Texas
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Texas Flowers
These are some flowers I’ve been hoarding to brighten and warm up a cold winter’s day.
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Adios, Texas
Talk about “road-side hawks”! A Swainson’s Hawk (Buteo swainsoni). Loooong wings. Didn’t look like there was anything on the road, yet the bird must have been attracted to something before oncoming traffic flushed it (we, of course, had already pulled off to the side of the road).Another roadie, the Harris’s Hawk (Parabuteo unicinctus), telcom-poll percher…
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Ball Moss
Ball moss (Tillandsia recurvata) isn’t actually a moss; it’s a flowering plant. This particular example was found on the ground after it had flowered. This plant is in the same genus as the famous dripping Spanish Moss (and both are in the same family as the pineapple). These not-mosses are epiphytes, aerial plants that attach…
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Great-Tailed Grackles
The Great-tailed Grackle, a.k.a. the Mexican Grackle (Quiscalus mexicanus). Big, bold, noisy, communal roosters. The first time I met them was in San Antonio some years ago. They spent the night in the trees along the River Walk. I was pooped upon. That’ll learn me. This time I enjoyed them from an angle. In 1900,…
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Frog, Turtle, ‘Gator
Big Bullfrog (Lithobates catesbeianus).Bigger, much bigger: Snapping Turtle (Chelydra serpentina). Possible looking for a place to exit the water and lay eggs (you need another reason to enforce the leash law in our parks?). Judging by the shell, I’d say I’ve seen this giant before. Also, even enormous Snappers start small; here’s a baby I…
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Goatsuckers
The Caprimulgidae family of goatsuckers are named because they were thought to suckle milk from goats. The Greeks thought so, and their man Aristotle was sure of it; the Romans ran with him, I mean, Aristotle, right? and then Linnaeus followed them. All wrong, like a good many other traditions: the birds are actually flying…
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TX Insects
Walking Stick on Peter’s bins. Texas has at least 16 species. Leaf-cutter ant (Atta texana) highway. The ants are returning to their sprawling underground colonies with leaf fragments, which, farmer-like, they feed to the fungus they actually eat.Thornbush Dasher (Micrathyria hagenii).Band-winged Dragonlet (Erythrodiplax umbrata).Antlion. This is the adult stage.We saw many antlion traps, where buried…
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Altamira Oriole
Big bright male Altamira (Icterus gularis).A nest in progress: a woven sack hanging from the branches. This species, which just barely makes it into South Texas, makes the largest nest in North America: they can be up to two feet long.The female is carrying something stringy here for this nest.This was another nest elsewhere. The…
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Rallidae
The Common Gallinule (Gallinula galeata), formerly known as the Common Moorhen, now “split” or separated from that Eurasian species (C. chloropus). Unlike the somewhat similar American Coot (Fulica americana), this bird doesn’t have lobbed toes. Look at the long toes on this Sora Rail (Porzana carolina). All the better for walking through oozy marshes.We saw…
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National Butterfly Center
Southern Texas is home to the greatest diversity of butterflies in the U.S., and the National Butterfly Center, in Mission, is in the thick of the action down there. November is the time to visit, but we didn’t do too badly. As a bonus, we flushed a pair of Bobwhite. It was evidently emperor butterfly…
Backyard and Beyond 