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
I was a bit hasty in deciding that the scales on the Snowberry Clearwing had just turned transparent. As I discussed with Suzanne in the comments in the Hemaris diffinis post, it appears the scales did just fall off. Here is my evidence. So my conclusion is that at least three different species of moths…
It got down to 37 again this morning! High was a wonderful 75 degrees! I found what the green caterpillar from yesterday was…Figure-Eight Sallow (Psaphida resumens) caterpillar. Small Phigalia (Phigalia strigataria) has multiple shades from this brown to a yellow and white colors. Ladybug larva! Square-bud Primrose (Calylophus berlandireri) has started to bloom! There are…
Visibility was 1/8 mile this morning. Great morning to see the meshweb weavers (Dictynidae) webs. They make a plain framework of an irregular mess over foliage, flowers, and dead stalks of plants. This ant hill made me think a rock formation in the Southwest. They had a side entrance so not many of the ants…
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…