Photo Essay
Nature Trail Tour - October, 2007
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[Additional Tours: February, 2006 | April, 2006 | May, 2006 | July, 2006 | August, 2006 | October, 2006 | January, 2007 | February, 2007 | April, 2007 | May, 2007 | June, 2007 | July, 2007 | August, 2007 | September, 2007]
After 20 inches of rain during the year, during late September and early October of 2007 no rain fell. October is a month that sees plant growth slowing and the evidence of the rigors of the growing year becoming evident with tattered and eaten leaves. October can be colorful, however, with fall vegetation bringing unique color combinations.
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Before the sun comes over the horizon, the landscape is full of soft colors. Here, white sleepy daisy with its rayflowers still closed, mixes with broomweed and yucca.
Tasajillo's red berries are bright against mesquite yet untouched by the sun's rays.
With the first ray of sun, the landscape brightens.
A tasajillo berry was dropped by a bird startled by the photographer's approach. The berry landed near the dropping of a dove.
With the first rays of the sun, the tasajillo seemed to glisten.
A closeup reveals the source of the "light" to be the thorns of the plant.
Looking across the pasture, it seems to be an impenetrable wall of thorny brush.
The yucca seedstalks popped out of the landscape with the first morning sunlight.
Yucca seeds fall out of the pods with wind and passing animals - over a hundred seeds were directly underneath one yucca.
Within a day or two, all of the seeds were gone, carried away by ants and birds.
One of the ant species enjoying the gift of the yucca seeds were a species of red harvester ants - slender bodied ants that often carry their abdomen arched into the air. Their nests are often shaped like lopsided volcanic cones. This species is unusual in the mesquite brushland habitat in Midland County and the colonies never seem to last long. The harvester ants with chunkier bodies seem to outcompete this more slender and delicate species.
Each nest cone has one hole.
The ants were busy excavating. About 10 individuals were constantly emerging with a load of dirt in their mouth and going partway up the cone and dropping it.
In the low light, the camera shudder speed did not quite freeze the motion of the ants, but you can see three ants' mouths full of dirt.
Bird poop fungus was surrounded by the seeds and spent disc flowers of cowpen daisy.
Under one mesquite a grouping of black spots presented a puzzle.
Upon closer examination, the black appeared to be dried up Nostoc algae. Use the website search engine to find photographs (in other virtual trails) of Nostoc while it is green and growing.
An old road through the pasture has lots of open ground. In places the wind has swept the hardpan soil clean of loose sand, and in other places, the sand collects and allows an observer to study the tracks of the animals that live at the Sibley Nature Center.
On the hardpan soil, it appears that a quail was able to leave a track - did he leave it as he began to fly? What would have caused such force to be exerted by the quail to be able to leave a track in the hard soil?
Quail spend most of their time on the ground, so their tracks are often found in loose sand. A lizard also left the mark of his tail.
A fox had trotted along the old road, too. Just in front of his track, it appears that a mouse left a series of tiny tracks.
Among plentiful quail tracks was a strange loop (in the lower right corner) probably left by some subterranean invertebrate possibly grazing on tiny flecks of algae growing among the sand grains.
On the left is another lizard track, but the squiggly line is the center might be a small snake's track, but why does it just appear for a short distance. Did the quail come after the snake and obscure the snake's track?
A small (less than a foot) long nose snake was brought to Sibley later that morning. It is an unusual color form, without much of the red coloring that often makes the snake appear to be similar to coral snake.
Desert holly usually grows under mesquite. This one, out in the open, revealed the green leaves of this year's growth, the orange leaves of last year's growth, and the white leaf of growth from two years before. The plant bloomed later that day, as evidenced by the bud. It is always a surprise to find the species in bloom - and the bloom only lasts a few hours before turning into a puffball of white seeds.
Under a lotebush the conical pits of antlions were plentiful.
At the base of the antlion pit, a sheer "cliff" shadows where the antlion lies hidden in the sand.
Mesquite leaves begin falling with the lack of rain as an adaptation to drought. Among the fallen leaves is a grasshopper. Can you see it?
Maybe you can see it now.
Salt marsh moth caterpillars were plentiful in October 2007. This plentiful species often has two generations a year - one in June and July, and another in September and October.
The gray espantes vaqueros or ghost cowboys is annual that often covers open ground. When it is in bloom, it is one of the sweetest smells of the Llano Estacado. The yellow blooms of broomweed and the red berries of tasajillo round out a beautiful fall color combination that is unique to the region.
Yucca, mesquite, and broomweed give another colorful combination - green, brown, gray, and yellow.
For some reason, one mesquite had put out new leaves and some bloom buds - very unusual for October!
In the foreground is spiny yellow aster, and beyond are broomweed and yucca.
In the foreground is Kochia americana, a nondescript perennial "weed" that proliferated in West Texas in 2007. This young plant was the first that had appeared along the trails at Sibley in over 10 years. It was over 200 yards from where it had grown in past years.
Mesquite often has lichen on the older bark. A few flecks of a gray species is on the right side, but the beautiful orange species (with little orange discs) covered one fork of one shrub.
The trails at Sibley have numbered stations. At the Lote station #15, many pits were present - but they were not antlion pits. It could have been the work of mice digging up some sort of seed or bulb, or it possibly could have been "bird dustbaths" but the pits seemed too small and steep sided to be the dustbaths.
Near the pond, the mesquite pasture was full of tumbleweed beginning to dry out - a definite fire hazard! A young soapberry pokes through the weeds on the left.
A passing bird had lost a molting feather, and it ended up stuck to the seed stalk of the tumbleweed.
On the east end of the pond a nice patch of sand dropseed lines the trail. A giant cottonwood grows beyond a small patch of mesquite. Beyond the trail are young Siberian elms that germinated from seeds blown from the other end of the pond, and on the right side of the trail is a hackberry planted by birds years ago.
Under the hackberry was a pile of old coyote scat - and it appears that it had eaten some oak acorns that passed through its gastric system intact.
The cottonwood is over 35 feet tall, and is only 15 years old. Golden eagles, harris's hawks, and other birds have often graced its branches over the years.
The trail on the dam has juniper planted along the fence on the north side, but the south side of the dam has kochia, tumbleweed, blue panic grass and other taller vegetation. A cottonwood at the edge of the pond had already lost many of its leaves, and the remaining leaves were brownish. Why had it begun the changes of fall, while the other cottonwood at the east end had not? Siberian elms remained green.
Beyond the 7 foot tall giant sacaton grass, the float dock can be seen in the water, and beyond the cattails the photographer's blind is partially visible. The grove of Siberian Elms and Burr Oak beyond are still green.
Beyond the giant sacaton a martin house and the tallest building of Midland can be seen.
Cocklebur always grows in playas, even playas changed by golf courses.
An annual kochia bloomstalk is on the left, while green cockleburs are on the right.
The cockleburs were beginning to turn brown.
On a cocklebur leaf a crab spider remained frozen, waiting for the fly to forget it was there.
On the south side of the pond a trail leads past cattails on the left and kochia and tumble weed on the right.
On the trail were several fire ant "graveyards." Fireants dump the dead bodies of their nest in neat piles. Not all ant species perform this behavior.
If you zoom in on this picture, one live ant can be seen clambering over the dead bodies of its kin.
In the kochia and tumbleweed one duckweed plant grew. In playas with constantly changing levels of water, duckweed can be plentiful (and even survive in standing water). Its name indicates its supreme value as waterfowl food.
Upon closer observation, a person can see that the leaves of the duckweed have small circles cut out - the work of leafcutter bees that use the discs of plant material to separate their eggs and pollen in their solitary underground nest holes.
Cattail seed stalks are easily recognized.
The seeds of the cattails begin loosening in late September and for the next month continually release the seeds into the wind. Sometimes the surrounding vegetation will be covered with the seed hairs, but sometimes the seeds fly for many miles.
A very bored naturalist once sat down and counted the seeds on one cattail seed stalk - and finally reached 250,000 after days of plucking away.
Beyond the cattail seedhead are the seedheads of marsh fleabane. (Use the website search engine to find pictures of the plant's beautiful blooms.)
Even cattail leaves begin to turn yellow in the fall.
Headed back to the building, a visitor walks among mesquite, yucca, and broomweed - the major plants of the pasture at the Sibley Nature Center.
Why were the leaflets eaten off of the mesquite leaves (and the midrib of the compound leaves left?)
A yucca pod had fallen and somehow become broken - so the arrangement of the seeds within can easily be seen.
This fall landscape of broomweed and mesquite also has a dying sleepy daisy plant.
Windmill grass is an easily recognized grass. This shortlived perennial is often found where the ground has been disturbed within the last year, so it is a "first stage succession" plant that will cover the ground with a little bit of rain.
Under many mesquites bristlegrass can be found. It is a favorite of wintering sparrows, and on this morning's walk, the photographer found over 30 white-crowned sparrows - but the sparrows were very wary and did not allow their photogaph to be taken.
Back at the building, the skeletonleaf goldeneye shrub was in full bloom in the Jean and Aubrey Reid Xeriscape garden.