A Brief Break

I'll be traveling for work for the next ten days, so no blog posts for a couple of weeks.

See you again on July 8th!

Water Dish Visitors

The game camera caught some nice shots of visitors to our wildlife water dish recently. The game camera doesn't seem to bother the animals although I think some of them do notice it, because they appear to look right at at.

In any case, I enjoy retrieving the image card every week and the Christmas-morning anticipation of looking through the typically hundreds of images to see what we caught.

First is a nice white-tailed (Odocoileus virginianus) doe. She looks young to me, but I'm certainly no expert. Speaking just from what I've observed over the last few years, the older does appear heavier than this one. This one looks sleek and graceful.

Next is a young white-tailed buck. You can see his fuzzy antlers coming in. They're covered in velvet which is a living skin-like tissue which provides the growing antlers with blood, oxygen, and nutrients. The antler starts as cartilage and becomes mineralized. Once the antler is full-size, the velvet sheds and the antler bone dies. Male deer re-grow their antlers every year. We frequently find discarded ones on our property. Interestingly, about 1 in 10,000 females have antlers and this is usually associated with hermaphroditism.

Lastly, we caught an elusive gray fox (Urocyon cinereoargenteus) in daytime. This photo was taken at 4 pm. We've caught gray foxes before but always when it was dark. They're nocturnal and very shy. It's a rare treat to see one in person.

Odds & Ends

I went for a  hike today and even though it's not officially summer yet, it was HOT! I declare summer here, not matter what the calendar says.

The black-eyed susans are still out in force and the Texas thistles are past their peak, which is a good thing. They are nasty.

A few weeks ago, while checking our nest boxes, I spotted this prickly pear heart. More appropriate for Valentine's Day, but it's a reminder that all you need is love.

Our game camera caught a doe and her fawn walking by.

We keep our glass and cans for recycling in plastic tubs behind our garage. A few weeks ago I took the recycling to the local place in San Marcos. I tossed the containers in the pickup bed and drove into town. I emptied the tubs and threw them back in the truck. When I got home and was putting them away behind the garage, I noticed something hanging from one of them. It was a monarch chrysalis!

The butterfly was almost ready to emerge. The chrysalis was turning transparent and you could see the butterfly inside. I checked it the next day and the chrysalis was cracked open and no sign of the butterfly.

I learned several things. First, the chrysalis is attached with something approaching "crazy glue" in strength. I remained attached and survived a round trip to San Marcos and fairly rough handling, since I didn't see it until after my return. Second, the monarch caterpillar is not picky about where it decides to metamorphose. The female butterfly is particular and lays her eggs on plants that will be a food source to her caterpillars. Where the transformation into butterfly takes place is apparently not critical.

Walk Softly And Be A Big Stick

Following on the steps of the red katydid outbreak is a walking stick invasion.

They belong to the Phasmatodea order of insects. There are four families in North America and many species in Texas. They are also known as stick insects and stick bugs. They are herbivores, so their increased numbers are not to take on the red katydids. I think that for both the red katydids and the walking sticks, weather conditions were favorable for them earlier this year and now their populations have boomed.

They excel at camouflage are are quite difficult to see unless, like these two, they're on our driveway or house.

This one is on our driveway and it's displaying a defense posture because I annoyed it. It's curling its abdomen and trying to look like a scorpion. I don't think it can actually sting, but I didn't take any chances. It's funny that it doesn't know that all I want is a photograph so it's not taking any chances either!

Like all insects, it has six legs, but only four are obvious. It's holding its front two legs together and ahead. I think this is to make it appear big and scare me off. As far as it knows - it worked!

This one is resting on a post on our front porch. They will sometimes stay in the same place for hours; longer than I'm willing to track them, anyway. It's also holding its forelegs in front.

These specimens are both about 6 inches long but you sometimes see smaller ones.

Mike Quinn, a local entomologist, has an excellent web page with more information here.