Ennis Bluebonnet Trails 2016: Animals

After some great shots at sunrise on my trip to Ennis last Saturday, I was ready to move on to the "gravy" portion of my visit. As in, any other good pictures I might get would just be gravy.

Gravy turned out to be right around the bend in the form of this adorable miniature donkey, whose name I would later learn is Sylvester.

I learned the donkey's name from this wonderful gentleman, who was filling barrels with oats for people to feed to the Belgian Horses.  I thought that was just awesome.  So did the Belgians.

"Anybody want to feed a real, live Belgian Horse?  Anyone at all?"

"Be patient, son.  You're embarrassing yourself."

Across the street from the Belgians was this lone donkey.  A passing jogger told me its mate had recently died, and it was very lonely, and it would be great if I could go over and pet it.  Which I did.  And I brought it some oats.  I couldn't tell if any of that made it happy or not.

One of the most Texas things I've ever seen: An old wooden fence adorned by a cattle skull, with a mockingbird perched on top.

At least one of these Longhorns had the good manners to say "Cheese" while I took their picture.

I stopped along the road to shoot some wildflowers, and heard rustling in a nearby tree.  It turned out to be a large flock of Cedar Waxwings.  I couldn't get close enough to them for a decent individual shot before they flew off in a whir of wings.  But here are about 40 of them while they didn't consider me a threat.

I saw a couple of Scissor-tailed Flycatchers over the course of the day, back from the tropics and looking for insects to catch.

Still more to come!