acorns big and small

I like picking up different things when I go out with my dog for walks. One of my favorite things in the fall is finding & comparing different kinds of acorns. I've read there are more than 400 different kinds of oak trees, and I suppose there are almost as many different kinds of acorns. These two big acorns are easy: they're from a bur oak. I used to collect dozens of these for a co-worker to take home to his daughters, and they would make little "rasta people" from them. I still pick them up out of habit and because they're interesting to look at. Lately my dog Kiera has taken to circling and re-circling the bur oaks at a nearby park on the off chance she'll scare up a squirrel. They're up in the trees, alright, but usually they're smart enough to stay up there. They like to drop (or throw?) their half-eaten acorns and woe to any unfortunate dog-moms (me) standing below. Those acorns are deadly little missiles.

The little acorn may be from a shumard oak, but it could be from a nuttall oak. Next time after things dry out a bit from our recent heavy rain I'll pick up some leaves to help identify it.

Springtime visitors

Hyles lineata

Warm weather is bringing out lots of wildlife! Thursday I spotted a hummingbird, so I made a sugar-water mixture and hung the feeder up. At least one hummer has been back to feed from it.

About a year and a half back (September 2016) I found a Rustic Sphinx moth resting on the brick exterior of my house. Yesterday I found a different large moth - a White-lined Sphinx. It wasn't as large as the Rustic sphinx, but was still pretty impressive.




Tonight I captured a Carolina Wolf Spider that had got in the house. I released it into the back yard; there's probably more food available for it outside.

the little monster

Doesn't this look like some cute little shaggy dog you'd love to pet?
Don't Do It!

This is the furry puss caterpillar of Megalopyge opercularis, the Southern Flannel Moth, and it is considered to be the most venomous caterpillar in the United States.

Must be the season for me to see weird bugs

As I've learned from experience, if a caterpillar is fuzzy, spiky, or begging to be petted, you should avoid it like the plague or be prepared to face Pain. Or as WIRED put it: Never Touch Anything That Looks Like Donald Trump's Hair.


This worm had an interesting brown stripe along its back, which included the tail. Looked like a Mohawk haircut. It was crawling around the withered top of a spider lily in my back yard, perhaps looking for a place to attach itself prior to morph into THIS.

I got a short video of this creature on my phone but forgot & turned it the wrong way.  When I went back outside to redo the video the critter had vanished.  So, apologies for making you turn sideways to view it.

Spiny Backed Orb Weaver

Gasteracantha cancriformis

Earlier in the week it was Spider Lillies, now it's an actual Spider. Another first for me, seeing one of these "smiley face" spiders in real life. This one is pretty small, maybe 1/4 inch in diameter. I almost missed the spider, but couldn't miss the beautiful web.

the sphinx

The biggest moth I think I have ever seen was resting against the side of my house yesterday. It stayed there for several hours and was back again this morning. It is a Rustic Sphinx (Manduca rustica).

What is the Sphinx trying to tell me?


 

more yellow birds

American goldfinch - Spinus tristus - Bell County, Texas

It seems most of the winter visitors here are little yellow birds; finches and warblers. I've rarely seen goldfinches in their brightest colors in Texas; by the time they are turning bright gold they're ready to return to their homes in the north. I've seen 3 or 4 individuals foraging together this year.

Goldfinch & Cardinal - Bell County, Texas

The cardinals are here all year. A few days ago I saw four males and four females foraging together in the front yard, so there are at least eight individuals frequenting the feeders.

Pine Warbler

Setophaga pinus - Bell County, Texas

I've been trying for a few weeks to get a clear shot of this winter visitor, as they aren't all that common in this area. I wish the sun had been brighter as the bird is so bright it looks like someone dipped it in powdered sulfur.

sunday wildlife report

I've been finding a lot of small white broken eggshells on my walks lately. I'm pretty sure they come from the nests of white-wing doves. Today I found part of a beautiful blue robin's egg. There was a time when seeing a robin in Texas seemed a rare sight. When I was little my family lived in Seattle, where robins were common, and I missed them when we moved to Texas. Now I see them in many places in North and Central Texas. I used to be sad when I saw a broken eggshell because I thought it had fallen out of the nest, then I found out it's a sign that a baby bird has hatched. The parent bird cleans the nest by throwing away the eggshell. Here's a time lapse of a baby Robin hatching and the adult bird tossing out the eggshell

Yesterday I found a good-size red-eared slider turtle in my neighbor's front yard. Its shell was about ten inches (25 cm) in diameter, so it was at least an adult. It seemed to be going somewhere, and I hope it gets there safely. I would have liked to bring it home with me, but I don't have a pond in my yard. Maybe someday.......

(c) Matthew High, some rights reserved (CC BY-NC)

I have a couple of Texas spiny lizards living in my back yard. I'm pretty sure one of them lives under the tool shed, but I've seen them often lately either scrambling up the wooden fence or catching bugs in the tallow tree. They will let me get fairly close, within two feet, probably because they can escape so quickly. One of these days I hope to get a good photo of one of them. They are one of my favorite little dinosaurs.

Itsy Bitsy Spiders

It's been overcast and cloudy most mornings lately, but a few days ago the sun shone brightly on half a dozen dewy spider webs in one of the crape myrtles. What was odd to me was that most of the webs were built horizontally or at 45 degree angles. The web in this photo is the only one that was built vertically. Like the other webs it's only about six inches in diameter. Each web was guarded at its perimeter by a small (and quick) greenish-yellow spider,  with a narrow body and very long front legs. They were too fast and too small for me to photograph, but I'm pretty sure they were some kind of Long-Jawed Orb Weaver or Tetragnathid, sometimes called Stretch Spiders. I like finding the names of my garden's inhabitants.

invasion of the yellow-rumped warblers

For the second time in a week a small flock of 10-15 of these cute little critters descended on the back yard. Mostly they foraged in the grass or on the bare branches of a chinese tallow tree that has a few seeds still hanging on it. I snapped a few photos and I'm trying to figure out how to attach them to my observation checklist at ebird. I only discovered the site a few months ago; it's a great place to see what kind of birds other people may have spotted in your area.

Land Slug

This blog seems to have changed into "Fifi's Garden Adventures". I'm spending a lot more time outside gardening & discovering new creatures & I'm too lazy to write about them in a journal. Plus I'd have to lug the laptop into my office, connect to the printer, and print a photo to remind me what I'm writing about. Too much work after working in the yard. (I had the chain saw out one day, the axe another day - dang! it wears me out.)

Couple days back I turned over a rock and found this slug. First one I have seen in many years. We have tons of snails here, and I saw lots of snails at various places I lived in North Texas, but never a slug. When I was a kid in Seattle we saw lots of slugs but not snails. We used to pour salt on them and watch them dissolve. Apparently it's an old tradition in some parts. I didn't salt this one though. I read that some of their deadliest enemies are the larvae of lightning bugs, and there are plenty of those around, so I'll let nature take its course.

caterpillar season

Hungry caterpillars everywhere on my sunflower! I've been trimming more and more spent flowers from the 7 ft. tall sunflower in the back yard and thinking how life is slowing down after two weeks of temperatures hovering near 100 degrees. And then I spotted the caterpillars. Not just one or two, but dozens of them, voraciously devouring the leaves on the sunflower plant. Usually when I see a lot of caterpillars they are the "bad" kind, but these particular creepycrawlies will turn into a pretty orange and black butterfly called the Border Patch Butterfly (Chlosyne lacinia). It's also called the Sunflower Patch because one of its favorite host plants is the sunflower. I've seen a few of these butterflies, but they have been too fast for me to catch with my camera.

You can see the ragged edge where this caterpillar has been chomping away at a leaf.

This one chews from the underside of the leaf. You can see from these few photos there is quite a lot of variation in the colors of these caterpillars.  Soon these little guys will attach themselves to the undersides of the sunflower leaves and form themselves into chrysalises, if they don't get eaten by the cardinal who seems to have found them. Maybe I'll be lucky enough to see butterflies emerge in a few weeks.

Bring me the sunflower crazed with the love of light

  -- Eugenio Montale

And life itself exhaling that central breath!

Top: The seed packet said Maximillian Sunflower (Helianthus maximilianii) but none of the pictures I found on the internet look like this. Plant is about 6 feet tall and flowers are about 5 inches wide.

Bottom: A "volunteer" sunflower, planted by birds, with Western Tiger Swallowtail. Probably a Common Sunflower (Helianthus annuus).  Flowers 4 to 4 1/2 inches wide. This plant is about 7 feet tall and has 40-50 blossoms on it, with more on the way.

little mocker

Young mockingbird almost ready to fly. Look at those short little tail feathers! My dog will be a happier puppy when she has her special corner in the back yard to herself again. Her favorite spot is apparently too close to the mockingbird nest (even though it's on the other side of the fence), and lately the adult mockingbirds keep swooping down to peck her on the back.

Charlotte's Web

 

This small argiope spider spun her web in a red rose bush in my backyard.  Google says this is the largest spider most folks in the U.S. will ever see, obviously not written by someone living in tarantula territory. This was a small spider, only about 1.5 inches long including its legs. I learned it is also called "the writing spider" and that its baby spiders disperse on the wind with fine web "parachutes". I suddenly realized this is the spider of Charlotte's Web. Only the female argiopes have this particular pattern and color, and only the females spin such distinctive webs, so I know this is a girl spider, like Charlotte. Maybe she will write me a message one day!

ode to a toad

"That afternoon the dream of the toads rang through the elms by Little River and affected the thoughts of men, though they were not conscious that they heard it."  -  Henry David Thoreau

We had a new visitor on the patio this morning. At first I thought it was a regular Texas Toad, but it seemed it little too yellow in color, so I went a googling.  I found out Texas Toads don't have a stripe down their back, and this one definitely does. It is a Gulf Coast Toad, Bufo valliceps valliceps. Even though we are pretty far inland, it's been so miserably hot & humid lately Bell County might could pass for Houston or Beaumont. I hope the toad stays in our back yard. It's currently taking refuge under the loose end of a bag of potting soil, but I put a broken terra cotta pot upside down nearby in case the toad would like a mini-cave.

See the stripe down the middle of the back and two lesser stripes on the sides above the legs? The other distinguishing trait it the deep "valley" between the toad's eyes.


I'll be listening this evening for toad songs.