Photo Essay
Nature Trail Tour - September, 2008
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Leslie Harman is a teacher at Midland Montessori and a member of the 2008 Master Naturalist class. She volunteered to help keep the Sibley Nature Center open on Saturdays, and on September 13th took a walk along the trails to see what she could find.
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The day began with heavy fog. A queen butterfly, weighted down by dew, rested in native grasses, waiting for sunlight to dry its wings.
Leaf-footed bugs crawled about on the junipers next to the building. They may have found shelter in the evergreens during the rain of the previous week.
An orb weaver spider's web gently waved from a desert willow. It was such a gentle breeze that the dew droplets did not fall.
Wolf spiders quickly rebuilt their turrets after the rain.
An old ground squirrel "cover hole" ( a shallow hole used to escape aerial predators) had a cluster of mushrooms filling it.
Seedlings of next year's wildflowers were everywhere, after almost four inches of rain had fallen the previous week.
Prairie zinnia, a long-lived perennial used in xeriscape gardens as a ground cover, came back into bloom after the rains. The species will often form mats in West Texas pastures that can cover several hundred square feet.
Rabbit tobacco normally blooms in the spring, but rain in the fall will stimulate surviving plants to bloom again, It is normally a shortlived perennial with a life span of less than three years.
White sleepy daisy lined one of the footpaths at Sibley. Like the zinnia, this long-lived perennial will come back into bloom anytime several inches of rain falls.
This year's berries of tasajillo have begun to turn red.
Mesquite seedling caused cracks in the wet soil as their seed leaves pushed above the surface.
A curved-bill thrasher ran along the ground, digging up tidbits - some insect, some plant material.
A tiny moth rested on a detritus pile of tiny sticks, rabbit dung, and other small organic material that had formed as sheet erosion swept across the landscape during a heavy rain shower.
It appeared that some of the cryptogamic soil crust had lifted as one mass and floated along in the sheet erosion. Normally only small chunks will float along, so Ms. Harman's observation added to our understanding of cryptogamic soil. (Use the website search engine to find out more!)
Far from the Sibley pond, two damselflies mated on a mesquite leaf.
Cheeses (Sida physocalyx) is a long lived perennial that produces a tiny tomato like fruit that turtles and mice love to eat.
A gray hairstreak butterfly rested in a young tumbleweed, waiting for the sun.
When the sun began peeking out, a bumblebee found a sunflower blossom.
A painted lady found a smaller sunflower blossom.
Widow's tears is a common fall wildflower.
The 6 foot tall giant sacaton grass at the pond shimmered in the sunlight as the skies cleared. Giant sacaton is a rare native to the Llano Estacado, usually found in draws and wet playas. It is also used as an ornamental grass by xeriscape aficionados.
Marsh fleabane is always found near water and in permanently wet soils.
A tiny species of ant created this quarter sized volcano of freshly moved soil.
The grasshoppers, still wet from the heavy dew, merely walked out of the way on the trail.
Oyster scale, an insect that does not move in the adult stage, clustered together on a mesquite branch. It can cause some damage to a number of woody species of plants.
A dove walked along near Ms. Harman, ignoring her presence.
It suddenly stopped and crouched down, spreading its wings. It may have been trying to distract Ms. Harman thinking she was a predator near its nest. Or, it could have been "basking" in the sun, drying its feathers, or even anting (letting ants crawl among its feathers searching for mites.)
In a minute or two, another dove joined the first, and they walked off together.
In the Aubrey and Jean Reid Xeriscape garden, one of two dozen queen butterflies worked on the plants sweet nectar.
A hummingbird moth came to the lantana.
A yellow mud turtle, far from the playa and its pond, also dug around in the Reid garden.
A dragonfly, far from the pond, perched out in the open pasture, waiting for passing flying insects.
A robberfly rested on a small caliche rock - unusual behavior for a species usually found perching high in the mesquite. Like the dragonfly, it is a predator of flying insects.
Some robberflies are mimics. This one has a vague similarity to a wasp at first glance.
Hierba de hormigas (herb of the ants), or Allionia incarnata, is another wildflower that will bloom in the fall, as well as in May.
Goldenrod is a good fall ornamental in the garden. (It does not cause hayfever.) Butterflies love it, too.
The blossoms of Clematis drummondii or Old Man's Beard vine, is a common sight in the pastures of West Texas in the early fall, The blooms will be replaced by showy white hairy seeds that hang on most of the winter
A Reakirt's blue butterfly hung out on a mesquite. Female Reakirt's lay their eggs on mesquite.
A tiny Fiery Skipper rested on a lantana blossom.
A Sibley staffer also walked in the pasture that morning. The fog and the heavy dewfall coated every spider web - and hundreds of spider webs were visible during a 30 minute walk. Some were simple funnels among the grass.
Other webs were billowing sweeps of web cascading through the grass.
The tasajillo were similarly adorned with webs. The spiders that created these webs were tiny - the size of the o in tasajillo.
The popotillo also had spiderwebs. Is this species that created these semi-colonial in behavior? The "micro-spiders" are poorly studied, and some may indeed form small colonies.
In a pasture with grass still brown from long months of drought, the first plants to green up were "talinum" which will later produce bright yellow stars of blossoms. It blooms after fall rains.
During the drought the black grama grass turned brown, but with the rains, what looked like dead stems suddenly began sending out bright new green leaves.
Usually the Aphanogaster ants spread their excavated soil willy-nilly near their nest, but for some reason after the rain, one colony built a huge tower (six inches tall, 8 inches long and 4 inches thick) of excavated dirt almost a foot from their entrance hole.
Aphanogaster ants process a lot of mesquite seeds for their larders, cutting off the endosperm, but for some reason rejected many seeds still viable for germination.
The mud tubes of the grassland termites covered much of the old grass.
As the mud tubes age, they fall apart and cover seeds that have blown underneath the grass, providing the perfect conditions for germination.
During the night, a skunk had dug a small hole to dig up a tasty food morsel. Later, in the early morning hours, a darkling beetle fell in.
On closer examination, a weevil and a small reddish beetle had fallen in with the darkling beetle.
Around another nest of a small ant species, seeds had been mixed with soil during the rain, and seedlings were sprouting everywhere, even at the entrance hole to the nest.
A small mammalaria vivipara cactus nestled under an old mesquite branch on the ground.
In a pile of mulch, tiny white mushrooms clustered.
Notice the "shaggy" appearance to the mushroom, and the tiny water droplets on the stem.
In the foreground, the new growth of mesquite and tasajillo is bright green. Beyond, on almost black branches, the new leaves of wolfberry are emerging. Wolfberry will drop its leaves from drought, so this is the second set of leaves for this plant this year.
Fog on the Llano Estacado brings "soft mystery," inviting casual walks of discovery.