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
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…
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…
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…
Had to get a drive-about before the rain…fingers crossed! Rough-winged swallows were our first stop along the side of the road. We also had first of season American kestrels. Other birds of the day were Great Blue Heron, Great Egret, doves, Loggerhead Shrikes, roadrunner, red-shouldered hawk, vultures, White-eyed vireo and one mad-at-us Carolina wren. Then…
This is photo I took back in June of this year. This relates to the previous post about the mushroom digesting. I updated that post about it digesting and NOT digesting itself as I had told y’all. Anyways, here is a slime mold…. tapioca slime mold (Brefeldia maxima) I have seen some slime mold that…
The mosquitoes are back with a vengeance! At least this girl won’t be getting my blood. This handsome fella, Salt Marsh Moth (Estigmene acrea), showed up at my backdoor last night.. He had just emerged. You can tell because in the top photo you can see his wing has not fully pumped up. Females…
Another warm day. Counting down for the days to cooler weather. 🙂 Gracie stood in the water for a good 6-8 minutes. She wants the cooler weather too. Thiers’ Lepidella (Amanita thiersii) Closeup. It was pretty white and the surface had a moist feel. A polypore, a Ganoderma species. Looks like a bowtie I thought. Underside…