Today's walk at BNC

A Great White Egret shook its feathers when I came too close. Then it flew away.

After a low in the 30s and three days of rainy weather, the sun came out.

With the temp at 50 F, it was a great day for a quick walk after our regular Friday Mexican food lunch.

Immature human stare down with an immature Yellow-Crowned Night Heron.

Monarch finds a sunny place to warm himself.

Fluttery Dogface butterfly finally ...

... let's me see her open wings.

Looks like this mockingbird has a low opinion of me.

Morning entertainment at Bayland Park

Pelicans wait for the fishing boats to return.

This week's adventures as a water monitor at Bayland Park for Galveston Bay Foundation.

• As I walked toward the dock, a guy was standing at the side while his buddy backed the boat into the water. "Curb!" the guide shouted. The driver stuck his head out of the window, "Huh?" "Curb," the guide repeated much quieter. The driver seemed unhappy. "I can see the curb! I'm not even close!" I was walking along the curb side, and the driver was right. He had plenty of room.

• A guy who drove a beat-up van stopped by to ask what I was doing. I explained I was just taking measurements. He said, "Oh, I thought you were homeless like me and trying to catch some shrimp." He didn't catch anything with his cast net. He said it was too cold. I wondered if he lived in that van. Down by a river.

• As I was counting drops during the dissolved oxygen test, an opossum strolled about 30 feet away.  I couldn't stop the test to get out my phone for a pic. It ambled  along the top of a ridge before going into a ditch.

• The last time I was out at Bayland Park I lost my license and debit card, which I had stuffed in a pocket with my keys. A fisherman had found the debit card when I returned to search, but the driver's license never turned up. My mother, who was visiting during this mini-crisis, sent me a 15-pocket travel vest so I could keep cards, keys and 13 other things secure and tidy. Thanks, Mom!

 

 

 

 

 

 

This new sign is about dredging from Morgan's Point to Exxon.

Long-tailed skippers in my viewfinder

Recently I had a cataract removed from my right (focusing) eye, and it has been a revelation. I feel like I have super vision.

This morning I stalked a couple of Long-Tailed Skippers to practice my new focusing skills.

These skippers are common in our area. They are about 2 inches long and like a variety of flowers. They are pretty, but I understand gardeners and farmers growing beans consider them pests because the caterpillars like to eat vine legumes.

A field trip with extra spit

The 82-foot tower provides a great view.

When you get to the top of the John Jacob Observation Tower, what do you want to do?

If you are a sixth-grade boy, you probably want to spit at the ground.

I was one of the herders for kids on a hike through Houston's Sheldon Lake State Park. Most of them couldn't wait to climb the stairs to the top of the observation tower.

The group also enjoyed getting muddy while helping plant in the wetlands.

On the walk we also spotted a broad-banded water snake in a display pond loaded with frogs. Yes, one boy wanted to spit on it to see if  it would move. To be fair there were others who wanted to poke at the snake with a stick, drop a pebble on it or touch it.

One kid, who was kind of joking, said, "Miss, I saw on TV that you grab them behind the head."

I guarded the snake to keep it undisturbed until the field trippers left.

"No, don't spit on the snake."

Scenes from a prairie plant-a-thon

After planting, the empty pots have to be collected.

About 140 volunteers turned out on a clear, crisp Saturday morning to plant 3,050 native species as part of the prairie restoration project at Sheldon Lake State Park. It took a little less than three hours to get the plants in the ground.

The plants were a mix of grasses and forbs, which were started from seeds or rescued from nearby areas.


This field should a new look in the spring.

Digging a hole for a plant in a one-gallon pot can be tough because it has been dry. But an inch of rain earlier in the week helped a bit.

Volunteers came in all sizes.

A couple of student environmental clubs and several families came to help.

What's in the cast net today?

The instructor's demo cast hauled in some menhaden. Or do you call them shad?

Ninth-graders used cast and seine nets during a Back to the Bay class to get a peek at what's below the water's surface.

On this warm October morning at Baytown Nature Center we mostly found menhaden, brown shrimp, comb jelly and old oyster shells covered in barnacles and hooked mussels.

But it's always fun to catch something.

A guy looking for bait fish wanted this catch. Sorry, dude, this is a catch-and-release class.

One group caught a 5-inch blue crab with their seine net.

But mostly they caught little brown shrimp and comb jelly.

Snakes like the pots pile

A harmless ribbon snake can still make be jump.

This is why you kick the pile of pots a couple times before pick up a stack for planting chores. The hope is that snakes and critters will leave their outposts. But sometimes they stick around.

The skin of a snake among the pots about ground level.

Pearl Crescent or Phaon Crescent butterflies?

Pearl Crescent is mostly orange and black,  They like asters.

One challenge for newbies (like me) on a butterfly count is distinguishing Pearl and Phaon Crescents on the fly. Their wingspan is only about an inch and half.

Veterans logging Saturday's count at Baytown Nature Center would see a flash of white and say: Phaon.

Phaon Crescent is orange and black with a cream band on the forewing. They like frogfruit.

When you do yard work and keep finding distractions

Not bad for an iPhone pic.

Woke up to a cool morning that makes you want to open all the windows to flush out the air-conditioning that has kept us from melting in the heat of the past few months.

Decided to catch up with some yard work, but I was immediately distracted by a Walking Stick. When its movement caught my eye, it really did look like a stick. It was about an inch and half long and so delicate.

I moved it to a leaf for a pic. It was unhappy and jumped back to the leaf litter.

So I moved on and found a beetle, I thought. When I nudged it, I discovered it was an empty carcass. I wonder how it lost its head.

The headless beetle.

Oops! Disturbing toads at home

These four toads were under an overturned plastic table holding bits of concrete.

Toads1 Toads! Toads!

I uncovered some toad hideouts while cleaning a space behind the garage where the previous homeowner built a lean-to for firewood.

For us, the tin-roof shelter has become a catch-all for yard junk. However it seems the mess has become a hangout for the croakers we hearing calling at night.

The area is toad-ally hopping.

There were three toads sharing that slot. A tiny frog hopped out of the other slot before I could snap a pic.

I'm  not sure what I did to disturb this one.

This one took a look at me when I pulled weeds too close to home.

As a peace offering, I buried pieces of a broken pot to replace the concrete blocks.

Snakes in the pond

A long, fat ribbon snake watches me. This one was bigger than the ones I usually see.

After a couple of days of rain cooled the August temperatures, lots of critters are emerging from the crevices.

These two snakes were on opposite sides of the small pond at Sheldon Lake with the alligator statue that warns visitors about gators.

A broad-banded water snake peeks out.

When it rains, you get a seed day indoors

Break open the Erect Baptisia (Baptisia sphaerocarpa) pods to find the seeds.

 When it is too rainy to go outdoors, volunteers at Sheldon Lake State Park & Environmental Learning Center clean seeds. A no-sweat workday.

Sometimes you need a hammer to get the seed pods open.

A bucket of seed pods will be reduced to about two cups of seeds.

If you sneeze while separating the Splitbeard Bluestem seed heads, all your work will fly away.

Seed work gives you time to chat. We managed to stay away from the topic of politics.

Butterflies don't need beer bottle caps

Beer of choice for litterers who toss the caps into plant beds at the butterfly garden for city workers and volunteers to pick up. Boo. Hiss.

I found all of these in a single milkweed bed I was cleaning.

On the plus side, I found only one plastic bottle this time. By the way, there is a trash can 10 feet away.

Water testing at Bayland Park

A quiet, still morning.

This is my water testing site.

Last fall someone gave up the site at Bayland Park, so I took it over this spring after going through a Galveston Bay Foundation training class.

This month the water was very calm and the salinity was up.  I'll know better after going through a year of testing, but I'm guessing this is normal for August.

A kayak and four boats launched during the couple of hours I was there. A man and a boy were casting a net from the bank on the other side.

In the past a nosy pelican was hanging around the boat launch, and a skinny cat would come toward the tables looking for a handout. But this time I only saw a few shorebirds gliding past plus the usual grackles patrolling the picnic shelter.

It was a nice, quiet morning if you could ignore the highway traffic.

Reading the hydrometer is always a challenge for me.

Gulf Fritillary finds a mate

 

When I checked on a Gulf Fritillary chrysalis, I was surprised to find two Frits near the open chrysalis.

I guess the butterfly emerged and immediately found a mate.  I'm glad they consider my fence a safe place to start a family.

Caterpillar settles in for transformation

Frit face

This morning I happened to spot a Gulf Fritillary caterpillar beginning its J-turn to become a chrysalis. I hope it survives to become a butterfly.

This caterpillar decided to stay on fence with the passion vine it had been eating.

I went inside to give the dog a bath and came back to find this. Wow, that happened quicker than I expected.

Here's another caterpillar still eating.