DFW Urban Wildlife

Dateline – Spring, Summer, Fall 2019 – Denton County

EDITOR’s NOTE: This is a followup to an earlier article… This Place in the Woods – Deep Winter and Early Spring. In this post I will be sharing more trail camera pictures taken in the same general location as those from the previous article. What has changed in the interim? The seasons! Lets’s take a look at how the turning of the calendar pages affects the daily lives of DFW forest fauna as we leave winter behind, and enter spring, summer, then fall…

You drive by these bottomlands everyday on your way into work—what I mean by that is that there are places just like this one all across the metroplex. Riparian woods hug the Trinity River and its tributaries. They nestle up against our reservoirs. They grow up thick on nearly every forgotten and neglected plot of bottomland in the Dallas/Fort Worth area. Together they form a network of rich nature areas spreading throughout the metroplex.

You may notice these mini-wildernesses while driving through Dallas/Fort Worth on your daily business—there are more of these types of nature areas than you might first expect. The pictures I am going to share with you here could have been taken in any one of them. Behind the veil of leafy-green you will find the daily drama of a menagerie of wildlife going about its business—the unforgiving business of survival.

Spring

I used several different trail camera sets for this project. Each was placed with framing and composition in mind. The most important consideration, though, was ensuring that our native urban wildlife appeared in front of the camera as often as possible. Spring showers turned much of this forest into a temporary bog, as shallow pools of water collected all along the bottomlands, creating numerous unique environs. The water would stand well into summer, before finally succumbing to the intense heat. Here’s how the wildlife responded in the meanwhile…

Summer

As spring became summer, many of these spots became verdant oases of deep, rich greens, and dappled lighting effects. Some of the resulting photos were stunning.

One hope I had was that as the offspring born earlier in the spring, would begin to accompany their mothers as they grew and became stronger. There was some of that, but not nearly as much as I had expected—an outcome that was informative in and of itself…

Fall

In North Texas it take many long weeks for the dog days of summer to give way to the cooler weather of fall. When the changeover finally happens, it is a great relief to all DFW residents—human and wildlife alike. White-tailed Deer activity, in particular, picks up as the bucks prepare for the coming rut…

The Walk in and the Walk Out

As always, the walk to and from my trail camera sets often include interesting wildlife encounters as well. I always carry my point and shoot camera with me just in case…