Our goal

Our goal

The goal was to reach the creek. So we continued deeper into the bottomland. So more to come in tomorrow’s post of the grasslands outing! Article: This article is several years old, but certainly fascinating I thought…Bumblebees confused by iridescent colors Keep looking!

Bottomlands

Bottomlands

It was cloudy start to the day with the nearby rumbles so it was a bit dark in the understory yesterday. Most of our time was spend in the bottoms seeing what we could see. And we found plenty to enjoy. Article: The Strangely Scientific Endeavor of Making Ice Cream Keep looking!

Rumble, tweets, and snorts

Rumble, tweets, and snorts

Today was a grasslands day! Gosh was it a great one. I took well over four hundred photos of interesting things. Don’t worry as per my usual many were repeats and really bad photos. Not included in the documentations were the rumbles, tweets and snorts. We heard the rumbles of a thunderstorm nearby, but never…

Texas Cooter

Texas Cooter

So July 8th was an awesome day. There is always so much to find and enjoy on the grasslands! On this pond, we saw a Banded Pennant dragonfly. It was too far out for a photo. However it was pretty with the all black abdomen and three black spots on each wing with a brown…

Milky sap

Milky sap

There was quite the variety of colors on the outing. Yesterday, I showed you the chocolate and yellow mushrooms. Here are a few more colors to add to the rainbow of mushrooms. Articles: Narwhal Tusks Point to Changing Arctic Conditions Other Mammals, Not Dinosaurs, Kept Our Ancestors Down Biofuel Cell: Wearable Device Turns the Touch…

Mushrooms

Mushrooms

As we walked further from the lake, but staying near the drainage ditch, we came across mushrooms and some other good stuff. These Moths Will Be Renamed to Stop Use of an Ethnic Slur Dr. Dal Forno is a Research Botanist at BRIT: Meet the Scientist: Manuela Dal Forno Warmer Climate May Cause Male Dragonflies…

Palps

Palps

This afternoon Gracie and I were startled on our walk. We saw our first turkey that I have seen in our woods. To be fair, I think it was more startled than either of us. It let out a weird sound and flew about 15 feet. Then it proceeded on foot away from us at…

Jumped the gun…

Jumped the gun…

I was a bit hasty in deciding that the scales on the Snowberry Clearwing had just turned transparent. As I discussed with Suzanne in the comments in the Hemaris diffinis post, it appears the scales did just fall off. Here is my evidence. So my conclusion is that at least three different species of moths…

Hemaris diffinis

Hemaris diffinis

What a nice breeze on this morning’s walk. We saw a bumblebee on nightshade and then I spotted Hemaris diffinis (a moth) further into the woods next to a patch of Coralberry. I was excited to see it sitting still! Coralberry (Symphoricarpos orbiculatus) is a host plant of the Snowberry Clearwing! On first glance when…

Microscope confirmations

Microscope confirmations

Yesterday I brought home several specimens. When you are in the field with others, they stop and look at different things. So I needed to use the dissecting and the compound microscopes to just to see what we had and to confirm. Thank you prairie friends for your observations! Articles: Meet the White Tern, a…