Friends of Lake Kirby

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Abilene, TX
Friends of Lake Kirby

This conservation effort is viewed as enhancing the current activities at the lake and park such as sports, picnicking, fishing, and youth activities.

The mission for Lake Kirby Nature Park is to improve and expand the conservation efforts, educational programs, and family friendly recreation of this valuable resource for the enjoyment of all visitors. Portions of Lake Kirby Park are envisioned as a conservation area by a group of Abilene civic leaders, educators, environmentalists and bird watching enthusiasts under the auspices of the West Texas Science Center. Other appropriate uses would be hiking and cycling with improved facilities and specialized areas.

09/14/2026

Purple Eryngo and yellow Grey Gold Aster are the two dominant wildflowers currently in bloom in Kirby Park's very dry and drab landscape. The Grey Gold Aster is even looking stressed! Not much else happening at this time of late summer.

09/12/2026

Lots of dragonfly action this week at Kirby! Female Blue Dasher dragonfly along the Kirby Park lakeshore. Females have a yellow-striped thorax/abdomen and reddish eyes. Males have a blue abdomen when mature.

09/11/2026

A Snowy Egret foraging earlier this week at Kirby. They are interesting to observe as they actively use their feet to paddle, shuffle, and scratch the bottom to stir up their prey. In contrast, Great Blue Herons are ambush predators and wait patiently for prey.

09/10/2026

Pack your saddlebags! This is a Red Saddlebags dragonfly I photographed this week on the east side of Kirby Lake. The dark markings at the base of the broad hindwings are the saddlebags. I found a swarm of them flying incessantly and then perching briefly before taking off again.

09/09/2026

One of the few species continuing to bloom in the September heat. This is a humble little member of the sunflower family called Curly-Cup Gumweed. It's a common invader of disturbed sites and is mixed in with other weedy "invaders" like Johnson Grass that are all doing well at Kirby with the hot and overly dry weather we are now having. The leaves are sticky and aromatic. Even though Curly-Cup Gumweed does not have the most positive reputation, it is still a native species that provides numerous seeds for quail, dove, and some songbirds during a time of the year when other wildflowers and their seeds are not very abundant.

09/08/2026

Focus is on pink this morning with examples of the amazing plant diversity at Kirby! Here are a few images of wildflowers from earlier this year. Pictured are Texas Bindweed, American Basketflower, Texas Skeleton Plant, Catclaw Sensitive Briar, and Pink Evening Primrose.

09/05/2026

Carolina Snailseed, sometimes called Coralvine or Coralbead. The mature fruit-containing berries are bright red, which indicates not only a mature fruit (the berry) but also a mature seed inside. Most of the berries will remain on the vine until we get a hard freeze (or two) which will take the leaves off the vine. Once the leaves are gone that's when the birds go to town! Snailseed vine is not to be confused with another similar vine called Greenbriar, which we also have in the Park. We will talk about this in a future post.

09/04/2026

Yellow-shouldered Drone Fly on a Curlycup Gumweed flower head. Drone flies are mimics of honeybees. However, unlike honeybees, drone flies have only one pair of wings and lack a stinger. The brown and orange markings makes it look like a male honeybee to help avoid predators while searching for nectar among flowers.

09/02/2026

False Indigo comprises a good bit of the vegetation that is found along and near the bank of Lake Kirby’s east side. Many of these shrubs are six to eight feet tall and often mix in with button bush, mesquite, elm, and hackberry trees to form Kirby’s larger bank side plants. False Indigo can be very showy when lots of flowers appear. This native Texas species is a member of the bean family and would probably do well in a garden setting. This plant serves as a larval host for the Silver-spotted Skipper butterfly.

09/01/2026

This Longhorn Beetle caught my attention while I was exploring a patch of Prairie Coneflowers back in late spring. This adult is feeding on pollen and maybe some of the petals on this flower. You can't see it in my photo, but the eyes are notched and actually wrap around the base of the antennae. Longhorns are members of a beetle family that has over 20,000 species described worldwide and close to 1100 species in North America. In fact, 1 out of every 4 animals on earth is a beetle with maybe 3 million species worldwide. That's a lot of beetle diversity!

Address

5650 Maple Street
Abilene, TX
79602

Website

http://www.wtsciencecenter.org/lakekirby

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