Insect Sightings – Page 12 – The Hermits' Rest

Book Report: Navigating Rocky Terrain

I got this book, with the complete title of Navigating Rocky Terrain: Caves, Karsts, and the Soul of Unseen Spaces, at the Texas Master Naturalist Annual Meeting last week. It’s a 2024 book by Laurie Roath Frazier, a fellow Master Naturalist in the chapter that hosted the meeting. She wrote the essay collection while dealing with a series of the holes her losses caused in her life by finding healing in the cracks and crevices of the Texas Hill Country, a landscape very familiar to me, where I also found comfort in hard times.

Since I’m also a huge fan of the unique features of the karst formations I lived in for 25 years, I figured I’d enjoy reading about Roath’s quests and observations. I didn’t expect to be so moved by her work with her inner rocky terrain. It reminded me so much of when my life was fractured by divorce, mental health challenges (mine and a child’s), and fear for the future.

She’s a good writer, though I wish there was more of an arc connecting the essays and that there was some resolution to pieces of her life—like, what happened with her birth family? But I enjoyed both the personal parts and the more scientific information about caves, limestone, bats, lakes, and crevices. And of course, it was nice to read about the Sacred Springs in San Marcos, where I’d just had such a moving experience.

If you’re a fan of nature, geology, or personal growth, you’ll enjoy this little book and support a Master Naturalist!

I hope to share it with friends!

Something else I’ll treasure from the meeting last week: I now can tell you that this is a female house fly. Yep. Males’ eyes look like one big eye.

Why Is Common Mestra So Common This Year?

The Common Mestra (Mestra amymone) is a butterfly I’ve been seeing very often this autumn. I went on and on about it the first time I saw one.

Since then, they’ve been everywhere, including parks I’ve visited, flitting here and there and enjoying the broomweed and frog fruit in particular. I’d never seen them before this year.

It’s pretty and orange on the underwings.

I’ve been trying to get better pictures of them, since I wanted to write about them. However, they are very busy looking for nectar or places to lay eggs, or something. I wonder if they’re able to find what they need, with no rain here all month.

You wouldn’t know it, but there are at least a half dozen in this photo of the Hermits’ Rest woods.

I looked up information on these delicate beauties. These Mestra live from our area down through Panama.

According to the descriptions in various websites, they like lantana flowers, but those are no longer blooming here. I go to wondering about their lifecycle this week as we saw dozens of Mestra at the Springtail Ridge hike.

This one shows the orange border nicely.

One of the women I was BioBlitzing with found a resource that said their host plant is Tragia or noseburn. I hadn’t looked up the common name for Tragia when I first read up on these butterflies. Suddenly it all made sense.

*Tragia urticifolia*, or Nettleleaf Noseburn growing in our woods.

This year was a really good one for this plant thanks to having more rain this summer than usual. This may have meant more Mestra eggs hatched this year than usual. All the women I talked to live in central Texas where there was this same rain pattern. They’ve all seen more of these than usual. One woman who’s been in Texas a long time remembered another year with lots of Mestra, then they went away until this year.

My guess is that good years for noseburn (not our most pleasant plant otherwise) mean good years for Common Mestra. I’ll be on the lookout next year to see if this is true.

After I got home from San Marcos, I was happy to get home to my birds and woods. I even heard a Swainson’s Hawk to greet me. I spent an hour or so taking photos of pollinators, since the Bioblitz ends today. I found more butterflies than I’ve been seeing lately, plus bees and wasps.

I look forward to a week with my dog and horse buddies and to ordering reading material to supplement what I learned last week, like Val Plumwood, Paul Taylor, and Paul Shepherd. I wrote those here so I won’t lose their names.

I Love to Walk, but

What is your favorite form of physical exercise?

Yes. Walking is my favorite exercise. That’s clear to anyone who reads this little blog. Second is horseback riding. You get exercise and don’t even notice, because your brain is so engaged.

I get itchy if I don’t get my walking in. That became very obvious when I had Covid and in the weeks afterwards when my stamina left. However, today I did a LOT of sitting, since this was the only day of the Texas Master Naturalist Annual Meeting when I didn’t have any field sessions. I walked around the hotel as fast as I could and got out for a ten-minute walk between sessions. Better than nothing, though, and it helped me make my move goal.

The oak tree I found in the parking lot is not native. It’s a Mexican white oak.

Let me say this; it was worth sitting around all day. I learned so much that I’ll use in the future today! This has really been a great conference, which I’m glad for since I’ve had to miss another conference with many friends.

Two of the sessions I attended were about interpretation. My mom would be pleased, since she always thought I was going to school to be an interpreter (I was a linguistics major). Note that the sessions were about interpretation of nature or historical locations. I want to be better at leading nature and bird walks at our new bird sanctuary.

Levels of experience you can help people achieve.

I have good ideas for stories I can tell to facilitate learning in different audiences.

Two other sessions I attended were about creatures I’m fond of, spiders and flies. Both were by the same woman, a nature writer whose stuff I’m familiar with from the Texas Parks and Wildlife magazine, Sheryl Smith-Rodgers. She’s entertaining, though her presentations are relentlessly paced. I could have used more depth.

I especially liked some of her videos, many of which she took herself. There was one on a peacock spider that was extra cute, and one extreme closeup video of a mosquito (which is a fly) getting blood out of someone. It was both fascinating and nauseating.

The other thing I learned was how to tell a male from a female fly. Females have a gap between their compound eyes.

I wish I had videos of these presentations so I could look at the pictures more.

Another session I learned a lot from was on what lives in the aquifer under San Marcos. They get samples of what comes up from an old artesian well and analyze them.

I knew vaguely that there were blind cave salamanders, but, wow, there are all sorts of living things under the water in the limestone. It ranges from shrimp to snails to relatives of pill bugs. They’re all blind and colorless.

I think my brain got full today. I’m glad I could just enjoy dinner with nice folks, including my chapter friend Linda Jo. They gave out many, many awards, and I got to stand up for hitting 1,000 volunteer hours last year. Of course, that was dwarfed by two guys who hit 30,000 hours. Linda Jo and I think we started too late to get to that one. Also, we have other things in our lives.

Our program got an international award, though, and our bat monitoring program was voted the best master naturalist program in the US. Impressed.

I’ve had a darned good time even if I didn’t get much exercise today. I do look forward to heading home tomorrow to find out how the animals and people are holding up.

Look! Clouds! Maybe someday soon it will rain.

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.

This velvet-leaf mallow really has velvety leaves.

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!

Our little contingent managed to get together.

Working for a Good Cause and Making New Friends

Whew. I’m a tired gal. But it was fun getting that way and I was rewarded with a pleasant evening.

It’s time for the Texas Master Naturalist Annual Meeting. So I drove to the Shield Ranch somewhere in Southwest Travis County or Hays County to start my activities. I didn’t really know what I was getting into, but it looked like an interesting spot in the field session description.

It had an interesting stump that looks like an animal head.

When I got there (after having to go through rush hour in west Austin) I found that the session included doing some dirty work. And there I was in my white shirt. Silly me.

That’s me in the white shirt holding the seed sack.

But we intrepid volunteers all had a good time, I think. We prepared ground with topsoil and composted horse manure (much lifting, wheelbarrow wrangling, raking and mixing). I mostly threw native plant seeds appropriate to the part of the world where the ranch is on top of that mix. It sounds easy but that seed bucket was heavy. My left arm is telling me that, right now.

Seed buckets. There was also rye grass seed.

Once that was done, mulch was used to hide the seeds from birds. This was on the roadside, where plants have not been growing. It should be really nice if it ever rains the seeds in. We did well!

After the work, we ate our sack lunches in the impressive dining pavilion. It’s all solar powered and all the water is harvested rainwater. There’s no air conditioning, but it was perfectly pleasant inside. And at one end was a garage door of windows that could be cranked open, to be replaced by screens. Very clever.

I ate with a very nice older woman named Annie who was Texan in the best way, full of stories of her farm upbringing and funny relatives. I just had the nicest time talking to her.

Beautiful little bluestem prairie area as seen from the garage doors.

After we ate we went on tour of the site, which hosts camps for underprivileged young people, we took a hike along the creek then up the escarpment to see the meadows. There were many interesting plants, though they were pretty shriveled from the drought.

Oh, I meant to mention that a Master Naturalist chapter did the welcoming and very decorative plantings around the facility. It’s all native plants, teeming with life, but as attractive as a traditional landscape. They did great work. photos are above.

The drive to San Marcos, where the meeting is being held, was quite enjoyable, mostly on back roads. There were many huge ranches with ornate fencing and gates. Combined with their concrete driveways, you knew lots of money was being used for these spreads. Also there were numerous neighborhoods of very large homes. Land must be less expensive in the Buda area.

When the hour-long drive ended, I collapsed in my very comfy room. It’s a corner suite, which matters because I’m at one of those atrium hotels with all the echoes. Most suites have windows facing the hallway, which is loud. Mine looks out in the back (quiet) side of the hotel, where I can see how much the area has grown since I came here 15 years or so ago for a UU women’s conference. I feel old!

I did venture back out, because we get two free drinks per night! I’m so glad I did, because I ended up talking to the woman in front of me in the drinks line for a long time. We ended up having a great conversation about all sorts of things, even horses! She’s learning dressage. I couldn’t have had a nicer time.

Now I hope I can sleep. I didn’t last night! That was inconvenient insomnia. Tomorrow’s field session involves mindfulness and wetlands. Hmm. And later, glass-bottom boats at the beautiful former Aquarena Springs.

Die Moths, Die!

You thought I was such a peaceful, nonviolent person. I am, or I try to be. But I have my limits. Pantry moths have always pushed my limits, and lately they have made the Hermits’ Rest much less restful.

They sure can reproduce! AI prompt: create a romantic image of pantry moths.

We always have a few pantry moths, because they come in with food. We try to seal or put in the fridge things we know they love, but we mess up. I’m just not great at cleaning every square inch of pantry, and some containers I think are airtight turn out otherwise. Sigh. There’s a reason, says the Wikipedia article on Indian meal moths:

The larvae of this species have the ability to bite through plastic and cardboard so even sealed containers may be infested.

Oh. Turns out my nemesis is not from India. There’s something called Indian meal. I didn’t know that, either. It loves grains, nuts, flour, bread and cloth. No wonder moths showed up in the bedroom closet..

The issue is that some dog food bag that Lee bought had a lot of moths in it. And they bred like crazy. We’d be watching television with moths distracting us. I’d go to bed and have to slap moths attracted to my phone. They were in the shower. And the toilet (at least those were dead). They were everywhere. Yuck.

My friend Pamela told me about a product that worked for her, but I kept forgetting to order it. Last week I finally remembered. Every day I told the family the moth death was coming. Yes, I wanted to kill. Not very Buddhist of me.

Great name, huh. Notice I bought a bunch of them. Amazon Prime Deal Days!

But I’m willing to give up a bit of karma to live a home life with only an occasional pantry moth. I opened the box and set out the traps. Apparently, sexy moth pheromones immediately began wafting around the pantry, kitchen, living room…and everywhere.

Five minutes after setting the trap out.

Interesting fact: the sexy traps only attract male moths. But without the males, they can’t breed. The literature said that we’d still see some females and new ones after the last eggs hatch, but soon we’d be ok.

The results have been better than I expected. I don’t see a flutter of moths every time I walk into a room. The bathroom mirror has zero resting moths. The television is watchable (unless Dallas Cowboys are playing).

This is only in 24 hours! Dear readers, if you have even an average pantry moth problem, clean the cabinets then order Dr. Killigan’s. He also has a product for the evil moths that eat wool, say, your handmade socks and the yarn to make them. I have experience with these, too. I bought a few of these murder by smell devices, just in case the ones upstairs are that kind.

I really didn’t expect such as improvement so quickly. I’ve only seen a couple of moths today. What a relief. I’m a killer, I know. But I’m pretty sure there are plenty of others out there, probably in another bag of dog food.

I have no idea what that AI bag is supposed to say.

From Birds to Bravery

I’m tired so this is quick. The two halves of my day differed greatly. In the first half, I spent a few hours at the Wild Wings Bird Sanctuary with Ann. We got some excellent new birds to add to the list of sightings there, and did a bit of Bioblitz action as well.

We spent time with Gene and Cindy, who were working at selling chickens until we got to them to talk about wild birds. We went over designs for interesting benches to put out in the seating area to replace some rickety ones.

This is a Leopold bench, named after a famous naturalist who made them for bird watching.

We also talked about a logo. I’d used the AI software they want us to use at work to generate a few ideas. We are going with this one, with different colors.

It should be legible and look good in monochrome.

After all our decisions, I went into Cameron to the annual Steak Stein and Wine event. I got a couple of holiday gifts, which I’m proud of. Such a planner! And I got kettle corn, a snow cone, and later a peach Bellini, frozen. Mm.

As always, I enjoyed the car show. This is a Morris pickup truck conversion. Ooh. Want.

But I also was brave. I supported my friends y volunteering at the booth for the county Democratic Party. Why did I do this, if I’m avoiding politics? Honestly, it’s to let others know we are here and just normal people. We had no candidate signs or pamphlets, just a code you could scan to sign up for the mailing list. Mostly people ignored us or were polite, and we had a few nice conversations. Only after the drinking started did one guy get ugly, and I was gone by then.

I am proud for not totally hiding, to maybe encourage others to not be afraid. You shouldn’t be afraid in this country. I’m still going to respect your opinions if they differ from mine, especially if you’ve thought it out. we need to respect each other!

The event also included giant Dairy Queen treats!

I got to have dinner (the steak part of the festival) with family and workers at our nephew’s business. That means I got to see and talk to my son! And the food was better this year, especially the mashed potatoes.

All in all, it was a good, but long, day. I enjoyed seeing friends and acquaintances and was brave!

Bonus pretty photos to follow.

What? It All Worked Out?

It happens all the time to me. I get perturbed about a situation, but if I just give myself time, I can figure out a solution. I need to remember this for future perturbations.

I’ve no idea if I used perturbation right. But here’s a cute Fiery Skipper in a salt marsh aster.

Yesterday I found out my roommate for the upcoming Master Naturalist annual meeting had decided to get a room to herself. Now, as Suna, I would be hypocritical if I didn’t applaud someone who wanted to room alone. Heck, this was the first year I’d wanted a roommate, and I go on long trips alone. I get wanting a place to decompress!

This Dusky Skipper is here to tell you it’s time for the 2024 Texas Pollinator Bioblitz, so there will be many insects and flowering plants in here for the next few days.

The problem was that I’d messed up when registering for my hotel room. Because I wanted to arrive Wednesday, a day the hotel is full, I couldn’t use hotel points and had to reserve a full price. Then I realized I’d forgotten to book Saturday night. So, it was working out to be an expensive mess and I considered canceling, since I’ll have no one to hang out with.

I could hang with this guy. What an interesting wasp. It’s a Five-banded Thynnid wasp, I think.

But I thought, and thought, and at last my brain woke up and gave me the inspiration to contact Hilton customer support. So I got through to their Diamond member customer support. I told the agent my situation and she said she thought she could fix it. It took a while, but she was able to apply points for three of the nights, and get me the less expensive conference rate for that pesky Wednesday night (it’s still over $200—no wonder most of my colleagues aren’t going). To top it off, she exchanged my standard two-queen room for my favorite: the king corner suite. I just couldn’t stop thanking that nice and competent worker. She got a great review from me!

I’m happy as a Phaon Crescent that’s avoided the local Phoebes.

I felt like things took a turn for the better last night when I got a text from Tarrin after I’d already gone to bed. She said to go outside quickly. So I did. There was the aurora borealis dimly shining in the north! It may have been pale, but I’d never seen it before! And it looked really cool in photos.

I got all weepy and giddy at the same time. I’d always wanted to see the Northern Lights. Now I don’t have to go to Iceland to do it. Lee enjoyed it, too. I really should have texted others, but I was too awestruck. I’m glad Tarrin texted!

Bucket Lust (Anita said I had to leave this good typo) complete. That was the only thing left on it, now that I’ve also seen the Grand Canyon.

I’d also been sort of pouty that I had no one to do fun things with tomorrow afternoon, but now I do! I’m going to the Wild Wings Bird Sanctuary to do my October bird count and should find friends there, then I’ll go help another group at the yearly Steak Stein and Wine event downtown. I’m glad they asked. I’m a sucker for feeling needed.

I’m also a sucker for gifts of flowers. Lee got me a chrysanthemum a couple of days ago. This, however, is feverfew.

Plus, I get to eat the steak dinner, because a space became available. I was ok not going, but it will be nice to go after all and see my son as a bonus.

Don’t be pouty! A beautiful moment might be coming right up.

The moral of today is to quit being pouty. Things will work out, or a better alternative will arise if you remember to make your own fun!

Now to keep on Bioblitzing…

Sometimes It’s the Little Things

What’s something you would attempt if you were guaranteed not to fail.

The first thing that popped into my head when I saw this prompt was that I’d love to canter on one of my horses, to see what it feels like and finally go sorta fast. That’s just a little thing, but I’ve not moved forward in my skills enough to do it on Drew and Apache hasn’t moved forward in his skills enough. The one time I tried I ended up on the ground. I’m trying not to let myself get discouraged and enjoy the journey. But I’m human.

And I’m just a horse who won’t take my meds.

Little things can be good, though. For example, at the end of the work day I’d gotten to a good stopping point, and was looking out over my laptop as I sat at my porch “desk.” Something moved suddenly.

It was this absolutely adorable jumping spider, Phidippus arizonensis. I watched as it explored my laptop then jumped onto my mouse and checked out all my stuff. It waved its first legs around as it explored, and moved its mouthparts like it was tasting the air.

Okay, I think it’s a male. It has bulbous pedipalps. Those are the things that stick out in front.

I can see why people have jumping spiders as pets, because this fellow was very entertaining and not at all concerned by my presence. I prefer them in the wild, but I do enjoy the bold jumping spider who lives in the mailbox.

One of many around here. Too bad you can’t see the cool green eyes.

I’d never seen an arizonensis before, so I looked it up. It’s definitely confined to this part of the world.

I had the best time watching this spider. That’s living for the moment. Mindfulness for the win.

I did not enjoy observing this one. A black horsefly.

Another little thing that made my day was just watching the dogs play. With all the medical issues in our canine community it’s easy to forget the happy, healthy ones. Carlton and Penney love it when I’m outside so they can run and play with an audience!

Time to get some rest and talk to my high school friends in Florida who are going through the hurricane. I do keep up!

Carlton is ahead of me in the sleep department. He’s already dreaming.

The Thrill of Discovery

I think the reason I like to travel around and look for birds is that I get such a great feeling when I find a new one or a beautiful collection. I feel a refreshing rush of adrenaline and a glimmer of joy every time. You don’t get that many chances for those feelings!

You’re welcome for that feeling, Suna, says the White Ibis.

Today’s walk around 40 Acre Lake gave me plenty of reasons to glow and grin. I’d never seen a White Ibis outside of a zoo before, so the ones I got up close to and saw flying today were quite special.

Another sighting that took my breath away was an American Bittern. I think I saw one in South Carolina a few years ago, but this one was close. They are so stripey!

The lake had more of the Yellow-crowned Night Herons that Brazos Bend State Park is known for. One juvenile made fun faces at me.

Another bird I enjoyed were the Snowy Egrets. They are so dainty and busy. I saw many of them catching food, flying around, and squabbling.

After the lake I checked out some huge live oaks. They bring me a different feeling. I feel at peace around them. I guess it comes from hugging so many as a child.

I left the trails and headed back, but just had to stop on the roadside by the swamp snag area where all the birds hang out. There were dozens of Great Egrets, Snowy Egrets, Ibis, Little Blue Herons, and Gallinules. They’re lurking in these photos.

What you don’t see is the small flock of Roseate Spoonbills I saw flying. I got to see them with the binoculars, too. The only other times I’ve seen them was flying over the Interstate in Mississippi and the one that visited our pond with some storks on the most exciting ranch birding day ever. No photos, so here’s the only alligator I saw on this visit.

And now I’m back home, though I discovered jury duty was canceled. Back to work. But let me leave you with some pretty sights. I need them, so maybe you do, too. I’m tired of being bombarded with negativity in media, so let me provide you with an alternative.