The Little House in the Not-So-Big Woods

You're looking a little pale....

2011-05-15T20:33:00.001-05:00

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

2011-02-04T06:38:00.004-06:00

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

2011-01-30T19:06:00.002-06:00

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

2011-01-22T04:52:00.005-06:00

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

2011-01-05T05:00:00.001-06:00

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

2011-01-02T15:14:00.001-06:00

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

2010-12-28T13:14:00.000-06:00

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

2010-11-28T17:12:00.001-06:00

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

2010-11-25T12:55:00.002-06:00

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?

2010-10-17T21:35:00.000-05:00

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

2010-10-16T11:01:00.002-05:00

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

2010-09-26T13:40:00.001-05:00

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

2010-09-18T23:29:00.001-05:00

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

2010-07-21T13:02:00.000-05:00

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

2010-07-14T21:27:00.004-05:00

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.

Origami

2010-07-07T07:00:00.006-05:00

There are a lot of well-known architects and engineers in the animal world: beavers, paper wasps, termites, and naked mole rats come to mind. Just within my garden, a variety of critters create shelter using plant leaves. Any stroll will reveal leaves folded or rolled and sealed with silk. I opened up a leafy taco-shell, causing a spider to rush out in arachnid rage, shouting the spidery equivalent of "Get off my lawn!"

This caught my eye on a recent dog-walk. I've never seen a shelter shaped like this one. I don't think I could create it with my ten fingers and big brain.

The Return of Sleepy Wren

2010-07-05T20:44:00.000-05:00

Last night's wren visit apparently wasn't a one-off. Five minutes ago, I glanced up when a juvenile cardinal popped inside the globe feeder to get a bite. A few seconds later, a Carolina wren landed on the deck railing, and stood there, not eating or scratching around. Instead, she stared up in the direction of the occupied feeder. Or maybe it's a he: I get so impatient with those darned non-sexually-dimorphic birds!

Cardinal kept eating. Wren kept staring. Could it be....

I made just enough of a movement to encourage the cardinal to fly out of the cage. Maybe 10 seconds passed, then the wren flew in, fluffed her feathers, and relaxed. She's there now, crouched on the tray at the bottom of the feeder, apparently quite satisfied with her new sleeping quarters.

Sweet Dreams

2010-07-04T21:02:00.000-05:00

We have a bird-feeder with a globe-shaped wire enclosure around it, hanging just outside the living-room window. A Carolina wren has popped inside the wire cage, fluffed its feathers, and settled in for the night. I'm on the couch about 8 feet away, typing and watching TV. I'm honored that she feels so safe, so close to me.

The Roach, The Raccoon, and The Blog Writer

2010-07-04T19:16:00.000-05:00

Living out here in the Not-So-Big Woods, I'm used to bees and wasps buzzing around the inside of the windows, and spiders skating in the bathtub. Most of these critters get the upside-down juice-glass & subscription-card routine: scoop them up, and fling them outside.

But not the American cockroaches. These are demon insects, growing to lengths of 1.5 ~~feet~~ inches, and able to scuttle along at 3,000 miles per hour. I don't like them. They're one of the few insects that are immediately squashed when we find them inside. Awesome Husband squishes them with a paper towel; I prefer a fly swat--when I can find one. Right now I'm beating them to a pulp with a half-empty roll of giftwrap.

Last night, I was sitting in the living room. It was very dark outside. Although I could only see a few inches out the windows, I could easily see the Giant Roach crawling on the outside of the glass. It was looking for a way in so it could kill me. I'm sure of it. Suddenly, out of nowhere, a raccoon materialized, smashed the roach against the window, wrenched it off, and ate it. With the monster disposed of, the raccoon rescuer lumbered off. It was like stepping into a Disney cartoon.

There's No Place Like Hohme

2010-07-01T22:14:00.002-05:00

Awesome Husband and I escaped the Texas heat for a week, fleeing to Seattle and surrounding areas. One of the places we visited was the Hoh Rainforest on Washington's Olympic Peninsula, where about 80 million shades of green assault you as you walk through. Conifers like spruce, hemlock, and fir rule the area, dripping with an array of mosses, while the ground is invisible beneath ferns and oxalis.

Imagine that you're a little spruce seed, getting ready to drop from your parent tree. It's exciting to be sailing toward the ground, knowing that all you need is a fertile patch of ground that gets a little sunlight and some water, and you'll be on your way!

You look down and get a bit of a jolt.

Living here in the rainforest as you do, getting a damp patch of ground won't be a problem. Getting a shot of sunlight, though, will take some clever planning. There's just not much clear ground here. In most forests, fires do the job of opening up the canopy and burning off the undergrowth so that new seedlings can get a start. Being a RAINforest, though, fires aren't common here. As many shivering hikers have discovered, wet wood doesn't like to burn. The thick canopy of the ancient trees only lets patchy light through, and the carpet of ferns block most of that from the soil. What's a young seed to do?

If you're a smart youngster, you aim for a rotting log. Fallen logs can help supply two scarce resources. Rich nutrients are locked up in the decomposing wood, as well as natural fertilizer in the form of decayed leaves and animal scat that accumulates in the cracks. Not only do the downed logs provide nutrition for hungry seedlings, they rest above the layer of oxalis and ferns that block the sun from a new wannabe-tree. (See the tiny little spruce tree there?)

As the new trees grow, they send down long roots that look like sinuous legs draped over the decaying log. Because of the sometimes enormous diameter of those logs (called "nurse logs") the roots may have to be several feet long before they begin to penetrate the actual ground. The scene ends up looking as though a tree-person is straddling the log, with long legs stretching for the dirt.

As time passes, the younger tree becomes firmly anchored around the nurse log, and it's often hard to tell where one ends and the other begins. The nurse log continues to decay, a process that may take over a hundred years to complete. When it's gone, it leaves behind a hole in the twisting roots of the younger tree.

The final product is really dramatic when more than one sapling got its start on the same nurse log. When they're mature, you can see several enormous trees in a ridiculously straight line, all with the telltale hole in the buttressing root system. These groupings of trees are called "colonnades." The colonnade system is the primary way that forests in temperate rainforests renew themselves.

Saint Francis and the Dragon

2010-06-15T21:19:00.000-05:00

Since a couple of my blogging buddies have been writing about anoles, I suppose it's time to come clean about my own past with the chameleon-like lizard.

In the summer of 2006, we'd just gotten a brand-new camera. It was shiny, with knobs and lenses and switches and menus. Despite knowing almost nothing about using it, I grabbed the camera and hauled it out to the Fort Worth Botanical Gardens. Some of my favorite photos ever came from that trip, but this is about a Very Special Set of images that prove just how spectacularly unobservant I can be.

It was July, and hot. A few hours into the field trip, I needed to sit down in the shade for a while, and I stumbled across a little patio. A big tree provided the shade, and a low stone wall worked well as a place to sit. A terra-cotta statue of St. Francis watched over the patio from the flower garden behind the wall. I was surprised to see a brown lizard perched on his shoulder. Sensing a Photographic Moment, I crept over and started snapping away. (I am a member of the "Take A Million Pictures, and One is Bound to Be Good" club)

I was amazed that the anole didn't run away when I moved in close. Certainly, it turned around to look at me, but didn't flee. I changed position a little, and took more pictures, anticipating how nice the two earth tones would look juxtaposed.

At the time, I was concerned about how well the camera could handle the light and shadow contrast with the automatic settings, which is why I kept clicking the shutter button over and over again.

I was in an awkward physical position. St. Francis was far enough back that I needed to lean in, but the wall around the garden was too low to rest my elbows on, and too high to put my knee on it. The concrete on the ground had a layer of slippery gritty dirt that kept me from getting a good grip with my feet. My mind was focused more on staying upright and not dropping the camera than on what was going on in front of me.

By now, you've probably noticed what I failed to see. I continued failing to see the obvious until I got home and loaded the pictures on my computer. It's a habit of mine that I often look at picture rolls from end to beginning, so this was the first one I checked out:

Wait.... No, I was taking pictures of a BROWN lizard. Remember, I wanted to see the two earth tones? I scrolled back to the beginning of the roll, and it was only then that I saw the anole changing colors right in front of me. I completely missed it while it was happening.

Rescue

2010-06-10T19:06:00.002-05:00

Now and then I venture out of the Not-So-Big-Woods. A few days ago, I visited "The Shops at Legacy." According to their website, it's an "urban lifestyle center." This means that it's a small planned shopping/eating neighborhood with a few apartment buildings. Very trendy, happily pretentious, but with a nice movie theatre showing independent films plonked down in the big middle of it. In spite of missing the exit from the Tollway (twice!) I got there too early for my movie, so I strolled around the shopping area.

Just outside the Taco Diner is this fountain. A trio of sparkly young women stood there, looking down into the moat at the base. As I passed by them, I heard snatches of their conversation. "...soaking wet...don't think he can get out...going to drown..."

???

I doubled back and joined them, glancing down into the fountain. A really miserable grackle was trapped in the narrow space, soaking wet, just holding his head above the water. "Can you help him?"

I felt terribly sorry for the bird, but amused at the sparkly girls, too. Saving the bird meant that I had to reach down about 6 inches and scoop him out. Very difficult rescue operation, you know.

I lifted him, dripping and pitiful, and installed him under a nearby shrub. The sparkly girls were effusive with thanks and praise. "You're our hero!"

And yet....no one called the newspapers.

Juvie

2010-06-09T12:00:00.001-05:00

I spent the spring collecting hair for bird to line their nests with: my hair, my pets' hair, the unsuspecting neighbor dogs' hair. A whole generation of tiny birds were hatched into soft blankets of local hair. We're starting to see the results. Last week was the first appearance of a couple of young cardinals. They look a lot like the females, but they lack the snappy orange beaks and assertive manners of the adults. They have a more timid look, and aren't nearly as proficient with the sunflower seed buffet. I've seen this one spending quite a long time trying to break open a seed, only to finally figure out that it was an empty shell half to begin with. One of the young males is just starting to get his red chest feathers, but they're coming in very sporadically. He looks like someone was trying to color in his chest with a marker that's just about to run out of ink.

Self-Control

2010-06-06T18:22:00.003-05:00

I'm going to start off by saying that I didn't kill the neighbor's dog. He totally deserved it, but I restrained myself. Now you won't have to suffer through uncomfortable suspense.

We live in coyote country. We have no fenced yard. Our Dog is snack-sized. These three facts add up to: we accompany Dog on his walks. The most common trek is down our long long driveway, then up the private road to the gravel road where the mailboxes are, then back to the house. One-way is about 1000 feet. At the very furthest point, while waiting for Dog to do something productive, I noticed a butterfly on a hackberry leaf. Anything is more interesting than watching Dog search for just the right place, so I wandered over.

Wow. She was laying eggs on the underside of the leaf, her delicate ovipositer daintily dropping little dots one after the other, as though she was decorating a fancy wedding cake. I wondered if there was any chance that I could make the dash all the way back home to get a camera.

Moving as quickly as my inappropriate shoes would allow, I scampered back, got the camera, changed its lens, abandoned Dog, and headed back down the long long driveway.

A quarter of the way there, I stopped short when a gorgeous garter snake poured out of the grass onto the rocks right in front of me. Glowing yellow stripes on the sides, orange down the center, posing on the gravel. And I had a camera. I NEVER have a camera for things like this.

I'd just focused when the snake startled and vanished back into the grass. What? Why? AAAUUUGGHHH!!! It was the neighbor's dog, gallumphing with glee toward me, hoping for a belly scratch. Thoughts of destruction raged through my mind, but I restrained myself. I still had to get back to the butterfly tree.

Hurrying on, now with a companion dog, I arrived to find that she was still there! Still depositing those tiny pearls on the back of the leaf. I found a great angle, focused, started to press the shutter...And then the Neighbor Dog jumped on my leg, throwing me off-balance so that I nudged the branch with the camera. Frightened, the butterfly flew away before I could get the picture.

Yes, he ruined two fabulous pictures within three minutes, and still, Neighbor Dog lives: a monument to my self-control.

As I trudged back down the long long driveway, a Bess Beetle plonked himself in front of me as though he was offering himself up as a consolation prize. I got a nice picture, although I fully expected that Neighbor Dog was going to run up and eat it at any second. I babysat the beetle all the way across the driveway until it entered the leaf litter on the other side, fending off the curious dog, who then trotted back to his home. His work was done.

I'm still very sad about missing the snake. Here's an artist's representation:

Gravity

2010-06-02T21:08:00.001-05:00

Scientists use all sorts of graphs, drawings, and images when they want to show the relationship between gravity and a black hole. This image, taken from Wikimedia's Commons , is a pretty typical one.

I wonder why scientists don't just use a photograph of a funnel-web spider.

The funnel-web spinners found around here aren't the legendary spiders of Australia, where everything is venomous, including butterflies, cows, and small children. The Agelenidae family, my local funnel-web builders, are deadly only to insects that are unfortunate enough to step on the shimmering silken platform. The spider lurks inside the tube, waiting for vibrations from a wandering insect to sound the dinner bell. Then she rushes out, snags her blue-plate special, and dashes back inside, chortling all the way.

If you look for an answer to the question "What's inside a black hole," you get....well, you get a lot of results, but none of them seem to suggest that there's a giant Agelenidae in there. But really, how would you know?

Carnivals!

2010-05-31T13:40:00.000-05:00

Greg Laden is hosting Berry Go Round this time, at his place. Go visit, and read some of the most interesting plant bloggers out there.

If birds are your thing, Coyote Mercury is the place to be. I and the Bird #126 is being hosted (poetically, even) there.

Well, gall-eeee!!

2010-05-23T21:34:00.008-05:00

photo courtesy of rakka

One thing we have plenty of here in the Not-So-Big Woods is leaves, and when you've got leaves, you've got galls.

Awesome Husband refers to galls as "tree warts," and that's what they look like. These leafy protuberances form when an insect, often a wasp or a mite, lays her egg inside a leaf's tissue. The egg, and later, the larva, produce hormones that interact with the plant to form a...well, a sort of wart. The wartiness provides food and shelter for the developing larva. When the larva matures, it chews its way out of its little house, and goes on to make more warts on more trees. Galls are unsightly, but they don't usually hurt the tree.

Since they're generally harmless, we can just enjoy their weirdness.

This gall, attached to an oak leaf, looks like a beetle. Fairly smooth and hard, it's a single, but some leaves are covered in them.

On the other hand, these elm galls are smaller, softer, and a bit fuzzy. Some of them are pink, making it look like Captain Crunch visited and left some dimunitive Crunch Berries behind. (note to Quaker Oats Legal Dept.: I am not trying to insinuate that your Crunchberries contain larvae).

The pecan leaves are taking the hardest hit, aesthetically speaking. Multiple galls infest each leaf, and they're large ones. They're distorting the leaves, pulling them out of shape.

Different galls on the elm leaves are more cylindrical than most, and also covered in fuzz. They appeared very early in the season, when the leaves were first emerging.

And finally, these tiny little pointy things, perched on a hackberry leaf, casting shadows like mountains in the setting sun.

Those are just the galls I found in a 15-minute period in a hundred-foot stretch of trees lining the driveway. The variety is breath-taking, and I know there are more waiting in the woods.

"Don't be silly, dear, birds don't look like that..."

2010-05-16T14:05:00.002-05:00

Setting: an elementary classroom

Teacher: Ok kids, your assignment is to draw a bird. It doesn't have to be a real one: you can use your imagination, but it should look like it might exist around here. Try not to get too wild with the details. Please color it neatly. You'll have about 45 minutes to work. Let me know when you're finished.

(students draw and color intently, focusing on their work in a way that real children never do)

As time ticks by, students begin to finish their bird pictures and raise their hands for the teacher to come and collect their work. At the last desk, she looks at the picture being handed in with dismay.

Teacher: Oh dear. I don't think you understood the instructions. We're trying to draw a bird that's realistic. This picture is gorgeous, but you and I both know that there aren't any birds in this area that are colored like that.

Student: But--

Teacher: It looks like you went wild with your new marker set. Did you just get that for your birthday?

Student: But there was one outside my--

Teacher: I'll hang this up because it's a lovely picture, but you'll need to do another one that isn't quite so gaudy. You might see a bird like this in the rainforest, but certainly not here in this part of Texas.

Circus of the Spineless

2010-05-03T20:25:00.000-05:00

Visit Circus of the Spineless #50 at Arthropoda's house.

Silent Scream

2010-04-27T21:02:00.002-05:00

Often, there's a specific event that tilts someone from "enthusiast" to "fanatic." My obsession with the living things in the Not-So-Big Woods sprang from one small event that occurred just over a year ago.

It was gorgeous spring day on April 11, 2009. The sun was shining, and the wind was stirring the leaves gently. Awesome Husband was toiling under the deck, attaching it to the house (a step the previous owner had overlooked, preferring instead to lean it against the house and pound a few nails randomly here and there). My job was to stay nearby and fetch tools, nails, large pieces of lumber, and bandages as necessary.

I waited for orders in a swinging chair in the backyard, watching the birds and enjoying the sound of their wings as they flew between the trees and a thick layer of sunflower seeds laid out on the deck railing. A loud flutter grabbed my attention: a bird was very close. In fact, it had landed on the canvas back of my swing. I went statue-still. Inside, of course, I was squealing "THERE'S A BIRD ON MY CHAIR!!"

Then my eyes widened beyond their previously known boundaries: the bird had dropped down to my shoulder. "It's on my shoulder!!!" I didn't scream. "DID YOU HEAR ME?" (of course you didn't, I didn't make a sound) "THE BIRD IS ON MY SHOULDER!!"

Then it made a leap to the top of my head. I could feel the little claws digging in. I gritted my teeth as the sharp beak pecked through my hair. Inside, I alternated between an internal "OW!" and "THERE'S A BIRD ON MY HEAD? WHERE ARE MY WITNESSES??" Then the bird went still up there. The pain went away, and I was still left to the absolute joy of having a wild bird perched on my head. The bliss ebbed a bit as it bent down and painfully wrenched a few hairs from my head ("OUCH!!") and flew away. I was finally able to see it as it departed: a tufted titmouse, happily taking home some padding for the nest.

Fast forward about one year. I've just had a major haircut. At my request, the stylist collected all of my leftover hair so I could take it home and stuff it into an old suet box. I desperately hope that this is last year's bird, getting a big beakful of nest liner to take back home.

Oops

2010-04-26T21:26:00.000-05:00

Awesome Husband called me to the front porch, where an unknown caterpillar was crawling around on a blanket the dog had been relaxing on out near the woods.

"Oh dear, the poor thing!" I thought. "It will starve if I just leave it there. I'll photograph it and then put it on a tree in the backyard." So, photographed and relocated. Then it just needed to be identified.

Using the excellent site Discover Life , I quickly found the mystery critter.

Hm... "forest tent caterpillar Malacosoma disstria " Uh-oh. "...often defoliates large areas..." Oh dear.

Well, it's quite pretty, anyway.

Ten-Petal Anemone

2010-04-11T21:23:00.004-05:00

One of the earliest flowers to pop out in the Not-So-Big Woods when Spring settles in is the Ten-Petal Anemone, Anemone berlandieri. Our first ones were light purple, then the mostly-white ones took over. Graceful pointed sepals cup themselves around a veritable schnozz of an ovary as they open in the late morning. Believers in a short workday, they close up again well before dusk.

The obtrusive ovary has earned them another common name: Tenpetal Thimbleweed.

As the days pass, the sepals begin to lose their grip and drop away, leaving only the cylindrical ovary behind at the tip of the stem. The look is rather like an old-fashioned microphone that Frank Sinatra might have crooned into.

They hang around in this condition for a few days, swaying in the spring breezes. Finally, a change occurs. A tiny spot at the tip seems to soften and turn white.

It's the first sign that something has been happening. Inside that cylinder, tiny seeds have been developing a coat of fluff, just waiting to ripen and develop wings. Mature now, they long to break free.

It soon becomes obvious why yet another common name for this Anemone is the Windflower. Like dandelions, they depend on the wind for seed dispersal.

Soon, all that's left is the stem, leaves, and the pointed tip that the seeds once clung to. Some may never get this far. The soft stems are a veritable buffet for bright green aphids. The fluids in this Anemone are supposed to be irritating and mildly toxic. So, don't nibble. Unless you're an aphid. Then, enjoy!

Crouching Photographer, Hidden Grasshopper

2010-04-05T21:17:00.002-05:00

I belong to the "Assume something interesting is there, and crawl around with a camera until you find it" school of nature photography.

I spotted this guy when he jumped practically on top of me, then I lost him, then found him, then stupidly took my eyes off of him to glance up at some bird noise, then couldn't find him again, then he moved so I could see him. Then I took the picture before it was too late.

He sat almost perfectly still while I crept forward, until the camera's lens was only a couple of inches away. He was absolutely aware of me, perhaps wondering what kind of horrible lens-nosed monster-bird was after him. Knowing that concealment was the best form of protection, he willed himself to become part of the leaf litter as I approached. The only movement that I could detect was a painfully slow drawing up of his left rear leg, as he tensed for the jump he might have to make if his concealment failed him.

I slowly reached forward to pull a weed that was in the way of the picture. This was too much, and he fled a short hop away. I saw where he landed, and kept my eye pinned to that spot as I crawled over there.

I couldn't find him. I clearly saw where he landed, but I could NOT find him.

I thought about brushing my hand through the dead leaves and early spring plants to roust him out again, but I couldn't bring myself to do it. It wasn't fair, somehow. My survival didn't depend on finding him. I'd gotten the picture I'd hoped for. He won. His skills of hiding bested my skills of finding.

I'm tentatively calling this the Northern Green-Striped grasshopper (Chortophaga viridifasciata).

"Peripheral Vision" (or) "Hey! Over Here!"

2010-04-04T10:56:00.000-05:00

I've learned to count on my peripheral vision in the Not-So-Big-Woods. Paying attention to some subtle movement only visible from the corner of my eye is how I've run into some of the most interesting things.

Yesterday, I was walking down the long driveway that connects our house to our private road (which in turn connects to a gravel rural road, which connects to a small suburban road, which connects to a larger suburban road, which connects to a minor state highway, which connects to a major state highway, all of which combines to make giving directions to The Little House a Big Pain). We've done some major tree-trimming in preparation for a project that I still can't believe I'm about to undertake. (more about that in coming weeks)

Anyway, I saw a tiny bit of movement out of the corner of my eye, a few steps into the woods on the west side of the driveway. The movement was so subtle that when I turned my head to look for it, I lost it. "Dark against light...dark against light....where was it...??....Aha!"

It was one of our honeybees, collecting the resin from a newly-sawn bois d'arc branch. Three bees intently circling the outer rim of the tree branch stub, picking out the apparently-tasty bits of softened sap that oozed out on the warm April day.

Sometimes when I take a photograph, the picture doesn't end up with quite the feel that I thought it would have. These did. I love how the bee's warm gold colors blend in with the yellowish wood and amber resin. A few times I was able to get the bee profiled against the blue sky for a nice contrast. That required kneeling down and leaning against the tree, which is how I almost put my knee down on another bee that was sap-chewing from a cut near the bottom of the tree. Oops. Lesson learned: look first, kneel second.

'Bye Goldfinches! See You Next Year!

2010-03-28T18:00:00.001-05:00

Most of the goldfinches seem to be gone. There are still a couple of thistle-scarfing hangers-on, but the swarm appears to have moved north. The last time I saw the full flock was last Sunday during the snow. As other local bloggers mentioned, just about the time they got really showy-looking, they left.

It's as though, having spent the winter with us in their olive drab, they were a little embarrassed to be seen in sparkling lemon-gold plumage.

Welcome, Spring!

2010-03-21T13:34:00.001-05:00

Very Early Spring
(by Katherine Mansfield)

The fields are snowbound no longer;
There are little blue lakes and flags of tenderest green.
The snow has been caught up into the sky--
So many white clouds--and the blue of the sky is cold.

Now the sun walks in the forest,
He touches the bows and stems with his golden fingers;
They shiver, and wake from slumber.
Over the barren branches he shakes his yellow curls.
Yet is the forest full of the sound of tears....
A wind dances over the fields.
Shrill and clear the sound of her waking laughter,
Yet the little blue lakes tremble
And the flags of tenderest green bend and quiver.

This is our first full day of spring. The sun is definitely NOT walking in our forest, and the birds are cold and hungry. Normally, there is little interspecies fussing and fighting among the feeder-birds. The male cardinals squabble amongst themselves, sometimes with great shows of fluttering wings and the occasional aerial fight. Today, however, even the finches are feeling brave. Here's one of the goldfinches warning off a cardinal.

Surrender, Dorothy! There's flying monkeys out there!

2010-03-20T07:00:00.008-05:00

There were lots of new sounds to process when we moved out here from the Big City. Squawks and trills from the trees. ("What bird is making that noise?" "A squirrel." "That's not a bird." "Clever of you to notice.") Strange rustlings from the weeds, and when the weeds are eleven feet tall and growing right up against the house, this can cause some concern. Squeaking tree branches. Frogs that said things distinctly different than "ribbit." The roar of the river just behind us, reaching record-setting flood levels just as we moved in.

And then one night, we were startled to hear the monkeys. "Startled" may be an understatement. Books were flung...eyes widened. Someone may have said "Aaauuuggghhh! What is THAT?!?"

It was an amazing cacaphony of shrieking hooting barking coming from several directions at once, and the sources were very close.

I hoped the doors were locked.

I hoped monkeys didn't eat schnauzers.

I hoped there weren't any bananas in the living room.

As I was trying to decide between calling 911 or Animal Control, the pandemonium suddenly stopped. Someone must have called an emergency monkey meeting at a distant location.

We eventually were able to identify the culprit, and as it turned out, the monkeys were not what they seemed. They were actually Barred Owls (Strix varia), beautiful brown-streaked birds with round faces and ominous eyes. How a noise like that could come from an animal without opposable thumbs, I'll never know.

Camp Joie de View

2010-03-18T17:45:00.004-05:00

We have a campsite in our Not-So-Big-Woods. Nothing particularly fancy--just a clearing overlooking the creek and its deep bank, a circle of stones for a campfire, and a concrete bench used either for quiet contemplation or for holding cooking equipment and lanterns. Sometimes we pitch a tent and sleep out, sometimes it's just nice to spend an evening under the stars and among the trees, as we did earlier this week. The site has been named Camp Joie de View, combining my name with a celebration of the lovely view over the creek that wraps 2 sides of our property.

After a dinner of hamburgers cooked over the campfire (and a quick retreat to the house for a change of clothes after I dumped my drink in my lap), we just sat. As Dr. Ruth Young over at Talking Nature says, if you just sit quietly, things happen.

You might get the stinkeye from a black-and-white warbler, concerned that you're gobbling up all the good bugs. Jumping from twig to twig, then shimmying up a tree trunk in a darn good impression of a nuthatch, this twitchy little thing was constantly in motion. Always, though, with one eye on the suspicious couple in the red camp chairs.

You might get to hear the hoarse "Squonk!" of a Great Blue Heron, circling the big trees across the creek before settling in. The look so awkward in trees. I'm constantly surprised that they don't come crashing down through the branches, wings askew and legs tangled in vines. I watched through binoculars for a very long time before it dawned on me that one of them was sitting in a nest. And so was the other. Sometimes, I'm not as observant as I'd like to believe.

You might wonder about that ungodly high-pitched noise. It's hard to hear it at first, but once you notice it, you can't shake it. What is it? Oh. A tufted titmouse? Really? Yes, really. In fact, one that's just visited our feeder, then flew a hundred yards so it could eat one of our peanuts above our heads.

You might get to hear a Barred Owl hooting and barking. And if you happen to be looking in just the right direction at just the right second, you might see its silhouette as it flies in for a closer look at you, apparently decides you're ok, and glides out again. Don't even try to hear it--just take a moment to be thankful you aren't a mouse.

Late at night, while you doze on cushions on the ground waiting for the fire to burn out (and waiting...and waiting....) if you're very lucky, you might hear two packs of coyotes tumbling through the night, sounding like a playground full of kids laughing and screeching.

Nature IS out there.

The Second Entry in The Parade Of Predators

2010-03-07T07:23:00.002-06:00

Just days ago, a coyote ghosted through the woods behind the house, leaving us breathless. This morning, a bobcat strode with great seriousness and purpose from the driveway, around the side yard, and across the back yard before melting into the same set of woods, probably heading for the creek just beyond. A gorgeous animal with camouflage just as effective as its canine partner from last weekend.

Henbit

2010-03-03T19:25:00.017-06:00

Henbit was always part of the lawn when I was growing up. Its tiny purple flowers were a more reliable sign of spring's approach than robins or daffodils. I called it "clover" when I was a kid. Looking back, I think that's what I called most of the plants in the lawn that weren't obviously St. Augustine grass. I was not a botanically-aware child.

Henbit's fancy dress-up name is Lamium amplexicaule. It grows all over the United States, and Europe, and in large swathes of Africa, Asia, and probably Mars. A member of the family Lamiaceae, it is related to mint, oregano, thyme, lavender, basil, and sage, its more herbal cousins. The leaves are said to be edible, and especially good when lightly dressed in a salad. You can see henbit's resemblance to mint in the texture of the leaves, and the square cross-sectional shape of the stem.

Henbit is often confused with Purple Deadnettle (Lamium purpureum), but henbit's leaves attach directly to the main stem, with no petioles. Purple Deadnettle leaves dangle a bit, often overlapping, while Henbit's leaves wrap around the main stem, forming a shape like a cup or bowl.

Because henbit has just always been part of the standard outdoor greenery for me, I was taken aback when I started researching the plant: there's a considerable amount of vitriol aimed its way. "It's taking over my lawn! How do I kill it?" "I thought I killed it all, then it came back!" "Oh no! It's in my lawn AGAIN!!!"

All this over....henbit? I think of henbit as the cute purple flower that blooms even in winter, not as a skulking psycopathic lawn & garden destroyer. How bad can it be, if the bloom looks like Dino the Dinosaur?

Coyote

2010-02-28T12:51:00.002-06:00

A coyote drifted through the woods just at the treeline of the back yard yesterday morning. He was a large one, shaggy winter coat just the color of the tree trunks and dead grasses he slipped through. It was a lucky glance in the right direction that caught him--he was silent and almost invisible. I could hardly get the words out: "There's a...in the trees, there's a...dog-thing..." A few seconds later, he was gone, melted into the woods. Gone like someone turned off a coyote-switch and he simply evaporated. No time to take a picture, so I'm left with just a memory of the grey-brown fur and the wary eyes.

mmmmmm.....weather data!

2010-02-24T18:35:00.005-06:00

I don't know why this squirrel loved the rain gauge so much. It looked like the start of a great friendship, but alas...it was not to be. I became suspicious after a major rain event left the field marshy, and the creek swollen and turbulent, while the gauge attempted to convince me that the precipitation amount was somewhat less than 0.1 inch.

Upon closer examination, a crack was discovered. Unacceptable for a pair of weather geeks. (Yes, we've blown out a set of stereo speakers while listening to The Weather Channel. Hasn't everyone?) The yellow rain gauge has been discarded and replaced with a proper weather station.

We. Have. Data. We've got rainfall, barometric pressure, air speed and direction, outdoor AND indoor temperature, relative humidity, dew point..... I'm getting dizzy.

If it was easy, it wouldn't be fun.

2010-02-19T21:09:00.011-06:00

When we first moved from The City to The Country, I knew a few birds. Really, who CAN'T call a cardinal or a blue jay at first glance? Imagine my surprise when I found that not all birds are as easy to put a name to!

Once tucked away in the Little House in the Not-So-Big-Woods, I found that I liked having proper names for things. It's much better to talk about the Southern Prickly Ash than about "that tree with the weird pointy bark." It's the same with birds. I'd rather say "Look, there's a chipping sparrow" than "Hey, there's that little sparrow-looking thing."

So, with field guide in one hand and binoculars in the other, I set out to look for distinguishing marks on everything within sight that grew, crawled, slithered, or flew. I discovered the agony of trying to analyze the subtle difference in shading between 2 almost identical birds in the guide, and then apply it to a real live one: a bird that doesn't want to sit perfectly still in the exact pose as the exquisite picture in my hand.

Case #1 (Photo courtesy of Ken Blackwell, from Flickr )
Even I knew it was a woodpecker. I didn't know there so many kinds. It did have a red head. Perhaps it was a red-headed woodpecker! (I'm logical like that) Except...it wasn't. It could be a red-bellied woodpecker. What does the book say...hm..."...distinguished by the wash of pale red on the belly..."

The belly??!!?? It's a woodpecker! Their bellies stay pressed against the tree trunk! I can't remember how many times I followed the infernal winged things from branch to branch, binoculars making circular indentations around my eyes, quietly moaning "pleeeeaaaaassssse turn around!" I'm sure it got to be a game with them. "Hey, watch me hop up on this branch, but I'll turn away from her so she can't see my front side!" The bird that was finally careless enough to let me catch a glimpse of that rosy glow must have been heckled by all of his friends.

Case #2

(photo left, courtesy of Don Sutherland, from Flickr)
Again with the woodpeckers! "Hairy" or "Downy"? Check the all-knowing Reference Book. "Hairy woodpeckers are larger." Refrain from throwing Reference Book across the yard. That description would be great if only I could persuade one of each to perch side by side on a tree trunk, so I could do a little comparative measurement. When there's only seeing one, it's less than useful. I did finally find a mention elsewhere that you can differentiate them by the ratio of beak length to head width. At that time, they started hiding their heads.

(photo right, courtesy of Anne Elliott, from Flickr)

When the Leaves Are Gone

2010-02-14T07:00:00.008-06:00

My world is dominated by trees. The Little House is plonked down in the middle of a patch of deciduous woods about 5 acres in size. Trees jostle each other for position, sneakily sliding branches one way or another in order to slurp up just a little more sunlight during the summer days. When the wind blows, I think the noises are just branches creaking and leaves gently slapping, but it's probably the sound of arguing: "Hey! I was here first! Move your leaves somewhere else!"

Leaves were the first things I noticed about the trees when we moved out here in 2007. It was a wet spring: record-setting wet. The place had been abandoned for several months, and the resulting wall of trees and vines and weeds that surrounded the house made the leaves a real in-your-face presence. Leathery oak leaves. Sandpapery elms. Frilly chinaberry. Cedar elms with foliage that reminds me of cornflakes. All different, and all keys to identifying the tree.

And that worked great, until autumn rolled around. Without the curtain of leaves to assist me, I was forced to focus on more subtle cues, particularly bark.

Ask kids to draw trees, and invariably, they'll reach for the brown crayon when they draw the trunk. Scribble on some brown, draw in a knothole, and move on.

But if they'd just look....

Here's a young hackberry. One of my students called these little corky lumps "tree warts." I think it looks like a three-dimensional topographical map of an area you shouldn't go hiking in alone. I can imagine a tiny little Thelma & Louise driving off one of those cliffs.

Here's another.
Very little of the grade-schooler's crayon-brown bark on the bur oak. Like furrows in a farmer's field, the long, deep vertical grooves are characteristic of this tree's bark.

Similar, but not too alike, is the pecan.

The greyish color and vertical grooves recall the bur oak, but the furrows aren't as deep, straight, or continuous. Pecan trees have what I consider "regular bark." I had to think about why they seem to be the norm from which all other trees deviate, then I realized that pecan trees were all around my house when I was a kid. This was the type of bark I saw most often as I was growing up, so I must have imprinted on it as a gosling imprints on her mother.

I've saved the best for last.

Meet the Southern Prickly Ash. Unless you live in the Southeastern U.S., you probably haven't run across one. The trunk is covered with these little pyramids. Many of them have a single ominous thorn protruding from the tip. My husband cut a walking path through our woods, and there's one place where the ground slopes sharply. When it's wet or icy, that spot is slippery, so it would be great to be able to grab onto a tree for balance. Of course, this is the tree that's right there. I'll be keeping my balance by myself, thanks.

At this time of year, the leaves on most trees are still curled up drowsily inside their buds. What better time to get to know trees from a different angle?

A sad day for snowmen

2010-02-12T14:17:00.011-06:00

Significant snowfall in this part of Texas is an event so rare that schools are cancelled, businesses close, and local TV meteorologists warn about the dangerous conditions on the roads outside.

Kids who have trouble getting to school by 8 a.m. can be up, dressed, outside, and have a 6-foot-tall snowman completely finished and detailed by 7:15.

Snow started falling here as though someone turned on a switch at 6 a.m., Thursday. Big damp flakes started coating the ground almost immediately. School was delayed for two hours, then cancelled completely for the day. Still it fell and piled up in drifts that covered branches, steps, and armadillo burrows. I left for school before I knew about the delay, and found myself having to dodge potholes by memory: no hint of their gaping maws was evident under the white blanket.

After I got back home, Mike and I built our own snowman. I think that, in spite of his smile, he has a "get off my lawn!" sort of aura.

Maybe his crankiness got the better of him: He experienced a colossal structural failure of his nether regions, and toppled headfirst down the front steps. The hat is still buried in the resulting snowdrift. Rather sad, since he was my first-ever snowman.

I thought perhaps size might have been Mr Cranky's problem. Determined to leave my mark, I created a much smaller version, only about a foot tall, and plonked him down on the deck railing. Instead of gathering pebbles from the driveway for the facial features, I used the sunflower seeds that were already laying around nearby. Two for the eyes, one for the nose, several more for the mouth, and I salvaged and halved Mr. Cranky's left arm to make 2 arms for my new creation.

A few minutes later, I glanced outside and noticed that his mouth was missing a few seeds. Being a snowman novice, I'd put them in at a downward angle, so they must have fallen out. Five minutes later, one eye was gone. What's up with this? They weren't put in at a "fall out-able" angle. Do you suppose a bird....no, surely not. Not with all the piles of seed lying around everywhere. I replaced the missing bits, then watched as my feathered friends came closer and closer, and finally......

Of course, loading it with seed and suet was absolutely necessary now. I even tempted one of my favorite birds over within range. I love the brown thrasher, here imitating a roadrunner. Another highlight is the Incredible Levitating Finch.

In Praise of Rotting Things

2010-02-11T10:41:00.008-06:00

"Honey, you wanna see the new fungus picture?"

"Not while I'm eating lunch."

Such is the average view of rot and decay. To be fair to my awesome husband (who not only indulges but actively encourages my whims), a fair number of my photographs probably aren't appropriate for mealtime viewing. (A cheery little image of a glistening wasp larva being carried off by ants springs to mind.)

But this one was different.

Two years ago, we reluctantly cut down a pecan tree that was threatening to topple over and block the driveway. The pieces were pretty much left where they fell. Since then, we've had a wonderful array of bracket fungus take up residence on the old trunk. This is one of the most striking and dramatic.

I believe it is the Turkey Tail fungus (Trametes versicolor). There is also the possibility that it's the very similar-looking Stereum ostrea, a.k.a. the False Turkey Tail. Tom Volk's excellent website tells me that you can tell the difference by looking at the pore-bearing underside. Since we're getting quite a snowfall right this minute, investigating fungal private parts will just have to wait.

These fungi are very attractive. Hard and leathery, rather than slimy, they range up and down the trunks of dead (or sometimes not-quite-dead) trees. They array themselves in an assortment of colors: brown, reddish, orange, cream. Some of them become colonized by algae and display a distinct green color. They may form dense colonies, like the picture above, or enjoy a little space of their own, like this one.

Buffet For One

2010-02-02T07:43:00.000-06:00

The Little House and its Not-So-Big Woods are pretty full of sights and sounds and smells. There are few reasons to wander off outside its borders in search of interesting things to see, but even the most stay-at-home will drift away now and then.

That's how I met Buffet Snail. This cheery fellow (gal? other?) was a resident of the grassy area outside Ballinskeligs Castle in Ireland. Here, he's munching on a slightly rotted dandelion stem, which must be some sort of snail ambrosia. I've never seen a snail with such a gleeful expression.

I watched him for a while, then I felt that he should be relocated, as he was enjoying his snail-y lunch on a highly-traveled path. I picked him up and set him on my hand as I walked him to a quiet spot near the castle's wall. There was an odd sensation on my skin, and I realized he was rasping me with his rough tongue, hoping that I was as tasty as the dandelion had been. Alas, I'm not lunch-worthy.

Mystery in White

2010-01-31T11:30:00.010-06:00

Life out here in the Not-So-Big-Woods is full of little mysteries. "What's that....?" is such a common question.

What's that sparrow-y bird?
What's that snake? No, not the one over there. The one that's RIGHT HERE!
What's that little puddle of slime?
What's making that screaming monkey noise in the woods?

This time, the question was "What's that odd white gauzy fungus?" I noticed it on the morning of one of our first freezes of the winter, gently wrapped around the stem of a dead plant. It looked swirly and graceful, like a skirt on a dancer, or Aretha's newest hat.

These woods of ours are great if you like decay, rot, and fungus. I've never seen so many different ways that dead things can decompose. This was one of the most beautiful fungi I'd ever seen. So ethereal that I didn't touch it, for fear of breaking off layers. I wanted to show my husband, but it was gone by the next day.

The next year, I saw another example in almost exactly the same spot. This time, I couldn't resist a gentle touch--just a brush of my fingertips to find out if it was damp, or soft, or brittle, or slimy.

Well.

What it WAS, was cold. It melted from the scant heat of my hand.
What it WASN'T, was fungus. It was made of ice. I don't mean ice over the fungus. The whole thing was a fairy-wing sort of ice formation.

Another year later, and I ran across a blog post by Dr. James Carter, with a very similar picture of this icy-phenomenon. It's known as an "ice ribbon," or "frost ribbon." The stem of the plant is actually pulling water from the soil, which is then super-cooled as it leaves the stem, forming this flouncy ribbon of ice. Dr. Carter's page has lots of examples of odd ice formations.

Dr. James Carter's Ice Page

What holds the universe together?

2009-12-05T13:29:00.004-06:00

What is the universal glue that keeps everything bound together? If you walk through the woods here, it only takes a few moments to figure out the answer. It's not gravity, or molecular attraction. It's Smilax tamnoides, the bristly greenbrier.

This vine is one of the dominant plants in the woods. It springs straight out of the ground and pushes up up up up, until it either falls over under its own weight, or until it touches another plant. Then it sprouts a tendril, latches on, and commences some serious climbing. It makes wild leaps from tree to tree, forming thick mats that are impossible to walk through. These vines are tough. As if the unbreakable vines themselves aren't trouble enough, they come well-equipped with infernal needle-sharp bristles. Close to the ground, the prickles look like whiskers on an extra from The Godfather. Further up, the thorns are less spiky--more like thorns on a rose.

Because they're so tough, they don't seem to stretch much. They're always under some tension. It's wise to remember that when you go in armed with pruning shears, ready to do a little vine trimming. One cut will cause the vine to lash out in all sorts of unexpected directions. I'm forever getting whacked in the arm. A particularly evil specimen once twined itself around my leg. When I cut it, the infernal thing took careful aim and launched itself at that soft pad of flesh at the base of the thumb. Not satisfied with merely punching holes in me, it pierced the skin, then slid sideways, breaking off those little black needles and leaving them embedded. Much of the rest of the evening was spent with a sterilized needle, tweezers, and a bright lamp, picking at the little spears.

Maybe you shouldn't lean back on the railing just now.

2009-11-28T09:30:00.005-06:00

We're solitary people by nature, but every now and then someone visits. We were sitting out on the deck enjoying drinks with some friends from my husband's work. I glanced at the deck railing and saw a bit of movement behind Karen's head. Bee? Moth? June bug? No, it was something a little more unusual.

This is a Wheel Bug, Arilus cristatus. They're rather large and dramatic-looking. Part of the drama is due to the size: this one was easily an inch long--more if you count the long antennae. Its movements are eerily robotic: it walks slowly, moving one stick-like leg at a time. It also flies clumsily, with a loud buzzing sound. The whole time I was trying to get some pictures, I kept thinking that if it flew and landed on me while I was trying to focus the camera, I'd have a stroke and die. There was a particularly scary moment when the auto-focus was having a hard time, zooming in and out. By the time it stabilized, I was looking at an empty piece of railing. "Hm. I see where the bug was. I'm kind of afraid to look around to see where it is."

I can safely call this a bug because it really is one of the true bugs, belonging to the order Hemiptera. True bugs have mouths that have evolved into beaky sucking things. In this picture, you can see the "beak" tucked back under the head.

Most bugs use that structure (really it's called a "rostrum") for sucking the sap out of plants, like aphids. A good look at a Wheel Bug's rostrum makes you think that it's after something a little livelier than your Aunt Miranda's rosebush. You'd be right: this is a member of the family Reduviidae, the formidable Assassin Bugs. I keep seeing this family of insects referred to as "the gardener's best friend," although I don't know a lot of gardeners who can really get on board with that assessment. A Wheel Bug doesn't look like anyone's BFF. It preys on hapless insects, piercing them with that rostrum, and injecting them with a powerful digestive enzyme. It can then easily suck up the liquified bug innards as though it was sipping a chocolate malt. If handled, it's also happy to pierce human flesh and inject that same enzyme, which is reported to be a spectacularly painful event.

The tail, attached

2009-11-27T07:00:00.001-06:00

I think the wayward tail in the previous entry probably came from one of these: the Five-Lined Skink, Eumeces fasciatis.

Skinks belong to a branch of the lizard family tree. They're characterized by slick shiny scales and a "snaky" body and movements. Their lack of a distinct neck adds to their snake-like charisma. The Five-Lined Skink is pretty common in North Central Texas, in woodland areas where conditions stay a bit damp. That lovely blue tail is a sign of a juvenile. Sadly, the blue fades to greyish as the skink ages, especially in the males.

They're frequent visitors to our porch, stalking around looking for insects. This one was hanging around enjoying the warm wood of the railing. I was amazed that it let me get so close with my intrusive camera: this picture was taken while I was only a couple of feet away. I guess it was confident in its escape abilities: when disturbed, they move so fast they seem to disappear.

Some things aren't supposed to move

2009-11-26T09:23:00.002-06:00

Earthworms can move more than you might think. When there's a worm on the surface and you touch it, it may go through a whole series of spastic contortions as it tries to evade you and your hungry maw. Not too different from people, actually. Try sneaking up on a loved one and tapping his/her neck gently. You'll probably see similar gymnastics.

When I first saw this critter on top of the cedar mulch in the backyard rose garden, I thought it was a misplaced worm. It was writhing from side to side, apparently trying to find a patch of soft moist soil. My first thought was that I'd scoop it up and relocate it to a shady damp patch under some ferns. When I touched it, it leapt about 4 inches up in the air. Hmm. Rather energetic for a worm, but I guess there are Olympic-class athletes even in the Annelida phylum. After a little more wrestling, I got the thing in the palm of my hand, and finally took a closer look. Hey: that's no worm. It's the wrong texture, and it tapers too much, and why is the thick end sort of...raw-looking? It finally dawned on me that I was looking at the hastily discarded tail of a lizard. Five-lined skinks (Eumeces fasciatus) are very common around here, so I'm guessing that's what kind it was.

Some lizards will unattach a portion of their tails when they're being pursued--a sort of sacrificial rear-guard. The tail twitches and hops around all on its own in a most distracting way, allowing the more important parts of the lizard to escape. This one hopped and squirmed and rolled around for about 5 more minutes before relaxing into floppiness.

I never did see the lizard. I guess I was distracted.

Fortunately, it was cold outside

2009-11-25T15:43:00.001-06:00

As a rule, I like bugs and other creepy-crawlies. When there's a spider or wasp in the house, I'm the person who deals with it, trapping it in a sophisticated cage consisting of a juice-glass and a magazine's subscription card, then tossing it outside. I've fished bees out of a swimming pool, laying them out on the leg of my blue jeans to give them a chance to dry off before buzzing away.

There are, however, a few insects that can reduce me to the squealing stereotype of a bug-hater. Grasshoppers are one of those. There's something about the suddenness of their leaps, and the grasping nature of their legs when they land on me with a thud, that overwhelms my otherwise bug-o-centric nature.

I'm happy to announce, then, that the very chilly air this morning slowed down this fellow enough that I was able to approach him without fear. (Well, without as much fear as I usually feel) I've tentatively identified him as the Obscure Bird Grasshopper, aka Schistocerca obscura.