Still Having Nature Thrills

My idea of a thrill may not be yours. For me, seeing a new natural environment with new flora and fauna is often thrilling to me. Today’s field trip was to Ringtail Ridge Natural area, west of San Marcos. What an interesting spot!

We did a Bioblitz as part of the Texas Master Naturalist annual meeting set up by the Nature Trackers staff. The park was big enough that we could all disperse and not be on top of each other. I ended up with three excellent birders, and a good time was had by all.

We heard and saw warblers, a Kestrel, and many Black-crested Titmice. Finding interesting plants was a little harder, because it’s so dry right now, but we could tell this place is beautiful in spring and early summer. The topography was interesting, with many berms and old stone walls.

Most of the thrills came from insects, which we found plenty of. There were so many common mestra butterflies that in one place it looked like fairies having a convention. There were also many goatweed leaf wings and caterpillars galore. One caterpillar was huge. It looked like a big ole hotdog chomping on a vine. It’s a future Vine sphinx moth. Spectacular!

We also found nests and not just bird nests! There were many turtle nests, too, with little eggshells. We had fun.

Eventually we returned to the hotel, where I did two normal conference sessions, one on how to have difficult discussions as Master Naturalists and one on nightjars (like Chuck-will’s widows and nighthawks. Such interesting and little studied birds.

The dinner presentation was by Jeff Gessas, one of the leaders of the leaders of yesterday’s moving session. I loved watching him talk, as he reminded me so much of my estranged older son, also a philosopher. Geez. They’re the same age. Still, I learned a lot that resonated with me.

It was a fun day, and I even got to hang out with folks from my chapter a bit!