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
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…
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…
This is the Beet Webworm or also called the Hawaiian Beet Webworm (Spoladea recurvalis). It is a new county record. It was a little thing; only about 1/4 inch across. I know it’s not a very good photo, but sometimes that all I can get. This was gorgeous red-pink. It is of the Melanoplus genus …
If you remember I posted on 9-6-2020 about some eggs I found on Eastern Red Cedar. They have not hatched but… To my delight some are turning pink. Look at the little knobby hairs at the top. These eggs are only about one millimeter across! Fingers crossed for hatching soon!
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…
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…
Always something to new to see and always fun see old friends (plants, etc). We started on top the mesa and headed down the hill. Ditches and gullies just love’em. It is like a black hole…it just sucks me in :-0 Purple cliff brake ferns (Pellaea atropurpurea) Liverwort and moss Closer view of the liverwort…