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
First plant was collected. So now we headed to the east for the second collection. And a sincere thank you to Austin for stopping along the road last month! A new friend is always special. It was getting rather toasty out now. So it was time to fly down the road in the cool AC….
The phylum Arthropoda are the invertebrates. Moreover this group comprises (by some estimates) over 97% of the animal species on our planet! Therefore take a moment to soak that in. They are the animals that have: three or more pairs of jointed legs (some mites have less, many insect larvae have none), body segmented, bilaterally…
So even though there was not much rain this year at our house many of the native species are doing pretty fine. The rain two days ago was most welcome by all. However you might think that not much would be doing that well. Think again! So even though there has not been a lot…
Snow sounds very refreshing today doesn’t it? Of course there is none in North Texas. Well, at least not the ice crystal type. However we do have Snow-on-the-prairie (Euphorbia bicolor) and Snow-on-the-mountain (Euphorbia marginata)! And we have the Snow-on-the-prairie (Euphorbia bicolor) here at our house. So guess what? That will be the “snow” today. LOL…
Y’all have heard the saying one person’s junk is another’s treasure, right? I believe this can be applied to nature as well. Kathy made this video of the dung beetle with its treasure. “They roll it backwards a little, stop, climb on top then survey their direction before continuing with the rolling. They are fascinating.”…
Nectaries are small glands that secrete nectar in plants. However to complicate things there is an additional place where these glands are located. When the glands are located outside the flower they are referred to extra-floral nectaries. Some scientists think the extra-floral nectaries provide an enticement to insects to help protect against other insects. The…
We were cutting the trip short and heading home. But we were not driving straight through. A stop at the Lake Colorado City State Park was in the cards. And this was a new park for us. There seems to be abundant of red ants here. Which means it is good habitat for horny toads….
On the fourth day, we decided to stick close again to the camp. However, it would be just as great for seeing new stuff we soon found. It had been a great day staying closer to camp! And we had an exciting evening lined up which I will share in the next post. 🙂 I…
A good bit of the outing (March 6th) we looked for and at the Trout Lilies (Erythronium mesochoreum). And why shouldn’t we, they are so darn cute. They spread themselves out unlike their cousins, Erythronium albidum. Both species of the aforementioned are secure (G4) in their status in Texas. However, in several other states the…
Wasn’t the rain just fabulous yesterday! I hope everyone got some. Of course, Gracie and I did not let the rain keep us from our walks. Here’s what we found! The coyote did not see me at first, but then the after-burners kicked on when he did! As always, it was a splendid rainy day…