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
Hazy day again. Glad the temp is pleasant. This is a Flesh Fly (Sarcophagidae) on blackberry (Rubus oklahomas) leaves. Larvae: many species are necrophagous, but some feed in mammalian tissues or parasitize other arthropods (bees, cicadas, termites, grasshoppers/locusts, millipedes), earthworms, or snails. Adults feed on various sugar-containing materials such as nectar, sap, fruit juices and…
It was a nice day for a drive in Montague County. The air was a bit hazy but the temp was wonderful. View of the hazy weather. A pond slider was really taking in the view. Maybe it was enjoy watching us as we were watching it. We also saw at another creek, 10 or…
Don’t think I have ever notice a katydid (Orchelimum) of this color before. Ornate Box Turtle eating a grasshopper. Yum! I always take a top shot to compare to old photos of mine to see if it has been here at my house before. I last saw this one on Sept 24, 2016. Can’t get enough…
Part II is about all the other stuff that was found on Tuesday, Sept 15th. Millipedes Diplopoda (class) have two legs per segment True Bug (Heteroptera- suborder) Don’t you love those eyes! Underside Just found out from BugGuide what this is…Big-Eyed Toad Bug (Gelastocoris oculatus) What a good name! Texas skeleton (Lygodesmia texana) plant…
We found some amazing mushrooms and of course I can’t ID most of them. Maybe someday, just not today. For now I just trying to match the photos and what I can understand in the description to match. I have been relying on the book Mushrooms of the Gulf Coast States by Alan and Arleen…
It was a super fun day at the LBJ National Grasslands today. It was 3.5 miles and almost 6 hours of exploring. I’m pooped. This will probably take me a couple of days to show you all the stuff that was found. It will probably take several posts. So I will start with just a…
Spiny-aster (Chloracantha spinosa) is a plant that likes to be near water or in a drainage area. The plant is sorta scraggly and just starting to bloom here. Prickly Lettuce (Lactuca serriola) is an invasive but sure has a pretty seed head. The Poodle skirt mushroom (just what I call it…not an official common name)…
Update: So the insect that was burrowing in the sandstone has been identified by BugGuide to genus. They say there are 5 described species in the U.S and the only two in our area are the Smaller Sand Cricket (Ellipes minuta) and Ellipes gurneyi. So maybe I can catch it and see which it is. Fingers crossed… See post dated 9-11-2020…
I spent most of my day looking at spores under the scope. I did not know what I was going to see or what I was looking at half the time. Thank goodness for Google! Purple cliff-brake spores (Pellaea atropurpurea) are the roundish things to the right side of the photo. This is at 400x. …
Weather was sooooo nice for exploring the grasslands today! Found lots of cool stuff. Left the house by 7:30am A dandy group of small mushrooms. They were a bit wet to the feel and the stem was almost translucent. Shelf mushroom (Polypore) This small shelf type mushroom reminds me of shell Turkeytail polypore Short and…