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.

Tortoise Identified

I contacted Dr. Travis LaDuc at the Texas Natural History Collections at the University of Texas at Austin for help with identifying the small tortoise I found last weekend.

He's the Assistant Curator of Herpetology at the Texas Natural Science Center and I thought he might be able to tell what I had. We heard him speak at a Hays County Master Naturalist Chapter meeting earlier in the year.

He was most gracious and responded almost immediately.

He said he doesn't think it's a native and that we don't have any native tortoises in Texas roughly north of the San Antonio Metropolitan area. His best guess is that it's an African spurred tortoise (Geochelone sulcata), which is what I thought it might be too. Here's a photo of a juvenile and it does look similar.

He said that a number of people keep these as pets in their backyards and some of them don't realize what happens when you put a male and female together! Their incubation periods are something like 5 months, so it would be easy to overlook any juveniles.

I've been feeding it grass from the yard and also some carrots and lettuce. It seems to prefer the grass.

It looks like I have a new pet!

Tortoise Rescue

I saw a small tortoise crossing the road in our neighborhood yesterday afternoon. It was about halfway across and I carefully avoided it and backed up to see what it was.

I've rescued many turtles and tortoises over the years. If I see one on the road while driving the backroads, I'll get out of the car and either put it on the side of the road it was trying to get to, or pick it up and take it home for later release. A couple of times, I've released red-eared sliders (Trachemys scripta elegans) into a pond near our neighborhood.

I always feel sorry for them because they take so long to cross the road and I know there's a good chance they'll get hit by a car.

This isn't one I'm familiar with. The most common turtles or tortoises in this area are the red-eared slider, which are mainly aquatic, and the box turtle (genus Terrapene) which is mainly terrestrial. This one didn't look like either. It reminds me of some of the ones I've seen in pet stores, the African Spurred tortoise (Geochelone sulcata).

Here's a photo of it in a small animal cage. It's only about 2 inches long and 1 inch tall. I was lucky to see it in the road while driving by at 30 miles per hour.

I'm going to need help identifying it and figuring out what to feed it. For now, we're giving it lettuce and carrots.

If it's an African Spurred then it's not native and is probably an escaped or released pet. In the research I've done so far, it might be a native though, either the Texas (Gopherus berlandieri) or Desert Tortoise (Gopherus agassizii).

If any of you recognize it or know some who might, please let me know.

Wildlife Water

Now that the days are cooler, I decided to get out there and do some work!

We bought a small rainwater collector from RainwaterGuzzlers at the Rainwater Revival last weekend. The company is owned by two of our fellow Master Naturalists, Randy Garst and Tom Hausler. The guzzler is a little smaller than the one I built a few years ago but the idea is the same: a small metal roof collector and a water tank and water dish. It makes a good source of supplemental water for wildlife.

Randy delivered it on Wednesday and we set it up near one of the deer blinds on our property. It's also near some old cattle water troughs and I hope to eventually have it supplying water to one of them.

Last weekend I also bought a small 125 gallon water tank that I can use to take water out to the wildlife water guzzlers to make up for the lack of rain. You can see it in the pickup bed in this photo.

I  filled the water tank at our house and then drove out to the two guzzlers. I have a small electric water transfer pump which runs off the truck's 12V battery and used that to put water in the guzzler tanks.

I transferred about 45 gallons to the small guzzler and 205 gallons to the large water tank in two trips. Each trip took about 2 hours, including the time it took to fill the transfer water tank at our house, drive to the guzzlers and transfer the water. I spent about 4 hours this weekend working on this.

I'm hoping the wildlife gets good use from them. The next step is to put a motion-activated camera by one or both of them and see who's coming in for a drink.

Rain, I Don't Mind

We went to the Rainwater Revival in Dripping Springs yesterday. Appropriately, it rained.

The event is billed as a "A celebration of  collection, conservation and common sense!" In it's second year, the event promotes awareness of rainwater harvesting. There was a good crowd and even though the skies were threatening, everyone was enjoying the day.

Our house saw 0.4 inches of rain on Saturday and then 2.0 inches on Sunday. This makes October the 3rd wettest month this year and is much appreciated. Our rainwater collection tanks are now a little over half-full.

Even with the little rain we had in September, I've started to see signs of the plants taking advantage of it. Some of the oaks have put out acorns, and some of the native grasses are turning green. I'm expecting the 2.4 inches from this weekend will really have a noticeable effect.

On the drive home, I noticed a burst of color along the road. I doubled-back and even though it was starting to rain, I photographed this small plant with bright pink/purple blooms with my phone's camera. There were many of them along a 20 foot stretch of roadside. I don't know what the plant is, but it's definitely taking advantage of the recent rain.