Today we met with Linda Burgess, coordinator of the new Little Free Seed Library project (here’s a link to an article explaining how they work and an article from Mother Earth News). This project involves creating nice boxes for storing labeled native seeds that can be shared and exchanged. We hope to have more than one location in Milam County. The Wildscape will provide many native seeds for the project, as will members of our chapter.
Check the blog for updates on this project as we build it out. Share any ideas you may have for locations for the seed libraries.
Johnson Homestead Wildlife Update
At my house we are winding down the nature events. The Barn Swallow colony expanded this year, and there have been a record number of toads and frogs. I allowed a family of mice to live in a small section of my kitchen then successfully trapped and relocated them. We found them after they ate my daughter’s chocolate bars.
Barn SwallowsMice ready to relocateBeautiful moth
We are rehabbing another leopard frog that was hit by a weedeater. One foot had to be removed, so he is learning to swim again. When it is cold, I will put him in the yard next to our other frogs.
The picture with chairs, fans, etc., was an attempt to protect and keep cool a second batch of wrens at the house.
Wren protection setup
We had few snakes but an over-abundance of fire ants. Lessons were learned for next year.
Usually, I’m the one editing and uploading blog posts for other people, but today I have time to write my own post for this blog. If you live in Milam County, Texas, there’s a very good chance you’ve had some rain over the past few days, very welcome rain, in fact, even if some of us got a lot very quickly.
It’s been wet.
Where I live, at the Hermits’ Rest Ranch in northwest Milam County, we got close to six inches of rain. That’s how it goes here these days, months of drought followed by a big flood. I was expecting it.
Our spring is now springing anew.
It’s also autumn, and since I’m not one of those people Donna wrote about yesterday who think there’s nothing going on in nature this time of year, I thought the days after a big rain would be the perfect time to see what’s blooming or seeding, who’s flying around, and who’s up and about after a rain. Since one of my hobbies is documenting what flora and fauna are around at different times of year on this property, I knew it would be a good idea to document what’s here on iNaturalist (you don’t get Master Naturalist hours for work on your own property, but I’m fine with that, since this is my own research).
That’s an overfull tank!
As the title of this post hints, I found most of my interesting sightings on the ground. Looking down will quickly dissuade you of any notion that nothing’s blooming, growing, and reproducing this time of year. The very first thing I found on the ground was my favorite: this gorgeous leopard frog. I didn’t get a side view, so I can’t tell if it’s a Rio Grande one or a regular one, but it’s pretty.
It’s a big one, too.
As I walked down to my front pond, I saw another resident out of its usual watery location, this pond slider, who must have been going from the back pond to the front. There are so many of these in there, and I bet the flooding moved them around a bit.
Trachemys scripta
Once the sun came out, so did the butterflies and moths. I’m transfixed by the Ceraunus blues (Hemiargus ceraunus) and was really pleased to find them drying off their wings so I could see the blue part when they were sitting still, for once. But I also enjoyed the many sulphurs (not pictured, as they are blurry), Gulf fritillaries (Dione vanillae) and pearl crescents (Phyciodes tharos). There were also monarchs, who refused to pose, and lots of skippers.
Blue wings showingUsual view of ceraunus blueGulf fritillaryPearl crescentSorry they are blurry. Pretty sure they’re fiery skipperes.Lunate zale moth (Zale lunata)
Speaking of flying insects, there are also dozens of dragonflies and damselflies out scarfing up meals. Saddlebags, pond hawks, pink ones, and red ones all flitted by me. But these are the two that sat still briefly.
Variegated meadowhawk (Sympetrum corruptum), who blends with rocksThe common familiar bluet (Enallagma civile)
And for our pal Eric, I documented some spiders, including a rabid wolf spider mama and my bold jumping spider buddy who lives in my mailbox. There are also many orb weavers out, including these orange ones that may be spotted orb weavers, but I can’t get close enough to get a good photo.
Rabidosa rabida and egg sacOrb weaver in the airThat’s an orb weaver web, all rightHey, Suna, would you get the ants out of your mailbox?
Not a great photo of a pipit.
Of course, this is a great time of year for birds, and this is one time when it’s just fine to look up. After all, birds can be found in the water, on the ground, in the bushes, in trees, on poles, and in the air. I’ve been having a blast with the Merlin Bird ID app on my phone, which has helped me a lot with figuring out all the different sparrows and sparrow-esque birds out in our fields. I say “sparrow-esque,” because just this week I realized one confusing sparrow was, in fact, a pipit. (The link goes to my personal blog post about the birds.) Once Merlin identified it and told me what to look for, I could easily identify it from both sight and sound (and a lovely sound it is).
The list of actual sparrows I have seen and heard includes way more than the annoying house sparrows that have invaded from Europe! Here’s a list:
Clay-colored sparrow
Harris’s sparrow (seen in the winter, not now)
Lark sparrow (bigger ones)
Savannah sparrow
Swamp sparrow
Vesper sparrow
These are probably phoebes, but may be kingbirds. Darn that phone camera.
That’s a lot of sparrows. Added to that are the two kinds of wrens and the amazing meadowlarks (I could listen to those guys all day), and there is a lot of brown to go around. I almost forgot the killdeer. You can’t really forget them, because they never shut up. Between the killdeer and the crows, it can be hard for poor Merlin to hear the more delicate bird calls. The crows have much to tell each other, though I do enjoy all their different kinds of calls and other vocalizations.
Also quite vocal are the loggerhead shrikes and the phoebes. You can’t miss them. Plus, the shrike leaves tell-tale evidence.
A dragonfly captured and impaled by a loggerhead shrike.
You’d think I was done with the birds, but no way. We have large flocks of cardinals here, many warblers (this week the yellow-rumped are around), starlings, grackles, and three kinds of woodpecker (downy, red-bellied, and pileated).
There were two more cardinals on the same fence.
And then there are the water birds. Merlin messed up big time and identified this as a crow. It was right next to me when it croaked, and it sure sounded like a great blue heron to me.
Not a crow.
A seasonal water bird that’s around right now is our belted kingfisher. I do have a photo of it, but it’s a blurry thing with a white neck ring that you know is a kingfisher if you’ve ever seen one. I got to enjoy watching is catch a couple of fish today (and make a lot of kingfisher trills), but there were willow trees between me and the bird, so no photos. Nonetheless, that was a wonderful experience!
The kingfisher was fishing from these trees.
I’m impressed by how many birds are are still here or migrating through, since many summer residents have moved on. I’d miss the tanagers and buntings more if other beautiful singers hadn’t taken their place. But enough on birds. I’m overly chatty.
I had originally intended to focus on all the plants that are blooming or making pretty seeds/berries right now on the ranch, but I got distracted by all the other teeming wildlife. Autumn is a great time to look for flowers here, though, so allow me to share a few of the plants I’m enjoying right now. It’s fun to watch groups of flowers fade away while others start up!
Crow poison (Nothoscordum bivalve) and a tiny insectViolet ruellia (Ruellia nudiflora), still hanging in thereI never get this plant right. Broomweed or something else.Texas Indian mallow (Abutilon fruticosum)Common dandelion (Taraxacum officinale)White mouth dayflower (Commelina erecta)Tall Goldenrod (Solidago altissima)Lindheimer’s doveweed (Croton lindheimeri)Slender yellow wood sorrel (Oxalis dilenii)Not a plant. Mushrooms coming up.Rio Grande copper lily (a rain lily) (Zephyranthes tubispatha)Tie vine seed pods (Ipomoea cordatotriloba)Carolina snailseed (Cocculus carolinus)Ragweed, not sure whichA view looking into our wooded area
Well, if that doesn’t convince you that autumn is a great time to go out in nature and look down for a while, I don’t know what will. Heck, you might even see a milkweed beetle.
For several months I have been caring for a leopard frog that was hit by a weed eater and sprayed with roundup by accident. I rinsed him in water, but his leg was badly hurt. I put him in a small container with moist paper towels.
As he improved, I started letting him swim in a sink as I straightened his leg and foot.
I bought and caught crickets for his food and purchased a frog habitat. He drank water through his skin from a dish.
I learned they are quite happy living like this, then I noticed he stopped eating. This is natural when they start to hibernate.
So, I made the decision to let him go, as it is cooler. I fixed a safe, wet outdoor habitat and still add crickets. I miss him – I would cover him up at night, open his window in the morning, watch him snatch the crickets, and enjoy when he would swim up to my hand.
Where? Milam Wildscape Project – Bird and Bee Farm – 1369 County Road 334, Milano, Texas.
What? Nature Days
Come see blooming tall purple asters, red and pink Turk’s cap, white fragrant mist flower, Mexican bush sage, Mexican honeysuckle, forsythia sage, Gulf muhly, and more.
View this video for a sample of the thousands of pollinators. We will be giving away free native plants, goody bags for all, bee houses, plus refreshments.
Come tour the garden and share YOUR nature stories with us.
Our garden is never finished, beautiful, and always WILD.
I see some pretty cool things on my walks around my ranch. I think part of my poor posture comes from looking down all the time, in case I see something. But that’s a small price to pay. I’ve been doing a lot more aural observation lately, and that’s come in really handy when I’m looking for new species to add to my collection on iNaturalist. I have almost 600 species identified since I started, 62% of my 1600+ observations are research grade. I’m trying to get a good picture of what can be found in this little piece of the Earth.
Yesterday and today I’ve put my listening skills to a test. I can’t take a picture of something if I can’t find it, and sounds often lead me to something interesting. For example, I went to check the mail, which is a third of a mile walk from my house. I often stop to observe in the pond and arroyo I go by. That’s hard right now since the pond is being dug up to make it deeper if it ever rains, and our gate emits an annoying beep that I once accidentally identified as a South American bird via an app. But yesterday I was alarmed to hear what sounded like someone talking in the stream. It sort of sounded like, “Help, help!” So I put down my mail and went searching.
I followed the eerie sounds and got closer to where our “spring” starts. I didn’t want to get my feet wet, so I was careful. At one point it seemed like I was right on top of whatever it was, but I couldn’t see anything, so I stomped my feet. That caused something to move and gave me a focus for my eyes. Finally I saw something.
Is it a water hose?
Now I know why my friend’s orange and black water hose spooks the horses. That Western Ribbon Snake (Thamnophis proximus) sure looked like a garden hose. I was not inclined to grab it to get a better photo. But what was the sound?
I knew right away that it was a cricket frog, since that’s the kind of frogs I hear all the time from that location (I learned how they sound from one of our Chapter Meetings). I guess it’s now a former cricket frog, thanks to the circle of life. So, my aural observation skills clued me in without even having to see the frog. I was happy to learn from reading about these ribbon snakes that they hang out on the edges of wet areas (check) and primarily eat…of all things…cricket frogs! I also learned that the one we have here at the ranch is the orangestripe subspecies, T. proximus proximus, which is why it didn’t look like the one in the main photo on iNat, which had originally confused me.
Coachwhip
By the way, I am only seeing ribbon snakes and coachwhips lately. I haven’t seen a rattlesnake or a rat snake in a month or two (the hens are glad about that). The coachwhip in this picture climbed into my son’s cabin and was hanging out on the ceiling. Luckily, he’s had pet snakes before, so he just knocked it into a laundry basket and took it outside (then sealed the hole the snake came in).
Back to my observations. Today was the same story. I was putting mail in the box to be picked up, this time. I kept hearing a sharp chirp, and it wasn’t the broken gate. It was coming from the black willow trees on our dam, which no, I’m not cutting down, because they are native and feed lots of things. I looked and looked, trying to home in on where the chirps were coming from. To the bird’s credit, it didn’t stop chirping until it began making tapping sounds. Aha. Now I knew to stop looking in the branches and look at the trunks of the trees instead.
Sure enough, there was a perky little ladder-backed woodpecker (Dryobates scalaris), pecking away and chirping during rests. There are a lot of woodpeckers around here (they like the grapevines to hide in and are especially fond of the telephone pole across the road), but I mostly see larger ones. Neither I nor the bulldozer grinding away behind this bird deterred it one bit from its mission.
Wood pecking
I’m glad I keep listening when I go outside. I might have missed both of these interesting observations and new species!
Nature Along the El Camino Real 