his fourteen slaves, which made it way harder for him to raise and train horses. That’s a shame. Anyway, he died in debt and in 1976 his old stomping grounds became a state park.

    McKinney’s homestead sat at the confluence of Onion Creek and Williamson Creek. Williamson Creek is named for Robert McAlpin Williamson, who is also the namesake of Williamson County, which sits immediately to the north of Travis County. A noted jurist and politician, Williamson was reportedly the first white man to ever learn to play the banjo. He was also known as “Three-Legged Willie” because of his enormous schlong. Okay, actually it was because he used a prosthetic wooden leg due to a childhood illness. You can see why he got the name if you check out his statue in Georgetown.

    But never let the truth get in the way of a good story. For all we know, he was packing some epically oversized man-meat. Everything is bigger in Texas after all.

    I got some nice shots of the creek as well as a shot of a golf course on the other side of the creek from the park. I probably wasn’t supposed to go onto the golf course, but I am a rebel like that.

    Lastly, as I was getting ready to hike out I caught a massive break from the universe. This one bird just decided to plop down on the top of a tree right next to me. Right at the top where no branches or leaves could block it. And it just sat there and let me take picture upon picture of it. This little birdie definitely wins star of the show for the entire trip.

    I am not 100% sure, but I’m reasonably comfortable saying this is a northern mockingbird. That is the official state bird of six states, second most in the USA. In addition to mimicking other birds, they can also imitate frogs, toads, and music. As far as diet, they prefer insects and fruit.

    I had the good sense to know when I was ahead and quickly leave the park after that. I’m pleased as punch with how all my gear held up over the weekend. Eager to try another overnight in colder conditions or maybe even rain to test my gear, and myself, even more.

  • Birdwatching 101

    Since I have been walking far more than usual I feel qualified to serve as an expert on being outside. Let me tell you, the outdoors has a lot of things going for it. One thing not in its favor is that it is boring as shit. When it comes to entertainment, indoors beats outdoors by KO in the very first round. Think Ronda Rousey vs Gina Carano. Inside, I have my computer with blazing fast internet access. Streaming MLB Network and full audio for all 30 teams. Xbox series X. As Jimmy Buffet would say “an air conditioner for when I’m hot, a radiator for when I’m not”. All a person could ask for.

    Outdoors has grass and sidewalks. Clouds and the relentless scorching sun and the outside of buildings that are temperature controlled only on the inside. All things that are fine the first few times you see them. But the three thousandth? Not so much. I never saw a tree that could play Disco Elysium or listened to Songs In The Key Of Life from a conch shell. The fact that being outdoors often sucks is making it tougher and tougher for me to properly train. I am in need of a solution. Something I can do outside that can compare in some small way to binge watching Abby Labar on Quick Pitch or DarkViperAU on YouTube.

    After looking over some new outdoor hobbies for all of fourteen minutes I decided to take up birdwatching. You should have been able to deduce that from my post title. As with anything new I attempt nowadays, the first thing I did after making my decision was to head over to the r/birdwatching subreddit. Those guys don’t make birding seem that hard. You go outside. You see cool birds. You photograph them. You figure out what kind of bird they are. All you need to get started is the ability to leave your house (check), a pair of binoculars (check), and a camera phone (check). I can handle this.

    So the very first thing I noticed is that birds are really fast. And jumpy. If you get close to one and then try to whip out your phone to take a picture they will inevitably get spooked and fly off at 100 mph. I searched on the internet for the best way to overcome this. I searched for things like “how to get close to birds and take pictures without them noticing you”. I found one interesting site by a British guy. It got kind of weird and pervy. Not much I could use in my birdwatching life, but maybe some pointers I can add to my everyday life as a weirdo.

    As I’ve mentioned before, I am a crappy photographer with a crappy camera on a crappy phone. It has only been since I took up birding that I realized I’ve been using my camera zoom incorrectly. The camera UI has a button that says “1X” for the zoom and when you push it the camera zooms in and it says “2X”. Push it again and it goes back to saying “1X”. Therefore, I logically assumed my camera could only zoom in 2X.

    Not so fast my friend. It turns out you can use your fingers to unpinch the camera and extend the zoom up to “4X”. There is a trade off in quality at that zoom level. Considering how poorly my pictures normally look it doesn’t take a rocket scientist to realize the pics I’m about to show you look like they were taken with a tiny hole cut into a shoebox. You have been warned.

    First up we have to choose the humble pigeon. The most ubiquitous of all the urban birds. I was able to get lots of shots of these guys in their natural habitat like gas stations, power lines, and big puddles in parking lots. Because of their ubiquity, you’d be excused for dismissing pigeons as uninteresting creatures. But they are actually fascinating birds with a complex social structure and unusual quirks, as shown in this documentary from last year on PBS.

    For example, both parents are able to feed their chicks a form of milk that they produce from a gland in their throat called a crop. Pigeons also are able to … WAIT, WHAT? Milk from a pigeon? I thought only mammals made milk. Do pigeons have nipples? Can Greg milk them?

    Pigeons are one of a few types of birds that produce crop milk. Both sexes secrete this fluid which contains IgA and is high in protein, just like mammalian milk. Crop milk production begins just before the chicks hatch and it looks sort of like cottage cheese. There is no proof to the rumor that raw crop milk is a nutritional panacea or that it is a great way to wash down your daily dose of ivermectin.

    These are some interesting shots I got of a white pigeon. I saw this one sitting in a doorway and expected it to fly away when I took my camera out. Far from it. This little birdie basically sat there and posed for me. They did their little turn on the catwalk and everything. I actually started to get scared that they were injured and unable to fly away. That was not the case though, as they eventually flew off after getting bored of hitting various poses.

    Next up we highlight the grackle. This bird is also common in urban settings and fairly unfazed by human activity. This allowed me to get closer to these birds than any others. You’ll recognize this bird by its dark, shiny, iridescent coat and the fact that it sounds like someone started a jet-powered lawnmower in your yard. The big, dark ones are the males. Females have a more muted, brown tone and are significantly smaller.

    Here is a group shot of multiple birds I captured in a picturesque urban setting. A Valero parking lot off of I-35.

    Lastly here are some pictures of white-winged doves. If you are only familiar with these animals from Stevie Nicks lyrics it will surprise you to see that they are basically brown as dirt.

    When they are perched you can only see a very small portion of their white feathers. Once they take flight, the white pops out and creates a staggering visual. Of course, I am not yet advanced enough to get pictures of moving birds so I’ll need you to take my word for it. Actually, never mind, I can just link to some pictures someone else has taken to show you what I mean. Much easier.

    Thus concludes introductory birdwatching. I feel like I am now ready to start photographing some of the many jays, woodpeckers, and owls in central Texas. I need to continue improving in a hurry because fall migration begins as early as mid-August and should peak around October in this area. With any luck by then I will be able to apply everything I’ve learned and capture even the most elusive of birds.

    It’s Abby Labar! From that joke earlier! What a bird!