Comments (0) Best Place to Watch Wildlife in the Urban Jungle - 2006

Kilmarnock Ditch

This man-made Brays Bayou feeder teems with wildlife both native and exotic. From the levee that protects the western edge of the Ayrshire subdivision you can gaze down on a usually sluggish (and, truth be told, smelly and trash-strewn) stream full of minnows, frogs, snakes and three kinds of turtle -- black-and-yellow sliders, prehistoric-looking (and surprisingly speedy) softshells and vicious snappers. Herons and egrets wade the muddy waters in search of aquatic snacks, while glossy brown nutria loll about in the ponds. Night brings owls, opossums and raccoons, and just across the ditch lies a 500-foot-wide CenterPoint Energy/Union Pacific easement, an oddly pastoral strip in which horses graze and green and gray Argentine monk parakeets nest, all under the watchful eyes of wheeling hawks. Sure, the arboretum is cleaner and shadier, and Brazos Bend has gators, but Kilmarnock Ditch makes up for that by being more unknown and infinitely more surreal.