Austin received some much-needed rain this week. The Austin American-Statesman reports that at least four inches fell overnight, with some areas receiving considerably more. Flooding continues to be a concern this morning and some outlying school districts are closed today.

Bands of thunderstorms starting moving through downtown Austin yesterday morning and continued overnight. Yesterday afternoon one of the storms brought pea-sized hail to the downtown area.

Lady Bird Lake always turns muddy with silt and debris after a hard rain. But eventually everything floats downstream or sinks to the bottom.

Two weeks ago I was out at Lake Travis in the Spicewood area. Lake Travis is two lakes upstream from downtown Austin and provides Austin’s drinking supply. (Lake Austin is next downstream in the Highland Lakes system, and then Lady Bird Lake which runs through downtown.) Lake Travis looked more like “River Travis.” The shoreline was over a half-mile away from where it used to be. The Lower Colorado River Authority projects that Central Texas will continue to be in an extreme drought situation in 2012. We will need a lot more rain before Lake Travis starts to fill up again.

Recently I’ve noticed more grackles around the lake. I thought that maybe they had migrated over the summer, but local NPR station KUT says that grackles live here year-round. They are more noticeable in the winter because they haven’t scattered to nest.

Grackles are smaller than crows and thrive in urban areas. They are a nuisance in many parts of Austin. That huge flock at the old Highland Mall on Airport Boulevard was pretty scary. In 2010, the City of Austin started a project to discourage grackles from hanging out downtown. I don’t know how successful this has been, but I would love to see the bird patrol squad “armed with large green laser pointers, similar in appearance to radar guns and set to a frequency particularly annoying to grackles.” That also sounds pretty scary.

While I’m writing about grackles, I must mention that I had one land on my head, just a block away from our apartment building. Fortunately the bird flew away before I realized what had happened. I quickly looked around to see if anyone else had noticed, but the street was deserted. The bird left nothing behind, if you know what I mean.

I have one more exciting bird-related activity to relate. As I was walking around Auditorium Shores this week, I finally saw some of the feral parrots that live downtown. These are Monk Parakeets, also known as Quaker Parrots. Their nest is in a cell tower near the Austin Amtrak station. I was glad to see that they were holding their own with those nasty grackles.

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I don’t consider myself a bird watcher. But when a bird is watching me, I feel obligated to watch back.

Last week I walked into our apartment’s living room with a “someone is looking at me” feeling. Sure enough, a hawk was staring in at me from our balcony railing. We watched each other for about five minutes before the hawk flew off.

I suspect this might be a juvenile Sharp-Shinned or Cooper’s Hawk. Any help from my readers?

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