Gene Hikes the Appalachian Trail

Tag: wildlife

  • Butler Bike Trail

    When a person from outside the Austin area thinks of Austin, they likely think about all of the sights you can find along the Butler Bike Trail. The kinds of spectacular shots of identifiable downtown landmarks you’d see in a show of the CSI/9-1-1/FBI -insert-your-city-name-here ilk, if there was such a show based in Austin. Wait a minute, there was a show called 9-1-1: Lone Star that was based in Austin. Their opening credits must have shown exactly the kinds of sights I’m thinking about. Let’s see that open.

    Okay. Never mind. That was pretty limp. If 9-1-1: Lone Star actually had an opening, it would show you the sort of things you think of when you think of Austin. And all those things can be seen along the Butler Bike Trail. Just trust me on this. So I threw on the backpack and went lakeside to check it out.

    Butler Bike Trail (officially the Ann and Roy Butler Hike-and-Bike Trail and Boardwalk At Lady Bird Lake — which rolls off the tongue) is a ten-mile loop along Lady Bird Lake between MoPac and Pleasant Valley Road. I went downtown and picked up the trail at mile zero near Auditorium Shores and hiked in the preferred clockwise direction because my OCD wouldn’t let me complete the loop in any other way.

    Almost exactly at the beginning I encountered my first outdoor fitness area. A decent enough spot with some pull-up bars, push-up bars, and abdominal exercise stations. It also had good sized trees nearby to provide some shade in midday.

    The keen-eyed among you will notice the Bird scooter on the left side of the picture above. I had to include that in the shot since I am now an amateur birdwatcher.

    Before I got too far into the trail, I had to take some shots of downtown. Since Austin is a city on the grow, most of what you see in the skyline is exceedingly new. In the picture on the left you can see Sail Tower on the far left; it looks like a sail. Moving right, you have Northshore, which is a high-end apartment building that looks like stair steps. On the right in the first picture and the left in the second picture is the W Hotel Austin. I’ve been on the roof there before. The views were nice and all but beer tasted the same as it does on ground level, and it’s much cheaper on the ground.

    Just under one mile into the trail I saw a sign for some exercise equipment just off the path. Of course I had to investigate.

    Not 100 yards off the trail I found another fitness area. Two in less than one mile!

    And was that a Swedish ladder I saw along with some rings, a dip station, rope ladder, and suspension trainers? Be still my heart! It had only been one mile, but so far this was the single greatest trail in the entire United States of America. The only thing that could have made this better would’ve been a stand with free beef jerky.

    Sadly, there was no beef jerky. I soon made my way to Lou Neff Point. The location is named for Barbara Louise Neff, who was a civic leader and held many positions with multiple entities such as being President of Austin High School PTA and Heritage Society. Lou Neff Point is a scenic vista where I got another good shot of downtown, although Mister Sun did his best to spoil the shot.

    The next couple of miles were uneventful. Just hiking along the shore, watching people, crossing over and under bridges. Spider webs covering almost everything. Notice how once I crossed over the MoPac bridge the maps on the mile markers flipped over. Not sure why that was necessary.

    Near the Central Library, I got a great look at two particularly photogenic Egyptian geese. I have to include a shot of them here since I am an expert birdwatcher.

    Egyptian geese are an invasive species that are not native to Texas. They are easily identified by the big brown spots around their eyes and colorful back feathers. They are also known to be aggressive when defending their area, to the point of trying to fight off drones. The two I saw were pretty chill and basically ignored me. They may have still been salty about their team blowing that lead against Argentina.

    Here is another shot of downtown that shows off a few different buildings. That super tall tower on the left is Waterline, Austin’s tallest building and her first to break 1000 feet. The buildings on the right are all part of the Rainey Street district. These include the tallest one on the right, which is 44 East.

    Between mile 5 and 6 I crossed under I-35 for the first time. While there I took some time to admire the never ending construction while resting on some park benches.

    Major construction of roadways always reminds me of the Big Dig. If that name sounds sort of familiar to you, but you aren’t sure why, that was the colloquial name given to the public works project that buried I-93 underneath Boston. This was in the nineties and early 2000s. It was contentious because it was largely paid for with federal government money. Meaning some guy in Iowa was getting hit with the tax hammer so some people in some place he had never been could get their city beautified. As someone who hates spending tax money and beauty, I always thought it was unfair for the Big Dig to be funded in such a way. Especially since delays and design flaws ballooned both the cost and the timeline.

    However, as someone who lived in Boston during and after the Big Dig, I have to say it was the most significant and positive change that occurred in The Hub the whole time I was there. It literally took a town that was cut in half by the elevated highway and stitched it back together into a walkable, pedestrian friendly city. It salvaged a mishmash of ancient streets that could not handle modern traffic and at least gave commuters a fighting chance to get home from work before bedtime. It also gave us the Zakim Bridge, which is exactly the kind of landmark you see on TV when they need to tell you their show is set in Boston.

    These old legs needed another break after mile 6, so I wandered just slightly off the trail at Longhorn Dam / Pleasant Valley Road and entered Krieg Athletic Complex. I ate a turkey and provolone sandwich and Great Value key lime yogurt that I had packed myself and then checked out the park. There were probably over a dozen softball fields as well as turf fields and volleyball fields. Lots of space for recreation and whatnot.

    The mile marker maps flipped back over again at mile 7, which meant I was getting close to the end of the sojourn. Here is one more shot of downtown from around that point on the trail. For those of you who want to know more about the diverse buildings of downtown, here is a good little story and quiz from our local NBC affiliate. For everyone else, I promise I will not mention the skyline again in this post.

    I was pleasantly surprised when I saw a third outdoor fitness station. This one was much like the first one, some pull-up bars and inclined ab locations.

    At this point I need to mention one extremely positive thing. Every single fitness station had a working water fountain. More than that, there were working water fountains all over the trail. And lots of working toilets spaced adequately so that it never seemed like you went more than a mile and change without coming across one. And the trail itself was as well kept as you could expect with thousands of yahoos like myself using it every day. Hats off to The Trail Conservancy and their Park Rangers and custodians and everyone involved with making sure that everything was in pristine condition. The effort was much appreciated.

    The homestretch of the trail included the Boardwalk. This reminded me of the Esplanade in Boston. The Esplanade was always a good place to go for a run or catch an event at the Hatch Shell or play ultimate along the Charles. I haven’t lived in Boston for thirteen years, so it was strange to think about it twice in one morning. At least both memories were positive.

    Sadly, my time on the Boardwalk was not all positive. The major drawback was that there was zero overhead cover from mean old Mister Sun. And it was a hot day. Everywhere else on the trail had access to a fair amount of tree cover and shade, but the Boardwalk had none of that. I’m not sure who made that decision, but it was an interesting choice. It definitely made me speed walk the end of my hike to get it over and go somewhere cool.

    I have one final picture that didn’t really fit in anywhere else in my story, but it needs to go somewhere. Here is a shot of four turtles on a log in the lake. Why are they there? What are they doing? Don’t know, don’t care. Enjoy.

  • 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!