City Nature Challenge, Part 2 -- Animals except Birds

As I mentioned an the earlier post, the DFW metroplex was one of 16 cities to participate.in the 2017 City Nature Challenge.

What did we observe? As part of the Challenge, we posted 155 observations to iNaturalist.org.  It included quite a wide variety of different plants and animals.  Some types were obviously much more plentiful (or at least more easy to observe) than others.  The observations are broken down as follows:  66 plants, 43 birds, 29 insects, 3 finned fishes, 3 mammals, 2 reptiles, 2 fungi, 1 mollusk, 1 amphibian, 1 arachnid, 1 other.


Amphibians.  Fortunately for the Frog we saw at least one amphibian, a Southern Leopard Frog.  He was at one of the bridges in the woods near the end of the Bittern Marsh Trail.

Southern Leopard Frog

Reptiles.  We only saw two reptiles.  We saw one of the green anoles that hangs out in our side yard near the garden. 

Green anole on the arm of the bench in the garden

We also saw red-eared slider turtles both in a creek in Highland Village and at LLELA (although we only posted once).  They seem to be, by far, the common turtle around here.

Red-eared slider in the creek along City Trail in Highland Village

We did not see any snakes, but admittedly we did not look very hard for them.

Mammals.  We did not see many mammals.  The ones we did see were all in our backyard!  There were the ever ubiquitous fox squirrels, a Virginia opossum that wandered through at night and appeared on the surveillance camera, and of course Bun, our not so wild Eastern cottontail.

Bun in the side yard, one of  his resting spots

We saw lots of deer and racoon tracks at both LELLA and on the equestrian trail near Old Alton Bridge, but unfortunately the deer and racoons remained well hidden.

Racoon tracks on the Redbud Trail at LLELA.  The large deep track is the hind foot.  The smaller track just to the left of it is the front foot.  The two tracks in front of those two are reversed (hind foot on the left and front foot on the right.)  Given the pattern, this large racoon was apparently slowly walking down the trail.

We had seen this little guy in the dumpster at LLELA, but it was the week before the Challenge so he did not count.  (Yes, we think he got out safely.  Some of the fishermen put a long stick into the dumpster so he could crawl out and we talked to one of the LLELA staff who promised to check on him later.)

Racoon in the dumpster at LLELA

Fish.  We didn't expect to see many fish, but did see a crappie that a fisherman had caught and watched a fisherman and his son land a catfish from the river.

Fishing on the Trinity River, 4-14-17

Either a blue catfish or a channel catfish

The most surprising fish find was a small school of mosquitofish in Bittern Marsh.


Arachnids.  We observed only one spider, but it was kind of neat, a furrow orbweaver.

Furrow orbweaver in a web above the boardwalk along the Bittern Marsh Trail

Insects.   We originally did not anticipate seeing many insects, but ended up with  29 observations.  Some of those observations were to be anticipated, such as a honey bee and a ladybug.

Honey bee

Seven-spotted Ladybird

Some were a little more unexpected (at least to us), such as the large milkweed bug on the milkweed plant and the brilliantly colored six-spotted tiger beetles that were very apparent in the middle of the trail even in the dim light of the heavy woods.

Large milkweed bug

Six-spotted tiger beetles

We also saw some interesting tent caterpillars (no they are not spiderwebs...my first thought), but did not realize until looking later at this site from TAMU that we could probably have identified them easily if we had gotten a better look at the caterpillars.

Tent caterpillars along the Trinity River

However, the more interesting and fun observations turned out to be the butterflies and dragonflies.

Dragonflies.  In addition to the plains clubtail mentioned in the previous post,  we also saw a common whitetail and an Eastern pondhawk (yes, that really is the name!).

Male common whitetail dragonfly

Eastern pondhawk dragonfly

Butterflies.  While the dragonflies were very interesting to see, the butterflies were just plain gorgeous.  We probably saw more butterflies than we had observations, but some would not sit still long enough to get their picture taken.  We did get pictures of a Black Swallowtail, Variegated Fritillary, Question Mark, Common Buckeye, Hackberry Emporer, Orange Sulphur, Red Admiral, Viceroy, and a Red-spotted Purple (shown in the previous post).

Black Swallowtail

Variegated Fritillary

Question Mark

Common Buckeye

Hackberry Emperor

Orange Sulphur

Red Admiral

Viceroy

No, I could not have identified these, except for perhaps the Buckeye and the Swallowtail, before this exercise.  The website dallasbutterflies.com was particularly useful with the identifications.  Not only does it show pictures of each with both the top and bottom of the wings, but it groups the butterflies into subfamilies, hence showing how some of them are related.

No, the last one shown is not a Monarch.  As described here, the Monarch is larger, glides more gracefully than the erratic flight of the Viceroy, and does not have the extra black line on its hind wing.

Wow, as you can see we were fortunate to see lots of interesting things during the five day period of the City Challenge.  I have not yet addressed birds or plants, but this post is already too long.  I will deal with them in another post.