Welcome to my nature blog! I love sharing my photos of North Texas! I will keep looking out and hope you do too.
Comments welcome. Thank you, Mary
These photos are all from the Prairie Seekers field day in Collin County. Candlesnuff fungus or also called Stag’s horn fungus (Xylaria species)! Apparently you must look at the spores to get a definite answer for the species according to the MushroomExpert. Border Patch caterpillar on Saw-tooth Sunflower (Helianthus grosseserratus)! We saw quite a few of…
Now I know some of you will want to skip part of this post, but I found both of my subjects quite interesting. The Gulf Coast Tick (Amblyomma maculatum) and the Common Bird’s Nest (Crucibulum laeve) fungus are the my subjects today. I brought both of these ticks home with me in a container from yesterday’s NPAT…
Today, I went on the Prairie Seeker field training over in Collin County. It was a great day! Only got misted on a little bit and the only shower came when we were getting back into cars to leave. Good karma! I will share tomorrow what we found. Tapioca slime mold (Brefeldia maxima) is interesting!…
I went for an afternoon drive with my good friend! We saw several real nice birds. Three spotted sandpipers, the closest view I have ever had of a broad-wing hawk, two great egrets, two green herons, a beautiful female painted bunting and a couple of great blue herons that were lazily circling in the sky!…
The weather has brought out some mushrooms! And I told y’all yesterday, I was going to share one of the tiniest mushrooms I have seen. Here it is! They are amazing! This is them in the leaf litter! I have not clue what species it is. When I first noticed the tiny white specks…I thought…
Another beautiful day! Today on the afternoon walk, I found the tiniest specimen of a mushroom. No photos today, but I will get them to y’all in a day or so. Really cool! Today’s photos are all from the grasslands. Woods Ear (Auricularia angiospermarum) is always a fun to see with its velvety texture! Closeup…
We added .86″ to our rain bucket since midnight. So the grand total for us for the storm has been 2.26″. Pretty nice! Back side of Greenthread (Thelesperma filifolium). The two toned phyllaries are a characteristic of Greenthread. What a lovely shade on these shelf fungus! A closeup of a treehopper (Ceresini) nymph! It was…
More good stuff! And lots of sunshine today. High temperature today was 80 degrees for us. We got a nice amount rain from yesterday’s storm…1.30″ Indian Blanket with a tiny beetle! Southern Purple Mint moth (Pyrausta laticlavia)! Snake Herb (Dyschoriste linearis) has an awesome throat! Texas Bindweed (Convolvulus equitans) has several colors from white to white…
More from the grasslands… Two-leaf Senna (Senna roemeriana)! Easy to recognize because its leaflets are in pairs! Bladderpod seeds (Physaria engelmannii)! Don’t you love this spiraling grass seed burrowing into the ground. Texas Wintergrass, Texas Speargrass, or Wintergrass (Nassella leucotricha) are all names for this grass! It is a known characteristics of this grass. Thanks Jeanne…
Back in March, Jeanne and I were checking out a spot on the grasslands to see what we could find. Well, we found a plant that had these hairs on the old stem that hurt to touch. Kathy saw my post and suggested it might be Marbleseed (Onosmodium bejariense) and also known as False Gromwell….