Also known as First Wednesday. 🙂 Not too chilly and certainly an enthusiastic group!
FYI, IT is still working on the email notification problem.
Whit had alerted us to the birds on the hillside. One of the species Whit spied were Spotted Towhees flying back and forth on the hillside. Exciting! Up closer I had spotted a White-throated Sparrow. (photo by Jerry)
Most the birds were too far away for a photo. However the White-throated Sparrow was only about 10-15 feet in front of us. This species breeds in Canada. And is a winter visitor in most of Texas.
The focus was mainly on the barren. This part of the grasslands was once scraped for gravel. We were standing next to a puddle where the nostoc was still jelly-like.
But as you can see there is still plenty to look at like the Prickly Pear and the White Compass plants (whitish colored dead leaves). Photo by Jerry.
Down on hands and knees for a closer look!
The beautiful frosted edged Psora lichen was one of the tiny treasures!
On some of the limestone rocks you may see crustose lichens like this Caloplaca species. A common name for this genus is Firedots.
Jerry took to the high ground to get this photo. So I was sharing a photo of the Pineapple Cactus (Coryphantha sulcata) in bloom. Photo by Jerry.
Off the barren we went.
This time Jerry was on the low ground. 😉 Thanks Jerry for sharing your photos!
And here was the moss Jeanne had ID’d, Ptychomitrium sinese. It had such a pretty cap on it capsule!
It had been a lot greener when Jeanne and I had visited it before.
So we dumped a bit of water on it so Diane could take a movie. It took less than two minutes for it to spread its leaves and get green!
Amazing that the moss only took 2 minutes to get green. More wonderful lichens.
It’s really is amazing 😊