You're looking a little pale....

Color is the first thing I notice when I look at a bird, trying to figure out what it is.  Red = cardinal.  Blue = blue jay.  Grey/white = Tufted titmouse. Every flippin' color under the rainbow = painted bunting.

When it's winter, black on top, white on the bottom = junco. They're the first birds that really signal the appearance of winter. Tiny and chirpy, they're the reminder to pull out my heavy coat and make sure that each glove has a mate.

The junco flock from this last winter brought a bird of a different color. It was so different that I wasn't sure at first that she (?he?) was a junco at all. Rather than charcoal and ivory, this bird resembled a toasted marshmallow.

I named her "Lucy," because the condition that lightened her feathers is called "leucism." It's not the same as being an albino. There's pigment there, it's just not as much as usual. I think Lucy's case is interesting because the color pattern is different from a normal junco. Junco's are top vs. bottom colored, not front vs. back, like Lucy.

Another form of leucism is called "pied." Imagine a section of feathers dipped in bleach.  I've never seen one in person, but pictures of pied birds always make them look a little embarrassed. The rest of the flock didn't seem to treat Lucy any differently than the other birds. It makes me wonder how much they respond to their own colors.

The Little House Cafe

The temperature here in North Central Texas is currently colder than the northern half of Montana. The last time we rose above freezing was about 3 a.m. Tuesday morning. We had an ice pellet storm on Tuesday, which has congealed into a solid sheet of ice coating the streets and driveways. Most of the schools in the area have been shut down since then: the streets are simply too slick for safety. To add insult to injury, 5 inches of snow were dumped on us overnight.

The intense and continuous cold has led to an avian crisis: the birds need food. Lots of it. With temperatures dropping near single digits, the tiny birds that normally frequent our feeders can lose a significant part of their body weight in one night trying to keep warm.  Fortunately for my bird buddies, the school where I teach has been closed for 4 days, allowing me to maintain a pretty continuous buffet. Awesome Husband estimates that over 300 birds have dined at the Little House Cafe, where we've gone through about 30 pounds of black sunflower seed in 3 days, and too many cups of cornmeal/peanut butter suet to keep track of.

Over 100 in this picture alone, including a growing flock of red-winged blackbirds

Our usual friends were there. Tufted titmice, chickadees, mourning doves, and cardinals know where to turn for a meal any day.

"Please: fewer pictures, more seed."

Their enthusiasm brought in some birds that are less familiar. The red-bellied woodpecker hangs around the trees all the time, but it's only since the weather chilled down that he came to the buffet line. He was initially attracted to the whole peanuts we were putting out for the blue jays, but he soon learned to like my homemade suet. His first approaches were timid and quick, only peeking over the edge of the railing while he perched vertically. Now, he hops around like he owns the place, and visits every day.

Shot with one hand holding a heavy camera, through a window & screen, in low light. Better than expected.

I'd been wondering where the Harris's sparrows were. They always arrive later than the other birds, like a mid-winter present. I saw the first few on Tuesday, sporting their characteristic black beret and bib. So far, nine of them have showed up.

Harris's sparrow, with a brown-headed cowbird looking on

Fox sparrows were unexpected guests. I've seen a few of them in the woods, but never in a close-up. They're bigger than I'd expected, just about the size of a cardinal, with gorgeous brown and grey feathers on their backs. Their bellies are streaked, with a smeary black spot on the chest. They have a distinct little double-scratch they do when they're searching for food: they jump forward, then scoot back a couple of times. It's not so effective when they're on a layer of ice, but it's awfully cute.

"Yes, as a matter of fact, I AM stunning."

These chipping sparrows are enjoying the shelter from the biting north wind, nestled inside an overturned flowerpot.

"If she really loved us, she'd plug the hole that lets in the wind."

After a party, there's bound to be a little debris. Each evening, the deck is littered with the detritus of the day, evidence of a lot of hearty meals.

One Tree, in Close-Up

It feels like Spring in the Not-So-Big Woods. We're topping out around 68 F (20 C) today. Yesterday was even warmer. Three days from now, we aren't expected to get above freezing. Knowing that the cold front is coming is a push to go outside while I don't have to bundle up.

On our west side, there's a little worn slope that leads down into the riverbed. Just to the left of the slope I found a tiny path leading into the trees. That's one of those head-scratchers, because WE certainly didn't put it there.  It drops off into a river-eroded hillside, straight into a tangle of tree roots. My best guess is that it's a raccoon highway.

I walked down to the riverbed (NOT on the mysterious trail) to check out some of the trees that grow in precarious areas. The river is usually placid, but when we got a big rainfall, it fills up its banks with a roar of churning water. Soil is swept away from the trees lining the edges of the stream, exposing their roots. Eventually they tilt at crazy acrobat angles, then one day, they tumble, squealing and crashing.

Digging in with all their strength. So far, they stand.

The darkest tree in the middle is the one that caught my attention today. It's a little awkward to get close to it. The leaf-covered slope is slick, and stems of poison ivy stick up here and there.  Scores of small spiders dashed out of the way of my footsteps, probably screaming little arachnid versions of "AAAUUUGGGHH!"

Up closer, it's easy to see the top of the enormous taproot, plunging straight down into the earth, providing a tenacious grip that gives way only under tremendous strain.

This looks like a branch, but it's actually a horizontal root. There's evidence that a bird uses it as a dining hall, munching the poison ivy berries that are abundant in that area, leaving little crumbs behind.

 

That same root provides meals for birds like woodpeckers and sapsuckers. Little holes drilled cleanly into the wood hint at the enjoyment of past meals. And...do you notice a couple of orange blobs?

Two bright orange fungi add a little cheer, peeking out from the underside of the roots. The color is like pumpkin flesh. They're hard, like homemade biscuits left out on the counter for a few days. Soft velvet covers them, reminding me of the velvet on a deer's fresh antlers.

 

Countering the orange fungus, there's a miniature forest of green moss. Yes, as a matter of fact, it IS on the north side of the tree.  The craggy bark looks like the tortured twistings of mountain ranges when seen from an airplane, with tiny mossy trees adorning them.

A funnel-web spider was peering out from her silky tube. When I jostled the bark a little, she retreated. Apparently, I didn't send out "come and eat me, I'm just a little innocent bug" vibes.

House of Herps: A Festival for the Senses

The Little House in the Not-So-Big Woods is currently a house of another sort. The House of Herps Carnival has landed here this month, with posts that appeal to a variety of senses.

Touch

At Dave Hubble's ecology spot, the crumpet-like texture of a fossil tipped him off that he might have found an ancient crocodile. What else could it be, after all? It was located on that well-known crocodilian hotspot: the Isle of Wight!

A red-backed salamander is all snuggled up warm in its under-rock bed, until Bernard Brown goes herp-hunting. The chilly amphibian is at Philly Herping.

David Steen prides himself (and rightfully so) on taking down the myths that circulate on the web. Here, he debunks a bit of the "alligator vs. electric eel" video that made its rounds recently. Another of David's myth-defying entries dispels the notion that cottonmouth snakes want to drop in on you while you drift down the river in your canoe.

At the Birder's Lounge, a red-eared slider is caught basking in the warm sun. Sadly, Amber writes about another turtle, caught in the wild and for sale.

Taste

There's nothing like a nice ripe peach. In January, though, Stephanie Suesan Smith discovers that the fruit that you find on the tree may not be as sweet as you'd expect.

Here at the Little House, we've got two herps for the price of one. And one of the pair appeared to be pretty tasty.

Smell

Sniff...sniff-sniff....What's that smell? Is that insect repellent? Yes. Is it killing off anacondas? Probably not.

Hearing

Charlie Moore's shifts his focus from avians to monitor lizards at this entry from 10,000 Birds.  Read carefully, and you can practically hear the drip of water and the soft shush of grass as the enormous animals move through the marshes and waterways.

Sight

At xenogere, Jason shows off his photographic skills with an exciting story about his too-close-for-comfort encounter with a Southern Copperhead, complete with a breathtaking image of the gorgeous reptile. Nothing gets away from Jason's camera. Well, almost nothing. VERY LITTLE gets away from his camera....

Greg Neise writes of finding a Peruvian toad that only seems to exist in his photographs. These toads aren't only skilled in hiding in the leaves, they're also pretty good at keeping out of sight in the reference books.

Macro photography is applied to a variety of natural subjects. Insects, snails, and spiders have all become accustomed to having a big camera lens shoved right in their faces. Getting an up-close-and-personal macro of a snake is still a rarity, though. Visit Count Your Chicken! We're Taking Over! for a snake portrait of a different sort.

Blending into the background is a common adaptation. This individual hasn't read the memo.


Thanks to all who submitted an entry. Reading over all of these blogs was a joy to the senses: all five of them.  The House of Herps carnival moves from McKinney to Philadelphia next month, hosted at Philly Herping, so start writing!

It's a Mosstery to Me

Sometimes, interesting things are high in a tree, making binoculars a necessity. Other times, you have to lie face-down in the dirt to focus on the teeny crawling thing that caught your eye.

Now and then, all you have to do is glance down to see what you just tripped over.

Yes, it's just a stick, probably fallen from the overhanging hackberry tree, but it had an Interesting Thing attached to it.

Moss? Lichen? Alien creature bent on world domination? Beats me. I don't even know whether the bumpy things on the underside might be spores or old insect eggs.

Approval

When I was very young, I heard loud bird screeching in the side yard. I hopped off the porch swing and walked around the corner of my house. There, I saw a blue jay swooping and screaming around a young bird on the ground. With all the righteous indignation of a typical 6-year-old, I marched over to save the baby from the Blue Evil, but my good intentions fell away when the jay switched her attention from the baby bird to the top of my head. Blue jays have long sharp beaks, and she applied hers with vigorous force.

I abandoned my mission and ran shrieking back to the front porch, sobbing out my story. That was when I learned from my parents that mama blue jays don't like little naturalists messing with their fledgelings.

It took some years to recover from that trauma, but I managed to forgive the mother bird for her attack.

The blue jays in the Not-So-Big Woods enjoy irritating me in a totally different way. For 3 years, we've been trying to lure them in with offerings of peanuts. For 3 years, they've been indifferent.

Until now.

Choosing carefully. Not all peanuts are equal.

Desperately wanting to carry two nuts at once, but beak capacity is limited.

Suddenly, for no reason that I can find, we've been stamped "APPROVED." A blue jay couple visits every morning, scooping up peanuts both shelled and unshelled. Unlike many other situations I've read about, our jays don't bully the smaller birds, probably because we have so much food available and spread out over a large area. 

Cramming shelled and unshelled nuts at the same time.

Too many nuts in the crop to easily push this one down.

Taking off, fully laden.

Puzzle

There are approximately 20 birds, mostly sparrows, in this picture. I know they're there, because I saw them as I clicked the shutter button. They blend in pretty well.

Happy hunting!

Apology

Dear Squirrels and Raccoons,

I'm sorry. I accused you falsely. But you have to admit: the circumstantial evidence was plentiful.

Squirrel, do you remember the day I looked out the window and found you curled up inside the "squirrel-proof" bird feeder, merrily chewing away at the goodies within? And aren't you the critters that march like furry tanks across the seeds spread on the deck railing, leaving a trail of shattered and  empty shells in your wake?

And raccoons: really, can you blame me for being a little suspicious, when "search and destroy" seems to be your motto? Remember the suet feeder? You took it. Not the suet, oh no! You took the WHOLE FEEDER from its chain on the porch. We did find it, you know, months later, in the crawl space under the house.  Its little door was pried open, and the suet was long gone. I don't even want to think about the hummingbird feeder. It wasn't enough that you had to open it and drink it dry: you pulled off the little yellow flower-shaped wasp-guards, too. We never did track down the last two.

Because of this history we have, little mammals, you can understand why I thought of you when the peanut feeder went empty so fast. Less than 4 hours to completely run out of unshelled peanuts? There's NO WAY mere birds could do that.

Except... Shouldn't there have been empty shells on the ground under the feeder? You two tend to dine in, rather than resort to carry-out. And, now that I think of it, the emptying was done during the day, which doesn't sound like Mr. Raccoon.

Who, then? It was clearly time for clandestine surveillance.

Oh.

I see that I underestimated the persistence and tenacity of our brash titmice. When a bird swoops in and removes a nut roughly every 60 seconds, the feeder goes empty quite fast, actually.

So, raccoons and squirrels, I offer my sincere apologies for accusing you unjustly.

Even though you had it coming.

 
Sincerely,

Joy

Cooperation

Afternoon car-rider duty at school is pretty simple: hang out with the kids at the back of the school while they get picked up and taken home. There's rarely any drama beyond the occasional phone call by a "forgotten" child. "I was supposed to pick you up? I thought your dad was going to pick you up! I'll be right there!"

Therefore, it was quite surprising when we heard the screams, and saw the group of kids leap from the ground and scurry about ten feet away from where they'd been sitting in the grass.  "Problem?"  a teacher asked.

"SNAKE!!!!!"

And indeed there was. A snake had slithered over, probably hoping to help with homework, but had been soundly rebuffed. He was beautiful, and very calm, although none of these qualities seemed to endear him to the kids. "Are you gonna kill it?"  "Um, no, but I think I'll take it home so no one else decides to do just that."

The agreeable snake stayed in one spot while I dashed into the building and got a big cardboard box from the storage room. Then we tackled the problem of how to get him into the box.  "We could pick him up..." No one was volunteering.  Almost as a joke, I asked "What if we just put the box on the ground and nudged him. Think he'd just crawl in?"  I got a solid round of "Yeah, right" looks, but when I put the box down and nudged the snake with my foot, he slithered right inside.   All of the yeah-righters were wide-eyed with awe. I was pretty amazed: how often does wildlife do what you want?

No fighting, no hissing. What a good snake!

The box was rather shorter than its meter-long occupant.

Shy snake doesn't want to come out after relocation.

The snake came home with me, and was released into the backyard on the edge of the woods. He was reluctant to leave the box but he did finally slide out into the grass, then into the leafy floor of the woods, where he vanished.

Anybirdy Out There?

It's relatively quiet in the Not-So-Big Woods. The hummingbirds have moved south. We spotted the last one, frantically drinking from the feeder, on October 2. Our year-round residents, the tufted titmice, chickadees, and cardinals, are taking much less food from us than usual. I guess they're filling up on the autumn buffet available in the woods, because their visits to our cafe are of the "grab and go" variety, rather than a "stay a while and fill up" encounter.

The house finches are gone, taking their chirpy quarrels with them. I think we have two populations that visit. One stays with us during the warm season, raising their little ones here, then they disappear when the days get short. Another group must breed further north, and they arrive more-or-less synchronized with the annual goldfinch brigade.

Right now, it's like the calm few moments before a giant gust of wind brings a downpour. I know my winter friends are coming, and hungry.

Season's change

I think the deciding factor in whether someone is an "autumn person" or a "spring person" depends on how much they despise the previous season. Summer here is a horrifying succession of sultry nights and blazing white-hot days. I am an "autumn person." Awesome Husband hails from Chicago and Wisconsin.  Winter is tough in the great Northern Lands. Thus, he is a "spring person." Or he was, anyway. I think 10 Dallas summers may be bringing him around to my point of view.

Dallas autumn drifts in quietly, shy and unassuming. One morning you notice that the dawn air doesn't feel like a poorly wrung-out sponge. That first hit of fall air isn't exactly crisp, but at least it isn't soggy. Don't let that fool you: high temperatures will still dance in the 90s for a while, but at least there's a break when the sun goes down.

You can't really count on the foliage to cue you in to the presence of a new season. Traffic on the big highways can be pretty horrifying, but the slow-downs aren't caused by hordes of tourists with cameras, agape over the brilliant colors, because there aren't any. Most of our trees don't exactly burst into blazes of color. They generally turn a sickly yellowish, then brownish, then some of the leaves drift to the ground, while others hang around looking anemic until a big rain, when they plop soggily into squishy piles. We're at the "green fading to blotchy yellow" phase right now.

The spiders know. Silken bundles of spider eggs are showing up all over. This past summer was overflowing with Argiopes. They were everywhere: in the garden, suspended from the back steps, hanging from the awning of the goat shed, lounging in the fig tree, jostling for position all up and down the fence row. I named the goat-shed spiders Jennifer and Bailey. Jennifer vanished early on, but left behind a neatly sewn bag of eggs. Bailey saw that as a challenge, and managed to produce THREE egg sacs before I discovered her tattered, empty web one morning.

All of that egg-making and web-spinning takes its toll. Usually, I just find the webs as I found Jennifer's, and then Bailey's: torn apart, with the resident queen missing in action. I've always assumed that something wrenched them from their lair, and maybe that's often true. But I've seen firsthand this year that sometimes, they just die.

Argiope, dead and fallen to the ground below her web

Delayed Gratification

I just wanted a picture of a garter snake. I had a beautiful snake present itself to me once, its yellow and orange stripes practically glowing on a glossy dark background. I even had a camera in my hand, but the neighbor's dog scared it away just before I got the shot.

Awesome Husband was so charmed by my "artist's rendition" at the end of that post, he re-created it in neon, and hung it in the garage for my birthday. Every time I drive in, the neon snake lights up to greet me.

Still, I mourned the lost photograph.

I got my chance a few days ago, while refilling the goats' water bowls. As I bent over one of them, I saw a tiny cricket frog that seemed to have one leg stuck beneath the bowl. "Poor thing," I thought, and lifted the bowl to let it hop away, but it didn't move. Something long and very thin was stuck to its leg, keeping it from moving.

My brain needed a moment to process what I was seeing. A very small snake was coiled under the water bowl. The snake, not the dish, was keeping the frog from hopping away. When I removed his hiding place, he slithered over against the shed wall, frantically trying to escape and swallow his meal simultaneously. I think the snake is a Western Ribbon Snake (Thamnophis proximus proximus), a very slender member of the Garter Snake clan.

Return

It's been a while since I've been here. Two things kept me away for a bit.

#1 was the summer heat. August was a blast furnace, an oven turned up to "broil." It was a succession of days when the thermometer soared, and dragged the dew point along with it. Even darkness brought little relief: the ground had absorbed so much heat that it sent it back at you long after the sun went down. The thought of going outside, even for a few minutes, lost a lot of its luster. Today's high was only 92 F. I thought I might have to put on a sweater.

Reason #2 was that my mind was elsewhere. The family has grown a bit--we've added 28 new legs. Five Nigerian Dwarf goats and 2 livestock guardian dogs have joined us, and the learning curve has been steep.

This is Gus. He's almost four years old, and trained as a guardian dog. Part Great Pyrenees, part Anatolian Shepherd, he's enormous. He's got a ferocious deep bark, big slobbery jowls, and liquidy brown eyes. In spite of his guarding experience, he's remarkably easy-going, letting us probe around his footpads when he developed a limp.

Annie is Gus's companion dog. She's a mix of the same two breeds, but she shows her Anatolian side, while Gus looks much more like a Great Pyrenees. She's not quite a year old, so she's still a "puppy." Annie is the reason we learned to string electric wire along the top of the fences. She's an escape artist who can climb a gate in about 3 seconds. When we brought them home, she had to learn that the goats aren't chase toys. She still needs the occasional reminder.

Our two smallest goats are known as "The Twins," even though they aren't, actually. They are half-sisters, and you rarely find one without the other nearby. They're younger and smaller than the other goats, and currently lowest in status, but they're starting to give back what the others dish out. On the left is Lunazul. The other is Fairy Dust. They're our blue-eyed beauties. They were bottle-fed as kids, so they're the most people-friendly.

 Black-and-white Zenyatta goes by "Zen." The nickname implies a state of mind that she doesn't really possess. Her bleat is high-pitched and very different from the others. When the goats first arrived, she was the loudest and most insistent about her displeasure. She cried over and over, finally calming some when I forcibly hugged her. She was the first to request affection.

Pearl is a beautiful rich brown color. She loves to be brushed. Over and over and over. "More brushing, please. I think you may have missed a spot. Perhaps you should start over, just to be sure."

This is Nora, Queen of Standoff-ishness, and the largest and most dominant goat in the herd. She does not fear us, she simply doesn't seem to like us much. When we walk toward her, she meanders away, just out of reach. If I'm very quick, I can get to her with a brush, and she'll allow me to pet her while the brushing is happening. I can get in a few quick pats while she's eating grain, but that's all so far. I'm nothing if not persistent, though. She'll love me eventually.

So, now you know where I've been. Now that the weather has turned positively chilly, I'll be outside more. I'm already drafting the next entry, which has a backstory.

Lynx

Some arachnids wander through the garden, searching for prey. These are not web-weavers, although they often depend on a silken dragline. They hunt and pounce with catlike precision, earning themselves the name of Lynx.

Green lynx spiders (Peucetia viridans) are common in this area, although not commonly seen. Their jewel-toned coloration is formidable camouflage, allowing them to hide in plain sight, patiently waiting...waiting...

This one perches on a rose leaf. Unlike most of the invertebrate world I try to photograph, she stayed still, posing in the patchy sunlight filtering through the walnut tree. Green lynxes tend to stay in the same area for a while. An hour later, I went back outside to find that she was still there, still watching.

Squirm

Peripheral vision caught me again, calling my attention to the side, when I'd been intent on moving down the sidewalk. This time, a tiny movement inside a a ceramic bowl that was left outside during a rain slowed my steps. The bowl contained about half an inch of water, a large wolf spider, and a pile of squirm.

Interesting: I've never seen a pile of squirm before.

I tipped the bowl over onto a rock in the garden, thinking the spider might still be alive since the water wasn't especially deep. In fact, I wondered why she hadn't just crawled out--it wasn't like the depth was over her head. The spider didn't move. The pile of squirm separated itself into two smaller squirmy piles, and writhed around on the rock for a while, before crawling into a crack in the damp earth.

In the video, the spider is well-camouflaged and hard to see, but she's on the left side of the screen, about midway down.



At the time, I was completely mystified. How did two strange-looking worms happen to end up in the same bowl as an enormous arachnid? I wish I'd paid more attention to the spider, because now I know the connection between everybody in the bowl. The squirmy things are a couple of horsetail worms. These members of the roundworm family parasitize insects, spiders, and similar organisms. Apparently, having these little guys inside you makes you thirsty, so you hang around water a lot. When the worms are ready, they emerge, killing their host, and swim away in the pool of water nearby. There, they lay their eggs on vegetation in the water so the cycle can start all over.