Fall Woods

The central Texas autumns are not known for their color, but the colors are out there. While not overwhelming, there are splashes of yellows, reds, and oranges.

These photos were taken about a week ago in the woods behind our house. The woods contain Live Oaks, Post Oaks, Blackjack Oaks, Red Oaks, Cedar Elms and Ashe Junipers.

The Live Oaks and Ashe Junipers are green throughout the fall and winter. The Post Oaks usually turn brown, but this year they seem to be redder. The Red Oaks turn yellow and red and the Cedar Elms turn yellow and orange.

You can see that there's quite a bit of leaf litter on the ground already. The Red Oaks leaves are just turning and some are still green.

Here's a close up of the Red Oak leaves.

A Hole In The Ground

While on a recent hike I came across a karst feature on our property. We've seen it before, but this time I decided to photograph it and see how deep it was. I hiked out today and found it again.

I've posted about karst features on the Onion Creek Water Quality Protection Land, but it's neat to find one on our property. Karst is a geological feature, basically a hole or cave, that allows rain water to enter directly into an aquifer. They are formed by water percolating through limestone and are widespread throughout our part of Texas. Mary found this one years ago but we never paid much attention to it and haven't always able to find it.

It used to be surrounded and almost hidden by a very large prickly pear cactus, but that has died and the hole is now easily visible. The entrance hole is about 8 inches long and 3 inches wide.

Here's a better view of the inside. The rock at the top of the  hole is about 8 inches thick.

I lowered a weighted string into the hole to see how deep it was. The weight went down 5 feet! I think the  hole actually veers to the side, so the actual depth may be greater.

I wonder how long it took rain to form the karst? Is it relatively quick, by geologic standards? Maybe a few hundred or a few thousand years? Or did it take hundreds of thousands or millions of years?

And why there? Is the rock especially soft right there? The spot doesn't look like it's in the middle of a wet-weather creek, so I don't think water runs through there regularly.

I also checked the wildlife water supplies today. The recent rains have them operating well. It's been over a month since I last trucked water out to them. Both of them are full. Here's a photo of the newer, smaller one. The re-bar spikes I put in to keep the dishes from being moved around by animals also seem to be working.

Birds Of A Feather

As part of our Wildlife Management activities, we hired Jesse Huth, a local bird expert, to conduct a bird species census on our property. He and his mother, Jaci Kroupa, who served as scribe, came on a Saturday morning after it had been raining all night. We were going to start at 7 am, but were delayed until about 10:30 am, when the rain stopped.

It was misty, windy, and a cool 68 degrees. We were out for about 2.5 hours and there wasn't much activity for the first 45 minutes. Jesse explained that the birds were still hunkered down after the night's rain, but would need to start moving around and feeding soon to maintain their metabolism.

He made quite a few of the identifications by hearing the bird's call. I was fascinated by the experience and his ability to identify the bird calls. He had binoculars and made many identifications visually too.

In total he identified 31 species in that morning. Here's the list:

• Crested Caracara
• Northern Cardinal
• Carolina Chickadee
• American Crow
• Mourning Dove
• White-Winged Dove
• House Finch
• American Goldfinch
• Lesser Goldfinch
• Blue Jay
• Dark-eyed Junco
• Killdeer
• Golden-crowned Kinglet
• Ruby-crowned Kinglet
• Northern Mockingbird
• Eastern Phoebe
• Greater Roadrunner
• American Robin
• Chipping Sparrow
• Field Sparrow
• Black-crested Titmouse
• Tufted Titmouse
• Spotted Towhee
• Wild Turkey
• Black Vulture
• Turkey Vulture
• Yellow-rumped Warbler
• Yellow-throated Warbler
• Golden-fronted Woodpecker
• Ladder-backed Woodpecker
• Bewick's Wren

Jesse explained that the birds form mixed species foraging flocks. The birds take turns feeding and serving as the eyes of the flock, issuing warning calls as trouble approaches. We encountered several of these in our hike. There would be little or no bird activity and then we would walk into the middle of one of these flocks and the activity would pick up tremendously. Then, either because the flock was moving or we were walking, the activity would die down.

They were quite excited to encounter the Golden-crowned Kinglet. They considered this bird quite rare and we had many of them. Jesse said he'd found gold on our property!

Many of these birds live here year-round, but some of them just winter here. I'm looking forward to conducting the bird species census again in the spring to see how the identifications differ.

When The Rain Comes

It's been raining steadily now for about three days! I love it!

The ground is soggy, our rain tanks are full, and although it's been gloomy the entire time, I say "give us more!".

Since Friday, we've had about 3 inches of rain which means that within the first week of December it is already one of the wettest months of the year. We're closing out 2011 with some of the wettest months of the year: October had 2.4 inches and November had 3.4. The total so far is 15.8 inches. Last year we had 43.1 and an average year is about 33, so we're still behind.

I went for a hike today because I wanted to see what the property looked like during the rain. It was only drizzling lightly, but earlier it was raining pretty heavily. I took my chances - I didn't want to get my camera wet and I don't have a rain cover for it.

Scattered about our property are depressions, usually with rocks in the bottom. My theory is that they're small sinkholes where the underlying limestone has collapsed, but that's just a guess. Here's one that's near our house and it was full of water. The miniature pond is about 5 feet long and 4 feet wide and maybe 8 inches deep. It will hold water for a few days.

I actually got wetter walking under trees than out in the open because their canopies are soaked. Here's a shot of a live oak's leaves covered with water drops.

Finally, we have a wet weather creek running along the southern edge of our property. A wet weather creek is normally dry, but carries water during heavy rainfall. Along the creek are water holes, I suppose you could call them wet weather ponds, which will hold water for a week or two after a rain. They are quite large, maybe 60 feet by 30 feet and about 1.5 feet deep. They attract quite a bit of wildlife. We've seen cranes there and can hear frogs during summer nights from the house, which is about 1/2 mile away.

My attitude toward rain has definitely changed. I used to think that it just ruined the day, but now I wish we had more. I think I'm just paying more attention now.

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.