Goldfinches feast in the sweetgum tree

The American goldfinch likes the sweetgum tree in our yard that I curse every time I step on one those dadgum seed balls.

Four or five birds chirped in for a feast.

Then they eyeballed the feeder.

Joined a a bird party.

And stopped for a drink.

Disturbing a little snake under the leaves

It's about 60 degrees on this late December day, but still rather cold for this Rough Earth Snake that I uncovered while scooping leaves into a pile.

I probably would not have noticed it if a flash of white hadn't caught my eye. I tucked the little snake under the shed away from the threat of rakes.

Spending the last day of fall at Sheldon Lake

Before the bus arrived, I walked out on a boardwalk for a look about.

The Friday before Christmas was the last day of the year for planting with students and Wetlands Restoration Team volunteers at Sheldon Lake State Park.


Teens in rubber boots planted two species of Cordgrass on the outer banks of Pond Anhinga, which is off a road that is closed to the public. 

On Wednesday I had helped the wetlands team get 1,400 sprigs ready for the student volunteers, but this was the first time I had been part of a planting detail. I am a newbie volunteer who joined in mid November.

I managed to stay on my feet while wading in the muck in my three-sizes-too-big rubber boots that I bought at a garage sale. Buddy Diane H. showed me how to use the dibble, and we made our way around the pond.

Most of the kids were veterans planters who had been on a planting mission a month earlier. When one of the coordinators asked who were inexperienced, I raised my hand along with the girl in skirt. And she turned out to be an enthusiastic worker who said she would like to work at Sheldon Lake. When a ranger joked that she could come back early Saturday morning to clean the rubber boots, she just laughed and waved.

In 90 minutes the sprigs had new homes along the pond thanks to the teens.

But there are no photos because I was afraid I would make a splash down so I left my phone in a safe, dry place.

A possum playing possum

 

Good dog, Freddie. Now leave your new friend alone.

They are Virginia opossums, but I grew up calling them possums.

They come into our yard occasionally to raid the bird feeders and give the dog something to worry about.

Freddie the dog goes crazy when she sees one. Freddie usually spots a possum in a tree at night. The animal freezes and refuses to move. And the dog goes into crazy barking mode until we drag her indoors.

This time Freddie found an opossum at her level on the ground. 

Dog joy!

She was so pleased when I finally went out in the dark to find out what was distracting her dog brain. 

She was circling a small opossum rolled into a ball. It was baring its teeth, and with a flashlight I could see its little tongue. 

With a towel I lifted it over the fence. Dog party over.

It didn't seem to be injured and it hissed when I picked up with a towel to put it outside the fence.

It's not poop, it is scat

Getting middle-schoolers to use the word "scat" can be a challenge on a hike.

During a quick walk along trails at Sheldon Lake in 40-degree weather we encountered several piles of scat. There are always ewwws or giggles.

The scat comprised mostly of seeds probably were left by raccoons or possums.

Then there was scat with fur and seeds. An omnivore was here, it was concluded. There was discussion about a coyote as a possible culprit.

"It scatted it out," a kid announced.

Red-bellied woodpecker bullies

Coming in for a snack.

My bird feeders seem extra popular during these 40-degree days, and the Red-Bellied Woodpeckers have been exerting their dominance.

There are at least two of them that like to swoop in and make the little brown birds scatter.

Not even the squirrels want to challenge them for the free food.

Look at my belly.

A rattlesnake Thanksgiving in West Texas

Although I live in Baytown, my roots are in West Texas. I spent my first 12 years on a cotton farm near Big Spring and Stanton.

Here are few photos from a Thanksgiving visit.

There are few touches of green on the landscape.

Look closely for the eye of the rattlesnake peering at us. It was the first warm day after an ice storm, so it was sluggish.

You can see for miles.

In the draw, wild hogs are hiding.

At dusk the sandhill cranes add their night music.

Look closer for the Juncus scirpoides seeds

The Wetland Restoration Team working indoors Wednesday started with three lunch-size paper bags filled with stems from Juncus scirpoides aka Needlepod rush.

The goal was to collect the seeds.  That's when I learned the seeds are about the size of a period . . .

No sneezing allowed while working on this chore.

We ended up with about two tablespoons of seeds. Success!

The dried capsules . . .

. . . are deconstrusted over a white paper plate.

With a small brush, the seeds are swished in a collection sieve.

What you see here is mostly litter. An extreme close-up would show the seeds, which are tiny, uniform-size dots.

Hawk fights and fancy ducks

Walking along a mosquio-infested trail at Baytown Nature Center, we flushed out a Red-Tailed Hawk. 

Two Red-Shouldered Hawks immediately objected to its new perch on top of shelter, which gave us a good view of the big Red-Tailed. The smaller hawks circled before one of them swooped down to strike the Red-Tailed.

The big hawk left the shelter to land atop a nearby tree. Again the Red-Shouldered Hawks circled and one attacked. The scene was repeated a third time.

Although the Red-Tailed was bigger, the two Red-Shouldered Hawks forced it to leave.

What a show! For a couple of minutes it made us forget the mosquito swarms. 

David Hanson led the group on its November bird count, which was on a duck hunt, of sorts.

Hood Merganser photo by the Hansons.

 I got a good look at the pretty Hooded Mergansers and Gadwalls.

David said:

I guess  two things jumped out today. First, this was the most Hooded Mergansers I have ever seen in one session and the lack of Doves. There were very few of any of the Dove species but especially White-winged Doves.

As a novice birder, here is one that I can identify: dead.

Here is a list of the 57 species spotted  
    
7    Gadwall
6    Northern Shoveler
17   Hooded Merganser
1    Red-breasted Merganser
9    Pied-billed Grebe
10   Neotropic Cormorant
9    Double-crested Cormorant
17   American White Pelican
16   Brown Pelican
8    Great Blue Heron
9    Great Egret
3    Snowy Egret
1    Green Heron
8    Black-crowned Night-Heron
1    Roseate Spoonbill
1    Black Vulture
2    Turkey Vulture
2    Osprey
1    Northern Harrier
1    Cooper's Hawk
2    Red-shouldered Hawk
2    Red-tailed Hawk
2    Clapper Rail
21   Killdeer
2    Spotted Sandpiper
46   Laughing Gull
1    Ring-billed Gull
1    Herring Gull
10   Forster's Tern
1    Royal Tern
10   White-winged Dove
3    Mourning Dove
5    Belted Kingfisher
4    Red-bellied Woodpecker
3    Downy Woodpecker
2    American Kestrel
2    Eastern Phoebe
5    Loggerhead Shrike
5    Blue Jay
3    Carolina Chickadee
2    Tufted Titmouse
2    House Wren
4    Marsh Wren
6    Carolina Wren
5    Ruby-crowned Kinglet
10   Northern Mockingbird
1    Pine Warbler
8    Yellow-rumped Warbler
1    Swamp Sparrow
2    White-throated Sparrow
2    White-crowned Sparrow
4    Northern Cardinal
6    Red-winged Blackbird
8    Great-tailed Grackle
6    Brown-headed Cowbird
2    American Goldfinch
6    House Sparrow

Prairie Pandemonium 2013

I wasn't at Prairie Pandemonium, but some of my Galveston Bay Area master naturalist buddies were there.

Working with seeds gives you a warm feeling

Picking out the seeds can be tedious.

Woke up to to coldest morning this fall -- around 37 degrees -- to go to my first volunteer day with the Wetlands Team at Sheldon Lake. 

I opted to stay indoors to help deconstruct dried Indian Plantains, which were collected along Beltway 8 for their seeds.

One group braved the cold to take school kids to plant at the water's edge. Brrr.

The kids that wanted to stay indoors made seeds balls.

Maybe next week I'll get wet. -- Lana b

Butterfly tongue in extreme close-up

Image by Kata Kenesei and Barbara Orsolits of the Institute of Experimental Medicine - Hungarian Academy of Sciences.

While watching for Monarch butterflies to fly through, consider the insect's tongue.

Generally called the proboscis, the tubelike tongue uncoils for feeding. You can see a butterfly sipping with its proboscis if you are very still and lucky.

Or if you are an imaginative researcher, you can capture a butterfly, get out your microscope and take a photo.

Above is an image of a coiled butterfly tongue seen at 60 times magnification. The photo was taken for Nikon's Small World competition that honors images of objects too small for the unaided eye to see.

See more images here.

Finally! A Monarch among us...

October 23, 2013 at approximately 3:30 pm, I spotted this Monarch on the golden rod in the field behind my studio.  I was so excited, I had a difficult time holding the camera steady enough to get a shot, so sorry for the blurs.  This is a big male (the area on the vein of the bottom wing that is widened).  Then I saw another and then another, so I'm thinking the cold blast in the north has pushed them our way!  YEA!  I'll keep up the watch and keep posting the photos.

Marilyn

Glasswort puts on its fall display

Along the road to Brownwood Pavilion at Baytown Nature Center.

 Leaf peepers, look down. The glasswort is gorgeous this year.

For beautiful fall colors you can't beat glasswort, which is found in the sandy soil of salt marshes, wetlands and beaches.

Rather than leaves, it is the fleshy, succulent stems that are changing from bright greens to shades of orange and red.

Miniature forest.

Europeans gave the plant its name 400 to 500 years ago when they discovered they could burn the stems for glassmaking. They would use the ash combined with sand to make crude glass. According to local legend, Germans settling in Texas brought the glassmaking technique with them.

Also, some say it sounds like you are stepping on broken glass when you walk on a bed of glasswort. I can't vouch for that sound. I was in a nature center and stayed on the trail. Plus, it just seems rude to step on plants.

That hand is for scale only. No glasswort was hurt for this photo

Glasswort's fiery colors.

 Glasswort stems are edible. Most often the new green stems are used in fresh salads or pickled.

At BNC, field trippers often are given a broken stem to taste.  Yep, glasswort tastes salty. Or is that just the coyote-pee flavoring?

Did you pet a mullet today?

Petting a mullet during a field trip to Baytown Nature Center.

The first mullet that the ninth-graders hauled in with a cast net was treated like a superstar.

The students posed for photos with the mullet and petted the mullet.

They also dropped the slimy mullet a lot. When it was released, the mullet probably had a headache.

Then more mullets, a speckled trout and pinfish were caught. Yet none of them got the celebrity treatment endured by the first mullet catch of the day.

This mullet got a lot of attention.

Picking up a mullet can be a challenge.

No one wanted to pick up the Pinfish when instructor Mike cautioned the students to beware of the fins.

Burnet Bay named for complex Texas president

David G. Burnet Park, built on the Burnet homestead, does not have access to Burnet Bay. But it is a nice green space with a playground. And think about this while you wander around: Burnet's wife and three of his four children are buried somewhere on the property although no one knows where their grave sites are located.

I have a fondness for David G. Burnet although he seems to have been a cantankerous, complicated pioneer. He was the guy who was against Texas independence yet became the first president of the republic.

In Baytown I live on a street named for the president of Texas that runs along Burnet Bay and is across the gully from David G. Burnet Park, which features a pavilion replica of the Burnet homestead.

Alas, the street sign says “Burnett.” I understand at one time it was "Burnet Drive," but someone sometime decided the street name needed another ‘t’.

In my small protest, I spell my street name “Burnet.”

And David G.’s last name should be pronounced “Burn-it.”

David Gouverneur Burnet, born in Newark, N.J., in 1788, moved to this area 1831. He was buddies with Lorenzo de Zavala and Mirabeau B. Lamar. And an enemy of Texas' beloved Sam Houston.

According to Texas State Historical Association:

Burnet bought seventeen acres on the San Jacinto River from Nathaniel Lynch for the mill and an additional 279 acres east of Lynch facing Burnet Bay, where he built a simple four-room home called Oakland.  

David G. Burnet

Local residents chose big-talking Burnet to represent them in 1833, and he was appointed head of the Brazos District Court. Forever after he would be known as Judge Burnet.

However since he was against independence for Texas, Burnet was not chosen as a delegate to the Convention of 1836, according to TSHA.

Nevertheless, he attended the session on March 10, where he successfully gained clemency for a client sentenced to hang.

The delegates, who were opposed to electing one of their number president of the new republic, elected Burnet by a majority of seven votes.

It was a volatile six-month tenure. On Burnet’s bitter departure, Texas State Library and Archives Commission says:

In September 1836, Sam Houston was elected president in the first election held in the new-born Republic of Texas. Burnet was exhausted and embittered by the criticism he had received. 

He and his wife were also personally suffering with grief over the death in September of their infant son Jacob. Burnet wrote in the family Bible that Jacob was "a Victim of the War of Revolution." 

On October 23, 1836, Burnet resigned under pressure so that Houston could take office before the official start of his term in December.

 Yet Burnet ran for president again in 1841 aiming to defeat his nemesis Sam Houston.

TSL says: 

The campaign was marked by vicious name-calling.

Burnet alleged that Houston, in addition to being an alcoholic, was an opium addict who had the "blind malignity of a rattlesnake in dog days."

For his part, Houston derisively called Burnet "Little Davy" and "King Wetumpka" (hog thief).

Burnet was soundly defeated by the popular Houston…

 Burnet’s life didn’t get any easier. 

With Hannah Este he had four children. However only son William survived to adulthood, and he was killed in Alabama while fighting for the Confederacy in 1863, according to TSL. Wife Hannah died in 1858.

He was destitute when Galveston friends took him in. Burnet, 82, died in 1870.

In the park's picnic pavilion, a silhouette of Burnet sits at his desk.

Food for thought in the 1956-57 almanac

The drawings are labeled Coreopsis, or Golden Wave (left) and Bluebonnet

1956-1957 Texas Almanac.

I found this 100th anniversary edition of the Texas Almanac. The pages are brown, and the type is small.

Most of the almanac is devoted to agriculture, business and lots of charts.

However there are also small sections on plants and wildlife.

Chapters in "The Principal Wild Flowers of Texas" are divided by the color of the flowers.

The first one listed is Anemone. In the description it says: "Legend says the anemone originated from the tears dropped by Venus."

Below is chart with coastal fishing numbers. Have you caught any Menhaden or Pompano recently?

What are you thinking, little crab?

Holly's sharp eyes spotted the little juvenile crab in the puddle.

With all this open area nearby, the frisky crab ...

... chose a mud hole in the parking area for a stopover.

Good luck, tiny one.

Yep, the water is extra turbid today

The high-schoolers showed up and so did the rain.

But the Baytown Nature Center's staffers and volunteers aren't wimps. And the exceptional group of students didn't mind getting wet on a warm day.

So we dodged raindrops while calculating the turbidity, salinity, pH, dissolved oxygen and nitrate levels.

Note the tarp-holding technique of the dedicated volunteer (below) protecting students conducting water tests during a cloudburst. -- Lana b.

The sample of water in the bucket pulled from the bridge gets an infusion of rainwater.

Incised Shaman Rock? Mammoth Tooth Fossil?

On Tuesday at the Texas City Prairie Preserve, I was walking along the gravel road between the education center and potting area when I saw this rock among rocks.

The lines etched on the rock were all over the surface and accented by a white coating in the grooves.

Always wanting to find that hidden treasure or prehistoric tool, my imagination ran wild with ideas of its origination and utility!  I asked the others at the potting table if they had seen anything like it...."No" no one had.

At home I took the photos seen above, attached them to an email to Dirk Van Tuerenhout at the Houston Museum of Natural Science who forwarded the inquiry with rock photo to the resident geologist.

The explanation for the "groovy" rock:

 "The chert photos you sent to Inda are certainly the common variety of banded chert. 

Ground water stains the rock with manganese where the chert is more porous.
People bring this into the Houston Gem and Mineral Soc all the time and are disappointed when the inside shows a nearly uniform white color.

This is a natural phenomenon and was not aided by humans."

: )

Marilyn

Lesser Scaup stops by BNC pond

The Scaup was seen on the "fresh water" pond on Golden Bloom Trail.

 I missed the monthly bird count at Baytown Nature Center, but David H. and fellow birder spotted 52 species on a hot day with extremely high tides.

The most interesting finds were a Yellow-throated Warbler and an out-of-season Lesser Scaup.

The September bird count
2    Mottled Duck
3    Blue-winged Teal
1    Lesser Scaup
1    Wood Stork
22    Neotropic Cormorant
2    Anhinga
2    American White Pelican
28    Brown Pelican
10    Great Blue Heron
14    Great Egret
55    Snowy Egret
7    Little Blue Heron
5    Tricolored Heron
1    Cattle Egret
6    Green Heron
5    Black-crowned Night-Heron
22    Yellow-crowned Night-Heron
22    White Ibis
1    Osprey
2    Cooper's Hawk
2    Red-shouldered Hawk
3    Clapper Rail
3    Black-necked Stilt
12    Killdeer
8    Spotted Sandpiper
3    Willet
30    Least Sandpiper
85    Laughing Gull
33    Forster's Tern
3    Royal Tern
4    Sandwich Tern
8    Rock Pigeon
73    White-winged Dove
8    Mourning Dove
15    Chimney Swift
12    Ruby-throated Hummingbird
4    Belted Kingfisher
2    Red-bellied Woodpecker
1    Downy Woodpecker
2    Loggerhead Shrike
12    Blue Jay
2    Carolina Chickadee
4    Carolina Wren
1    Blue-gray Gnatcatcher
17    Northern Mockingbird
42    European Starling
1    Yellow-throated Warbler
1    Northern Cardinal
8    Common Grackle
5    Great-tailed Grackle
1    Orchard Oriole
2    House Sparrow

Mythical Wetland Willy spotted at nature center

Photo taken Sept. 16 at Baytown Nature Center by Marilyn L.

The legendary Wetland Willy has appeared again. And this time a photographer got a photo.

The sighting of the elusive creature caused a bit of excitement this week at BNC.

High-schoolers on a field trip saw a dark form that seemed to be crouching in the tall grasses across from the Brownwood Pavilion at Baytown Nature Center.

They pointed and squinted.

Was it a bear?
A gorilla?
A log?

It must be Wetland Willy, sometimes called Baytown's little Sasquatch or the Burnet Bay Yowie.

The mysterious creature has had many names through the years. In the 1700s, there were reports of the secretive Kakau Kic, perhaps a female version of Wetland Willy.

In recent times the legend of Wetland Willy has waned, but the phantom of the wetlands may have found the perfect home at BNC.

Although little is known about its habits, WW seems to be a nocturnal creature, rather short in stature and usually glimpsed in the tall marsh grasses. When humans are near, it will often stand still for hours to blend with the environment.

And according to legend, Wetland Willy is most active during the fall, particularly toward the end of October.

Catch any comb jelly lately?

Contrails made an early morning X to mark the spot Sept. 16 at Baytown Nature Center where we meet ninth-graders participating  in the "Back to the Bay" program.

It was fun watching the students try to master the cast-net toss even though all they were pulling out of the bay were Comb Jelly.

Not that there is anything wrong with Comb Jelly.

Naturalist Crissy says Comb Jelly are the McDonald's of the bay: They are everywhere and everything eats them.

And they don't sting like jellyfish so you can feel the sliminess in your finger before tossing them back into the water.

Alas, touching their fragile bodies is generally fatal for the Comb Jelly. But when Comb Jellies that survived the cast net were put in viewing containers, the students were intrigued.

Fun facts about Comb Jelly to get high-schoolers' attention.

• Most are hermaphrodites, capable of producing eggs and sperm at the same time.  
• A Comb Jelly has a mouth and an anus, but you won't find a head or tail.
• The ones around here are around 4 inches long, but offshore they can get 4-feet long. 
• They are carnivores.  
• Comb Jelly can emit light -- often seen at night on the waves. That's bioluminescence, and it makes them extra special.

There are translucent Comb Jellies in the sample viewer on the concrete ledge. Squint your eyes and use your imagination.