Master Naturalists – Page 14 – The Hermits' Rest

Rare Friend Sighting! Plus, More Hens

This will be a fun weekend! It’s already been great, because I got to go meet my friend Janet at Bird and Bee Farm, because she needed new hens. Her “ladies” are all retired. I’ve known Janet since soon after I moved to Austin, and we have had many adventures together. Many adventures. She now lives in Groesbeck with her partner and horses, just far enough away to make visiting not too easy. So, we haven’t seen each other in a while.

So, we were glad to see each other at the chicken farm. I showed Janet all the hard work our Master Naturalist team had done with the Wildscape project, and she really liked some of Catherine and Rosie’s great recycled decor ideas.

This chair fountain’s particularly cute.

I was all excited about some butterflies, and tried really hard to get good pictures, but these pipevine swallowtails are not the kind that sits still. My best picture had something weird in the background.

It was one of the resident guinea fowl, just clucking away at me and peeping over the flowers.

Eventually we got in, after we convinced Gene I wasn’t here just for Master Naturalist stuff. Janet was after black hens, because apparently hawks don’t go after them, because they look like crows, and crows are mean to hawks. Huh. She got three young Jersey Giants and three australorps, all lovely and dusky beauties.

Native Rio Grande turkeys, since I didn’t get photos of Janet’s new pullets.

Well, I couldn’t exactly go there and come up empty handed, especially since our hen to rooster ratio is so low. I needed three hens. Conveniently, the oldest pullets they had were beautiful, as well. They are called Blue Star or Sapphire Gem, and apparently are a new heat-tolerant breed from Czech breeders. I got two of them, one of which has some gold in her neck feathers. She’s Star and the other is Sapphire. I am not creative today.

At least one is in the sun here. That’s Star.
Sapphire is in front. Bruce wants some action.
You can sorta see the pretty feathers.

My favorite thing about them is that they are large. They won’t have to stay separated too long, though they need growth food another month or two. They have beautiful dark brown eyes, too.

The other pullet I got is a Welsummer, which I had one of before in my first batch, but didn’t last too long due to the owl. No owl will get Butternut, though! She’s safe with us in the cage. I love her buttery yellow legs, which gave her the name, and she has cool light brown eyes that match her body feathers. She’s a bit smaller than the other two, and pretty friendly.

I’ll need to re-hook the water hose, and maybe move one of the pipe feeders over to the baby area, but otherwise, they should be fine. Now if I can just figure out how to stop Clarence from crowing under Jim’s RV. That has to be loud!

Anyhow, it was wonderful to catch up with Janet, who I’m going to spend more time with not on a mission very soon. We just wish we could set and eat a meal together, but neither of us wants to chance the germs.

Hey, Hay!

I think the long saga of me needing hay for Apache is over for a while, at least. It’s nice to have kind Master Naturalist friends to come to my rescue.

I thought I was getting square bales from Pamela, who lives nearby, but it turned out her baling guy would make no fewer than 200 bales (understandably). I just don’t have the funds for that.

So then my other Master Naturalist friend, Cindy, said she had some old hay for my preferred price (her new hay was too expensive, and besides, the older the better for Apache). That’s probably the best for us, anyway.

So, after work, Chris and I took a trailer down to Cindy’s place, which is even more beautiful than I imagined. It’s a Suna Dream Property. While I enjoyed her Tennessee Walking Horses, Chris loaded the hay with the help of another Master Naturalist, Sam, and another nice helper.

They’d already taken the hay out of the hayloft, so it went quickly.

We got to look around and chat, too, which was so nice. I miss my friends! It was worth sweating away in masks! It’s a fine bonus to getting the hay. Also, I was so busy looking around and chatting that I didn’t get many pictures.

I also didn’t get any pictures of unloading the hay. At least here’s a picture or two of the loaded hay.

I went to get Lee’s brother a burger, and the onion rings took so long that I totally missed unloading the hay! But the food was good, so yay. And I did get photos of the beautiful stacks Chris made.

Speaking of beautiful, I tried to get a gorgeous picture of Fiona and yet another fine sunset, but every time I stepped back to take a picture, she followed me. This is my best try!

By the way, my friends’ beautiful horse property is for sale. Want to bring your horses and come live near me?

I May Never Sleep Again

I was telling Lee how glad I was that all the Master Naturalist stuff has helped me be less squeamish about bugs. I’d just seen a dead bug on the floor and stopped to pick it up and take a picture.

We went outside (even though it was 99 F today), I checked my rocking chair for black widows, and I proceeded to look the insect up in iNaturalist. Oh, look, that one was easy! Let’s read all about it.

It’s a WHAT? It bites WHERE? It does THAT to people? It was in my HOUSE?

Nature, I love you. But I’d sure rather keep my distance from some of your creations, even if I’m a Naturalist.

If you see the eastern blood-sucking conenose, remove it from your home.

Its name is nowhere near as funny as yesterday’s grasshoppers. Texas. Everything not only bites or stings, but some of it sucks. On the other hand, I have a new thing to tell jerks: “Don’t be a bloodsucking conenose!”

I put it on my altar to represent darkness. Next to snake stuff.

Ick. So, what’s the most disgusting thing at YOUR house?

Grasshopper Names Are Majestic

Not much is going on this weekend. I had two good rides on Apache, and Sara helped me figure out the last thing I needed to keep progress going, which was shorter reins.

Other than that, I’ve been watching summer insects. I’m still trying to get better photos. Perhaps I should try the real camera again.

I did get some reasonable photos today, when looking at a friend’s garden.

As I uploaded them to iNaturalist, I was thoroughly entertained by the common names of the grasshoppers. They are so creative and grand. Here are some names:

Admirable grasshopper

Ponderous Spur-throatedgrasshopper

Differential grasshopper

Devastating grasshopper

Barbarian grasshopper

Wrinkled grasshopper

Boopedon (my favorite)

Prairie boopie

Plains lubber grasshopper

Grizzly Spur-throat grasshopper

Two-striped slant-faced grasshopper

Obscure grasshopper

What cool names, huh? Maybe I’ll find some of these. And maybe someone will help me ID them.

Texas, Where Almost Everything Bites

Today I have a hodgepodge of stuff to share, but first I want to talk about what’s lurking around the ranch these days. That would be things that bite, and things that jump. Yesterday, I went to sit down on one of the front-porch rocking chairs, when I saw something on the seat.

I am very glad she was pre-dead, and that I saw her before I sat. Certainly it confirms my habit of checking for creatures before plopping down anywhere around the Hermits’ Rest! I’m not sure what kind of widow spider she was, but I don’t want any of them biting me. These are the main reason I continue to support having pest control come around the house.

The second reason is scorpions, which I haven’t seen any of, but Lee and Kathleen have killed a few. I love them out in the woods, but not in the house. And I love the spiders, but not ones that could really mess with my health.

I’ve apparently become allergic to mosquito bites, and they make huge welts, so I could do without those right now, too. And biting flies! Argh. There are black flies around here, and horse flies (thankfully not around ME), and deer flies. Whatever. One of them bit me on my FACE this morning. That could have to do with how much poop we have at the ranch

Nonetheless, I am heartily enjoying discussing different kinds of flies and grasshoppers and stuff with Eric in our Master Naturalist class. He not only has good eye for finding them, but he has a good camera, and the patience to work hard to identify them.

Eric wrote me an email today about the coolest thing he saw (a “mystical experience,” in his words), which was he was trying to photograph a large grasshopper:

It jumped off the path into the high grass and when it landed it appeared to turn into at least a dozen tiny projectiles which flew off in all directions like a firework. A closer look uncovered a great concentration of grasshopper nymphs in the area.
Eric N., email 6/6/2020

Of course, he didn’t get a picture, but WOW, what an image!

My grasshopper experience this morning was also something you couldn’t photograph. I was walking back from horse riding (it went well), noticing that it’s definitely grasshopper season. Then I noticed the sound. As I walked, I was disturbing dozens and dozens of them (small ones, since they aren’t adult yet), and my walk seemed to have a rhythm section accompanying it. Tap, tap, tap, tap, tap-tap-tap.

I k now a lot of people don’t like grasshoppers (like my sister), and I admit they are annoying in the summers when there are hundreds pelting me as I drive the utility vehicle. At least they don’t bite often or hard. But they are so varied and interesting. I have an AWFUL time photographing them, so I think I’m going to get a good butterfly net soon, so I can get some to hold still.

That’s blurry
That’s blurry
I can’t find anything in this picture.

What Doesn’t Bite?

Roaches. Secretly, I have never been fond of roaches, due to childhood trauma, but I am doing better since I started doing iNaturalist. I recently even found one I thought was interesting to look at. It also lived outdoors, where it should.

Fairly attractive pale-bordered field cockroach

And non-venomous snakes don’t bite humans, often anyway. So, I was sad to see this one in the road this morning. Rat snakes are my buddies as long as they aren’t eating my hens’ eggs.

Okay, time to go see what’s outside that will hurt in some other way…

How Many Invasive Species Did I Find?

Last week I had a lot of Master Naturalist fun participating in the Texas Invasive Species BioBlitz 2020 that got set up by Texas Nature Trackers. You may remember I talked about it a bit last week. The idea was to see how many observations you could get from a list of invasive species found throughout the state. I knew I had easy access to a few, so I figured I’d try.

I got a good number of invasives pretty quickly, since I knew right where there was some Arundo donax (river cane), Johnson grass, and a lot of nandina on my own properties. I must have spent 3 hours the first weekend looking for invasives (and observing lots of other things, too).

Arundo donax
Common dandelion
Common lantana
Johnson grass (with prickly pear)
Glossy privet
Nandina (heavenly bamboo)
Bad photo of common hedge parsley

By the time I went to Austin on Tuesday, I was doing okay on the leaderboard. Just a few walks around the neighborhood of Bobcat Run produced more “goodies” like Japanese honeysuckle and privets.

By the time the week was over, I was proud to be in the top twenty of number of species observed, and doing okay with number of observations as well.

Here I am, number 17, and Linda Jo number 2 (I couldn’t fit number 1 on the screen, darn it.)

Of course, my fellow Chapter member Linda Jo Conn was in second place in number of observations and first place for species. Some other guy had way more observations, because he had multiple photos of some of the species. I did a few, like things I saw both in Austin and Cameron, or ones in distinct locations. However, I could have ROCKED the numbers by just walking across the lawn and taking pictures of Bermuda grass (I would NOT do such a thing, of course).

Regrets

Darn the luck! The day after the bioblitz was over, I drove down a street I don’t usually go by, and there were a whole bunch of mimosa trees taunting me with their fluffy pinkness. Argh!

Beautiful invasive mimosa tree, just one block off of where I usually drive every day.

Then, yesterday I walked to the horse barn (I’d been driving our utility vehicle because I have a sore tendon), and right on the side of the driveway was a cheerful annual bastard cabbage/ wild mustard plant. I’d been looking and looking for one, because I knew they were there! So, that’s two more I could have found if I’d been a bit more diligent.

What Did I Learn?

I think the project did what it was intended to do: it got me much more aware of invasive species wherever I saw them, and because I kept talking about it to friends and family, I raised awareness as well. That’s exactly the kind of thing I want to be doing as a Master Naturalist.

Oh, and also, I had fun. What have been your fun projects while we’ve been not gathering in large groups and such?

Serpentine Visitor

I miss all the good stuff. Last night at the ranch, while Vlassic and I were safely snoozing in our Austin bed, the ranch dogs started barking like crazy and would not stop. Lee got up and looked out the front door but couldn’t see anything.

They continued to bark, and apparently the whole family yelled at them a lot.

Then, as Lee and Chris were going to bed, they found out what all the ruckus was about: a three-foot plain-bellied water snake. According to eye witnesses, all the dogs were hiding around the corner, in order of size, with Alfred peeking his head out, barking and ducking back behind a wall. The rest were his backups.

Head of snake. Chris graciously fished it out of the dumpster for me.

Chris got the snake out with a broom, then it chased him, then he took his machete (I do not know where that came from unless it was MY machete that I won in some raffle once) and made the snake dead. Boo hoo. I was not there to convince them the snake wasn’t venomous.

The family believed it was a water moccasin, due to its head, which is all mushed up at this point, so the pit viperness is obscured. It does look a little triangular to me, too. I’m glad my iNaturalist friend aguilita identified it for me quickly as a regular ole water snake. In any case, it doesn’t belong indoors.

They think it must have come in when the wind blew the back door open. We are all glad the dogs didn’t go sniff it, since there are a lot of dogs getting bitten these days (Cathy J of Master Naturalists reported one rattlesnake bite and one copperhead bite just last week). Ah, rural Texas.

Vlassic, mighty disappointed that all he got out of this incident was a bit of dead snake smell.

I’m so glad to be back in Cameron. I’m also very glad to have naturalists who will help with identifying wildlife!

The Little Garden That Could

It’s been so much fun checking out what’s growing in my tiny garden outside my office. Every day, there’s a little bit more to see in and around it. This little space supports so much life!

This morning, I found the Inca doves poking around in the area where there’s dirt. I wondered where they were living, and then they were kind enough to show me! They have a nest right above our carport light! I love these birds, because they are calm, busy, and beautiful when they fly. The underside of their wings is a russet red, which makes them easy to identify, and looks beautiful.

I looked a little closer before I went into the office, and saw even more life, on a tiny scale. I saw something yellow on the milkweed plant and was all excited that it might be monarch eggs or something, but when I got closer, the yellow dots moved. They are very bright aphids with little black legs. Turns out they are oleander aphids, which are also, conveniently enough, known as milkweed aphids. Well, the plants are supporting their tiny life, so I let them keep sucking away.

MMMMMilkweed! (I don’t know what the black aphids are)

Over to the left, something moved on a common lantana flower (which Linda Jo, my iNaturalist identifier, called “not one of the good ones”). There was a tiny, tiny fly. It has stripes that make it look like a bee or wasp, but it’s one of the little flies that lives on nectar from flowers, a calligrapher fly. I guess it does look like it has writing on it!

I can’t write calligraphy, but I am pretty.

And finally, when I stood up, I saw one little dayflower that did not look like all its beautiful blue friends. It’s a white sport! I love it when I find the oddballs of nature smiling up at me.

What a great way to start one’s day, just noticing the bounty of life around me. This really is a little garden that could…be full of life!

What about me? I’m living in the little garden, too!

One More

I have to share, because it’s so pretty, this black swallowtail caterpillar on my bronze fennel plant at the ranch (one of two herbs that didn’t die in my planter). I’m so happy to support future beautiful butterflies!

I’m pretty even before metamorphosis! And this fennel is delish!

What Passes for Excitement

Today I went somewhere! I saw people! I did a good deed. And I stayed safe, especially considering the true dearth of infected people in this county.

Last week, a woman contacted me about a lot of things that one of the founders of our Master Naturalist chapter had been storing when she died. This woman, KB, as I’ll call her, was one of those people who are the backbone of an organization.

KB kept all the materials at her house, planned numerous events, workshops, and activities for the group, and apparently was a ton of fun, to top it all off. She was a prolific writer and note-taker, plus took lots of pictures. She had an entire room full of materials. After she passed away, the chapter wasn’t able to get the majority of her things, and I heard many expressions of regret.

Obviously, we were all excited when the woman who’s with KB’s husband gave us some of her old shirts. Then she wanted to let us look through more stuff that they’d made easier to go through. I didn’t feel qualified to do this, since I showed up in the sad, post-KB year.

I gave her a couple of names, and she got in touch with Phyllis, our previous chapter president. Our board agreed we should go over, and I offered to go along, since there was supposedly lots of stuff.

Neither Phyllis nor I had gone anywhere other than to get food since March, so we both really enjoyed the drive over to the property. It was full of native trees and plants, and Phyllis said she was glad they’d mowed. It may have been too natural for most people during KB’s time.

I know it was hard on Phyllis to go through all the many notebooks, notes, and other materials. I found the easy things like posters and signs, and was thrilled that the legendary mussel collection was intact. We did keep some collections and drawings to show our newer members. They were meticulous and awesome. This woman was a true citizen scientist.

It turned out that KB’s former husband and his current partner were very gracious hosts, so we got to tour their gardens and workshops. I was in awe. Nothing was fancy, but it was so interesting! Both of them are really creative. I even loved the chicken coop.

Then we toured the house, made much less fun by wearing masks. You know, you read about “farmhouse chic” a lot. Well, this is an actual chic farmhouse. Everywhere I turned there was an idea I wanted to try. Each room was more charming than the previous one. It was a comfortable home just full of old things being used as they always had, along with creatively repurposed stuff.

That was fun. I really enjoyed meeting new people and chatting. I probably won’t do it again for a while, but that was nice.

This is made from the light part of an old fan.

What stuff have you been doing that’s more fun than it should be? Have you taken a drive?

Earth Day at 50

As a certified Master Naturalist, I am obliged to acknowledge that today’s the 50th anniversary of Earth Day. As a human being, I relish the opportunity to dwell on my concerns about the planet we all share and to remind myself to keep doing the things I do to help our green and blue mother stay a welcoming home for us all.

Thanks, Earth, for bringing us sights like this. Photo by *@simogarb via Twenty20*.

It’s hard to think about the Big Picture when so much little stuff is on our minds. But, it can do us a lot of good, too. We get presents from the Earth every day. Surely we can give back some, too!

This is little quaking grass. It’s seed-heads look like rattlesnake tails, or tiny Christmas trees to me. Behind it is our doggy swimming hole, which is FULL of tadpoles right now. Thanks, Earth!

What Can You Do?

Sure, we’re all avoiding big gatherings, so our Master Naturalist chapter isn’t doing an event like we usually do (actually, we’d canceled anyway). But the internet is just full of ideas. Here are some things I’ve read as well as my own suggestions:

Do some of these great ideas from the Kresge Foundation. They include live virtual events, social media ideas, and even a musical playlist.
Read a book! Head on over to my Book Reports Page and find one of the many nature books I’ve recommended over the past two years, or go ahead and get Nature’s Best Hope. We all need that inspiration sometimes, and reading takes our minds off “stuff.”
Go outside! Take a walk with your eyes, your ears, and your mind open to what the Earth has to share with you. Do you hear birds, squirrels, dogs, or coyotes? Do you see butterflies and moths? Are there plants growing in all sorts of places you don’t normally see? Make a list; you might be surprised at what the Earth has for you, no matter where you are.
Share with others. Remind people you know that it’s Earth Day and that they can do something to help. Use Facebook, Twitter, Snapchat, email, your Zoom meetings…whatever! Word of mouth is always the best way to encourage new learning.
Start a new tradition. My friend Donna just told me that she has planted a tree every single Earth Day for the past 50 years. Hers is already in the ground. You can start your own Earth Day practice now!
Recycle something. Even better, re-use something you already have. I’ve made chicken feed scoops from plastic containers that have lasted months and months. I’m saving wine bottles and corks for projects (can’t wait for all my shiny bottle trees to start sprouting!). Let us know what YOU do!

Venus’ looking glass was my gift from the Earth yesterday.

I hope that’s given you some ways to celebrate Earth Day from the comfort of your property. The Earth is our home, and it never hearts to tidy her up, make her beautiful, and keep her safe.

Happy Earth Day #50!