dragonflies

Butterflies Are Tricky

Since I’m still feeling a bit under the weather I didn’t do much today. Luckily my favorite activity each morning is listening to birds and watching the wildlife behind our house. Paying attention is hard on the mind (sometimes) but easy on a weakened body.

The insects are enjoyable, and give me visual entertainment when I can’t see birds. There are always wasps and bees, along with flies, not all of whom are annoying (just most). It’s been a mediocre year for dragonflies — there have been years with more and years with less, but they’re always fun to watch.

Of concern this year, though, have been butterflies. Much of the spring and summer there really haven’t been as many as usual. The most prolific were the Gulf Fritillary contingent who love one of the spring vines.

I saw one today, but this is from spring

Next have been the clouded and Eufala skippers, who love the morning glories, of which I’ve shared many photos. Asters are doing a good job, too, as I shared recently.

For the last few days, though, I’m seeing a greater variety, ranging from tiny hairstreaks to large sulphurs and swallowtails. It sure was pleasant sitting in my chair and seeing a variety feeding on grass pollen. Too bad I decided not to move around and disturb them, because you’d have a lot to see! This hackberry emperor posed so beautifully on a corn leaf blown in from harvest that I had to capture it. That’s why we don’t eliminate hackberry trees!

I’ll feel better tomorrow and more up for photography. I’m sure they won’t all sneak away when they see me coming.

PS: Lee made me another book. The pages are thick watercolor paper. It was hard to sew, but he did a great job. The book opens nice and flat, too. He even stamped the cover with a sweet bow!

The Good Stuff: Equine Edition Plus

A little wiped out so I can’t write something long about comfort. So I’ll be brief but positive! This blog needs that, don’t you think?

I’m just pleased as punch to be able to announce that I’m in the best relationship yet with both my horses. That’s taken a lot of work and patience, but sure feels good. I’m glad my trainer works hard and is patient, too (plus she cares).

These are her filly and new calf. They have become playmates. It is extra cute.

It’s become a true pleasure to work with Apache. Funny story: I asked Tarrin if maybe something was wrong with him, because he’s been acting so laid back and agreeable. She laughed and said maybe I’m meeting my horse for the first time. He finally feels good and is showing his friendly and fun personality all the time, and he’s calm. We’ve both come a long way in that department. Dang, it’s fun to get better together.

I don’t have a photo of him today, so here are two more friends. They are good to each other.

And Drew is back to the horse I enjoyed so much before. Whatever he was angry about has passed, and he seems to feel better, too. I guess his shots are helping. I’m enjoying him rather than just working with him because I’m supposed to. I guess we figured things out.

Me riding Drew wherever I ask him to go. It was fun.

The good stuff plus today was that I managed to actually bring myself to reach out to someone about how bad I’ve been feeling lately. She listened, came up with ideas, and made some plans. It just felt good to explain how I feel and be listened to. That’s all I needed.

I’m going to have to find something fun to do this weekend, because we aren’t going camping as planned. The bedroom slide isn’t working in Seneca (Tarrin’s son looked at it but the easy possibility of a loose wire didn’t pan out). And I don’t want to leave the animals alone with just someone feeding them. At least I can ride the horses. My friendly, well behaved horses!

This female roseate skimmer reminds us that some change is good.

Sculptural Delights Plus Natural Beauty Equals a Good Saturday

Ah, It’s good to have a day off for fun and education. Today we enjoyed sleeping in a bit, then followed through with our plan to go back to scenic Brookgreen Gardens to see the new exhibit that was getting installed this week. We ended up seeing two new exhibits and lots of living wonders as well!

First off, we went to the beautiful butterfly exhibit, which was closed when we were at the Low Country Zoo last week. It’s always fun there, because there are beautiful flowers and water features in addition to all the butterflies.

They have different butterflies at different times of year, too, depending on what they have hatching. I can’t tell you what any of these are, because I don’t want to put them on iNaturalist. They aren’t wild. But they sure are pretty!

After the butterflies, we hopped back over to see the red wolves again, hoping maybe they’d be up to something this time. We lucked out, and while the female was just resting in the sun, the male came out of his giddy hole, walked around, then rolled and stretched for us. I guess that was enough of a show for him, because he went right back into his shady spot. We were lucky to see this!

We drove back to the main part of the gardens to see the first exhibit, which was the 90th National Sculpture Society awards exhibition. There were 42 works of art in the exhibit, which was narrows down from a couple of hundred entries. Only a small subset of these sculptures will be winners and exhibited in the NSS gallery in New York City later in the year.

We really enjoyed looking at the variety of entries and reading the stories the artists shared about their work. There were a lot of COVID themed works, and others with universal themes that really touched my heart.

I listened to a talk about some of the works by the curator of the museum, Robin Salmon. That was quite a privilege.

We went back to the same little restaurant we ate at last week, and had a good time visiting with the birds once again.

We also enjoyed lots of nature. There was a group of plants that was literally dancing with dragonflies. We must have watched them for five minutes, along with another couple. There were blue, orange, and yellow ones. Some of my photos have at least five in them!

We also got to see the resident alligator family (and hear them). First we saw the mother gator, who was hanging out in a small pond, then we saw two of her babies in a larger pond, hanging out with turtles. All the while we could hear other alligators nearby, but I decided not to be a dumb Master Naturalist and go look for them.

We ended up finding the other exhibit I was looking for, which was of Shona art from Zimbabwe. They used interesting stones, and I especially liked one that was completely different looking when it was polished versus unpolished. Many of the artists made people whose faces and body parts were polished, but their clothing was unpolished, and it was quite striking. I completely forgot to take any photos, but here’s a sample from the exhibition web page.

It’s just so lush and green at Brookgreen Gardens. I’m going to hold on to the image of all the green grass and the huge oaks when I go back to my crispy home.

When we got home, we napped, then headed down to the bar, where Kevin the bartender/history professor was kind enough to give me a pre-publication copy of his book on early Florida history, La Florida. I can’t wait to read it. I love an academic book with humor thrown in every so often, and I appreciate his perspective on the Spanish.

I also have the book from the NSS exhibit to enjoy, as well. It has interesting biographies of the sculptors.

Lee and I sure had a good day. And we had smoked salmon for dinner. That’s right. Indulged ourselves.

Bee Whisperer

Lately I attract bees. When I’m in the pool, honeybees land on me and drink drops of water off my skin. I do provide them with bowls of water with rocks in them, but I guess I’m more fun. They do tickle.

This is a long-legged fly, not a bee (*Condylostylus caudatus*), but it has a stinger.

I occasionally get a wasp, too. Nothing ever bites, since I sit still. I’m more choosy about wasps than bees.

These will not be allowed sit on my finger. Nor do they want to.

But today I made a new bee friend. She was a leaf cutter bee. She was so shiny!

She just kept buzzing me, so I stood still and let her explore. In return, I got to look at her up close enough to see her abdomen expand and contract, and her mouth parts checking me out.

Now she’s on my finger. I was trying to catch the iridescent shine on her wings.

She preferred my right hand, which made getting pictures harder, but that’s okay. I just enjoyed the interlude of peace. There are many similar bees, but I hope she’s the pugnacious leaf cutter bee (Megachile pugnata), because that’s such a fun name. Whatever she is, I adored her yellow belly.

I even made a video (with blurry parts), so you can see her pulsating.

Non pugnacious leaf cutter bee

It’s this, folks, that makes life worth living. Knowing we can connect like this with fellow inhabitants of our planet makes me feel whole, even in crazy times. There’s something new and unexpected everywhere you look.

Master Naturalist Meeting Notes 2: Saturday, October 22

Although I’m quite excited about migrating snout butterflies (hundreds) and sandhill cranes (dozens), I’ll share more that I learned last Saturday for now.

Insect Photography, by Mary Ann Melton

Insects are what I take photos of most, after plants. I enjoyed getting ideas from Mary Ann, who happened to be the speaker at our last Chapter Meeting. I was very happy that she gave tips for phone photos as well as camera ones.

I took photos of some of the ideas she shared, especially for digital cameras, in case I can ever get one. There was also a cool attachment that lets you take better close ups on the phone. Attaching that to the 3x camera on my phone should be fun to try.

I also just enjoyed her beautiful photos with nice blurry backgrounds so the subjects look better. This was fun.

Here Be Dragons! Odonata 101, by Brent Franklin

This was probably Brent’s first presentation, since he apologized a lot for its length and content. But it was just fine, and I learned a lot about dragonflies and damselflies, even though I thought I knew a lot. This guy has really seen a LOT of the Texas Odonata and has lots of insights on finding them and observing them.

He had some fantastic photos of various dragonflies, too. I learned more about their mating behavior (the male clamps on to the female behind her head and flies her around until they find a good egg-laying place) and life when young. I don’t think I’d realized how long they can live in the water before emerging into the air. It can be years!

There’s just so much going on with these guys. Did you know dragonfly eyes take up almost their whole head, while damselfly eyes are on stalks on the sides of their heads? Yep.

Sticking their back ends straight up is called obelisking. That’s a new word for me.

iNaturalist 301: Advanced Applications and Exploring Data in iNaturalist, by Tania Homayoun

I always feel like it’s not a good conference if I don’t go to a session by Tania. I think I’ve gone on a field trip with her or heard her speak at every conference I attended. I’m such a rogue iNat user that I don’t think she’s too impressed by me, but I’m impressed by her! This session didn’t disappoint, as I learned some new features in iNaturalist and that some features have gone away. I’m glad I was able to draw an area for our ranch before that was removed as an option because people were misusing it or something.

My latest iNat entry taken in glary sunlight. I think it’s a camelback cricket.

Since I’d spent all week uploading things for that Pollinator BioBlitz, it was good to just talk about it and to learn more about the computer application, which really lets you do useful things. I plan to download my ranch observation data soon and do some analysis in Excel.

I was sad to find out that Tania is leaving her position with Texas Nature Trackers, but very happy to discover it’s because she is going to be the State Ornithologist! WOW!

Wrens: Little Birds with Lots of Energy, by Scott Kiester

It turns out that the speaker for this session, the last one I attended, is the guy who drove us to the field trip on Thursday. He had lots and lots and lots of information on wrens, including fun recordings of the songs and “scolding calls” of each type.

Wren fact that blew my mind: there is only ONE kind of wren in the Old World, and they are pretty sure it crossed the Bering Strait and populated that part of the world from North America. There are many kinds of wrens here, though. We went through most of them in two hours, it seemed.

We also learned folk tales. The wren won kingship by hitchhiking on an eagle and jumping off it to become the highest flyer. Tricky bird.

I have a much better clue about wren identification now, and can easily tell you which one is a Bewick’s. By the way, their numbers are diminishing as some other wren takes over, and it’s pronounced like the Buick car. Huh.

The rest of the sessions on Saturday were about who won awards and honoring people with lots of volunteer hours. I sure wish Donna Lewis had been able to come so she could have received her 10,000 hour pin. That is a huge milestone. To compare, I have about 800 hours.

I’m sticking my crane photos and video from yesterday in here, in case you’re interested. Seeing them flying over is always a highlight of the autumn for me. I love the sounds they make.

Sandhill cranes on the move

Fall Fun

I’m saving conference memories until I can concentrate. I made it home to find that we had visitors and more coming. That’s fun!

Luckily I had a few minutes free to finish out the Pollinator BioBlitz. I hadn’t figured I’d see anything new, but I was happy to be surprised! I saw a new dragonfly, for one. It’s all black.

Plus I saw way more butterflies than I expected, including one I never got to hold still. I’m not sure which of the ones that look purple when they fly it is, it someone will correct it.

Plus, I saw a snout butterfly holding still, finally, and dozens of fiery skippers. And one more fritillary.

I was even more satisfied to finally get a clear photo of the bee fly who is always around the asters. Woo!

Well visitors are here. More later!

What’s Bugging Me

No, not people and what they do. It’s bugs. And they are bugging me in a good way, because at least they give me something to look at. There isn’t much else out here. People keep commenting about how quiet it s at night. Drought is no fun.

Thank you, Mr Widow Skimmer, for entertaining me today.

I’m so glad for the willow trees by our driveway, because they give me a shady place to enjoy insects when I go check the mail. Today there were many dragonflies, though I only got photos of three species.

I also saw a damselfly and a Halloween pennant, but they were too busy to stop. This one was very pretty, though it didn’t photograph well.

The widow skimmers were posing, though. I got enough closeups that you can see good details on both the males and females. the top four are the females.

I also see lots of wasps ever day. Usually it’s mud daubers, yellow jackets, and such, but I also see very pretty orangey-red wasps, and today one I don’t see much, black with a red abdomen.

Much brighter in sunlight, but it was hard to capture.

There are still birds around, but not in the usual numbers. There’s the woodpecker I always hear, a few remaining barn swallows, cardinals, mockingbirds and lots of thirsty starlings. The egrets and herons (blue and green) are still here because one pond in pretty full. Today’s exciting birds were this tiny orchard oriole (they are here this time of year) and a beautiful red-shouldered hawk I saw from the car. I love summer hawk sightings.

There are a very few flowers blooming, but I found a couple. There are lots of passion vines, but the flowers look funny. I guess the herbicide got to them. And there was one sad Mexican hat flower. Of course buffalo bur is blooming and one or two others that nothing can stop. Ooh and in the best plant news: I found milkweed seeds blowing around! More for the butterflies.

I figured I should do a nature post since I had my Master Naturalist meeting tonight. It was on turkeys! The speaker had a beautiful turkey shirt on, too.

I learned so much about Rio Grande turkeys!

Achieving Nature Goals

Okay, I have a little something to say. After all that iNaturalist work last weekend, it was this weekend where I met some goals, or desires, or whatever.

While walking around, I remembered to open up a balloon flower to find the seed. My friend Linda Jo was right! They look like little yin-yang symbols!

While we were walking the horses, Sara very patiently let me try to get photos of all the butterflies and moths swarming in the pasture, even when her horse stepped in fire ants.

Everyone’s patience was rewarded, though. I saw a butterfly on the fence. It sat still. I got its picture! It was an American snout, the ones we saw so many of last week! Finally one stood still.

No, not a great photo, but you can see the snout!

After achieving that goal, I felt fine. Then, on my way home, one of the dragonflies I’d been seeing all summer finally stood still. I was really curious what they were called, but they are very dart-y ones.

These always look like two mating to me. I was happy to see what they actually look like. Cool insects, and another goal met.

I looked at my iNaturalist totals and was happy to see I hit 1800 observations today. I’d been disappointed not to get there last week. Luckily, there are lots of interesting things to see on the Wild Type Ranch, where we walked!

I think that’s good for someone who has jobs and stuff. Still, I look forward to lots more in the future. We hope to visit neighboring counties with few observations and see what’s there!

Here I am looking for bugs with my “helper.”

Glad I found my voice. Sometimes I just need to shut up. Hee hee.

It Rained! And Other Signs of Life!

It being July in Texas, we are always prepared for a scarcity of rain and a lot of hot days. All we can hope for is to get some remnants or edges of a hurricane. Well, that seems to be happening right now, and since last night three bands of rain have come through our little ranch. The total rainfall so far is an exciting .15″ – not much, but it is better than nothing. We usually get about an inch per month, so we’re hoping that the big rain to the south of us sends us a bit more later tonight or tomorrow.

The third wave of rain as it approached. I could hear the thunder when I took the picture. The plant in the foreground is Lindheimer’s doveweed (Croton lindheimeri).

The rain lowered the temperature, so I was able to get out and look around some today. Get prepared for a lot of pictures of things that are damp!

I’m always happy when there is new life. And even before I left the house, I realized that our avocado seed is getting pretty robust in the root department. Now we just need a stem!

Speaking of trees, we now have one in the back yard. I didn’t mention it earlier, because I was sad about it. You see, we bought a Shumard oak back when Kathleen and I bought those plants for our office. The guys had set it next to the RV, and I guess forgot about it. I watered it every few days, not realizing I’d needed to water it EVERY day, so by the time we went to plant it, it was mostly dead leaves.

It’s a tree. Not much of a tree, but a tree nonetheless.

But, Chris said its stem was still alive, so he planted it in the back corner (if I could use the backhoe thing, I’d have planted it). He then proceeded to set up a fine watering system that piggybacks on the chicken system and has been able to water it every other day or so.

New leaves, and the life-giving water hose.

When I went out to say hi to the chickens to day, I looked over at the sad tree, and lo and behold, there are lots and lots of little new leaves appearing. It’s coming back! I’m so glad the rain is here to help out. It may even someday provide shade to the chickens and to the cattle behind us. That may be a while.

I found some other encouraging things as I was walking around today. I saw a young snake next to the tiny pond, and managed to get a picture of it before it dove underwater. As I patiently waited for it to come back up (with no success), I did notice a freshly shed snake skin near my feet. I bet I know who that belonged to!

The little snake, just before diving.
The snake’s old skin.

I enjoyed looking at dragonflies, turtles, and bullfrogs in the rapidly shrinking pond. The rain will at least give it a bit of fresh water. I’m hoping that the tropical rain tomorrow or the next day will refill it and the other ponds.

This guy kept dipping into the water then zipping off. It was not easy to get a picture. Note dead boopie grasshoppers on the shore. It could explain why the bullfrogs don’t appear very hungry.

Maybe the grass will turn green again, too. The chickens will like that. By the way, they’ve all settled down now that Clarence is the guard rooster. He has figured out how to get to the food inside the chicken run, so all I have to do is make sure he has water every day (though Lee thinks he’s found the pond behind the house).

I got to watch this great egret snatch a fish out of the pond behind the house. This is where Clarence could be going if he runs out of my nice water in the dish.

New life always signifies hope for me. That little stick of an oak tree is my symbol of hope after adversity for now!

Invasives and Dragonflies

Happy National Invasive Species Week everybody! Whee! I don’t know if we are supposed to celebrate them or deplore them this week, but I’m celebrating along with naturalists in the US, I guess. What I’m doing is participating in the Texas Invasive Species Bioblitz 2020 on iNaturalist. The project’s goal is to identify the locations of as many invasive plants, animals, etc., as possible in one week.

Here are the things I’ve found. No, these are not my photos.

While I’ve made over a hundred observations in the last few days in my quest to find invasives, I’ve only found seven on the list of official targets for the week. At least I’m contributing! It’s fun to see how some people are going all out finding things.

The floating plants are floating primrose-willow and will have beautiful yellow flowers soon. Logs are for the turtles, who are hiding.

I need to drive around more, because those are all I have on the ranch. I was disappointed that my potential chinaberry tree was a benign native soapberry. Then I said, wait, that’s a GOOD thing.

While I was off looking for some hedge parsley or bastard cabbage (where did it GO?) I wandered around our back pond and had fun observing turtles, water plants, and minnows. There were also quite a few dragonflies flitting around, and I did my best to get some photos.

I did not do a good job at all, as my blurry photos below attest, but I did enjoy myself very much. The skimmers were especially pretty, all bronze and dazzling, but they all were good to see. We have fewer these days than we used to.

Clubtail
Flitting
Resting
Go wings!
This buckeye butterfly is enjoying a cow patty.

I observed a damselfly or two, but they were really far away. Certainly looking at these insects while watching the dogs splash around in the pond is a great way to relax. And no dogs were stuck in cars yesterday!