Stranger In A Strange Land

I recently visited my brother who lives southeast of San Antonio near Floresville.

I was reminded of how varied the Texas geography is. My normal haunts are in the Hill Country and I've become pretty familiar with the land and many of the trees and plants. This was a nice opportunity to explore another part of Texas.

Floresville is in Wilson County and is in the South Texas geographical region. It's amazing to see how much difference a 100 miles makes.

My guess is my brother's property is pretty typical for the region. The soil is very sandy, not like the rocky, limestone and caliche we have here.

He only had a couple of Live Oaks (Quercus virginiana) while they are the predominant tree here. He also had a Walnut (Juglans nigra) tree and I think there were quite a few in the neighborhood. They are rare in our part of the Hill Country.

The predominant tree was the Blackjack Oak (Quercus marilandica). We have some on our property but it is not common. The ones in South Texas were also taller than the ones we have, probably due to the soil and rainfall.

Many Blackjack Oaks

He also had a nice stand of Little Bluestem  (Schizachyrium scoparium) grass. It was the predominant native grass in his neighborhood. The predominant grass we have is King Ranch Bluestem (Bothriochloa ischaemum), which is not native. We have some Little Bluestem and it might be the most common native grass we have. It was nice to see it doing so well down there.

Little Bluestem everywhere!

What Is It?

I want to share a bit about how I identify many of the species of plants and animals that I write about. You may find this useful if you need to identify a specimen.

I don't want to give the impression that I'm an expert. I do have basic knowledge, most recently gained from my Master Naturalist training. I'm also just curious and eager to learn. Over the years, I've learned to recognize many of the local trees, shrubs, and grasses. I treat it as a game or puzzle and am always looking for ways to improve my "score".

I'll take a photograph when I don't recognize the specimen. This is much better than relying on memory. I then use Google image search to try to narrow down the possibilities. For example, I'll search for terms like "central texas lizard", or "hill country pink flower". This results in hundreds of photos which I'll search through, trying to find a match. This works remarkably well.

The Wildflower Center also has an excellent native plant database which I use. This database allows searching by growing conditions and plant characteristics which is sometimes a good approach. The Wildflower Center also has a service, "Ask Mr. Smarty Plants". I haven't used this before, but you can send in a photo of the plant and they'll try to identify it.

Another approach I take is to ask my local group of experts. Many fellow Master Naturalists are very knowledgeable and are always very willing to help. If possible, I'll take them a sample of the plant to help with the identification. I've also met experts who speak at our chapter meetings and they are also very helpful. I relied on Dr. Travis LaDuc recently to help identify a small tortoise I rescued. You can find my post on that here.

Finally, here's a moth caterpillar which I'm still trying to identify. I think it might be a tiger moth caterpillar.

In this case, I asked Dr. Chris Nice from Texas State University for help. I saw him at a Master Naturalist event and didn't have the photograph with me. I gave him a verbal description and he thought it might be a tiger moth caterpillar.

Here's the Google image search. What do you think? Is it a tiger moth? Please leave comments!

Tiny Kamacuras or Praying Mantis

I saw a tiny praying mantis on our kitchen door frame this week. I was surprised to see it so late in the year, but the hot summer and the recent rains have confused the local flora and fauna.

I remembered taking photos of some a few years ago and dug through my archives to find these from 2007.

They are each about 3 inches long. I think they're the coolest-looking, most alien-in-appearance insects. Their triangular heads, bulging eyes, and spiked arms all contribute to their oddness. In addition, they are good leaf mimics. Their wings are leaf-shaped and even have leaf-like veins in them. I had only seen green ones but they also come in a gray/brown.

I thought the common name was Preying Mantis, because they are predatory, but Wikipedia says it's Praying Mantis because of their "prayer-like stance". They belong to an Order called Mantodea which contains 2,200 species in 15 families worldwide. Their closest relatives are cockroaches and termites.

Their diet consists mainly of insects, but they've also been known to eat lizards, frogs, birds, snakes, and rodents. They make a good biological pest control for gardeners.

Bluebird Nestboxes

As part of our Wildlife Management Plan, we spent an afternoon a couple of weekends ago putting up 8 bluebird nestboxes. The nestboxes fulfill the "providing habitat" part of the part of the plan.

The Eastern Bluebird (Siala sialis) is a small cavity-nesting thrush. Their natural habitat has been disappearing as more of our land becomes urbanized and developed. The nestboxes simulate their natural cavity nests and will attract them. The small hole in the nestbox will keep out larger birds, but other small birds may decide to use the nestboxes too.

We mounted most of them on fence T-posts in meadows spread across our property. We tended to face the openings south and near a wooded area. This allows us easy access to monitor them during nesting season, typically in the spring and also gives the fledglings nearby trees. We placed a couple of them on existing fence lines which otherwise met the above criteria.

We tried to place them about 100 yards apart, but they're fairly uneven. If they're too close, the birds' territoriality may cause problems.

For our first attempt, we didn't provide predator guards below the nests. We'll try to monitor for predators and add guards if they become a problem. Possible predators include raccoons and snakes.

I also recorded the GPS coordinates of each nestbox and used Google Maps to display their location. This forms part of our record-keeping for the Wildlife Management Plan and was quite simple to do.

We'll probably need to put up another 8 boxes next year and possibly around 20 in total. They are all easily accessible from our driveway and a dirt road on the property and form what is called a bluebird trail.

We're members of the Texas Bluebird Society. You may learn more about these birds and the efforts to help them there.