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.

City Nature Challenge, Part 1

Most of the past few weeks has been devoted to participating in or recovering from the City Nature Challenge.  What is the City Nature Challenge?  Here is the information as posted on the Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County website:

What is the City Nature Challenge?

Just in time for National Citizen Science Day (April 15) and Earth Day (April 22), 16 U.S. cities are asking residents of and visitors to these urban areas to explore nature all around them and document the species they find.

Building on the success of last year’s City Nature Challenge between Los Angeles and San Francisco, the initiative’s co-founders, Alison Young (Citizen Science Engagement Coordinator from the California Academy of Sciences) and Lila Higgins (Citizen Science Manager at the Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County) have expanded the event.

Last year over 20,000 observations were logged by over 1,000 citizen scientists, representing 1698 species in the Bay Area, and 1679 species in L.A. County! What will we find this year, when we look all over the country?

Needless to say, we did not hear about it from that site, but rather from the very active group we follow on Facebook, the DFW Urban Wildlife Group.  I had stumbled upon their Facebook page and website, dfwurbanwildlife.com, a little over a year ago when I was trying to identify the hawk we discovered perched in the yaupon holly outside our bathroom window.  It has been a fun group to follow, since they are heavily into the photography of wildlife in and around places we are very familiar with, including lots of observations at LLELA.  Although we have not attended any of their group get-togethers, we have met several of the members on the trail at LLELA.

In a nutshell, the City Challenge means getting as many people as possible (1) to make observations of nature, (2) to take pictures of their observations, then (3) to post the pictures on the iNaturalist.org website with their identification of the observation.  The observations could be either animals or plants.  The observations could be in a backyard or in a more natural setting, but the plants and animals needed to be "wild", i.e. not pet animals or cultivated plants.  The observations had to be sometime during the five day period of April 14-18 (Friday-Tuesday).  The postings were to be made by midnight Friday, April 21 (although that got extended by about half a day).  Sixteen different metropolitan areas were the "cities" competing for bragging rights.  For purposes of the challenge, the DFW metroplex included ten counties.

It seemed kind of interesting so we thought we would give it a try.  As we got into it we really started having fun.  I guess that is no great surprise.  It is nearly the perfect activity for us, combining photography, walking around in nature, learning new things, computer work...all the things we love anyway!!

We (meaning the Frog) took lots of pictures (over 1500, to be exact), then we tried to identify what we had observed in preparation for posting on iNaturalist.  In many cases the identification step took a LONG time and we were not always able to make a definitive ID.  That's where the power of iNaturalist comes in.  Other people, including some very high level experts, jump in to confirm or recommend changes to the ID. 

Our observations.  We ended up making 156 observations that we posted of which 112 were considered "research grade", i.e. at the species level and confirmed by the community.  I think I am missing a couple of observations, but they breakdown roughly as follows:  66 plants, 43 birds, 29 insects, 3 mammals, 3 ray-finned fishes, 2 reptiles, 2 fungi, 1 mollusk, 1 amphibian, 1 arachnid, and 1 other (which was an earthworm, don't know why he gets "other").

All of our observations were within a few miles of home.

Our observations posted to iNaturalist for the 2017 City Nature Challenge

I am not going to try and document our five days of observations chronologically.  However, since many of the pictures are so outstanding, I will show some of those in this and several subsequent blog postings.

Learning New Things.  The most exciting part of this whole experience has been learning new things and making unexpected discoveries.

Sometimes the new things were just based on our my ignorance.  For example, I did not realize that the top and bottom sides of some butterflies are dramatically different.

We saw this very beautiful butterfly.  I thought surely it would be easy to identify since its markings were so distinctive.  I looked and looked seemingly everywhere on the web and in the few reference books we had without success.  How could that be?

Finally I found a wonderful website, dallasbutterflies.com, that shows both the top and bottom views of the wings.  At least for this guy, a red-spotted purple (yep, that's its name!), his top wings don't show the spots.  Most of the pictures online only showed the plain upper wings.  I went back and looked at some of the other pictures the Frog had taken of this guy.  Sure enough, that was the case.

In some other instances, the quality of the pictures allowed us to observe things that would have been difficult or impossible with the naked eye.

This is a dragonfly we encountered on the trail along the banks of the Trinity River.

Dragonfly on the trail at LLELA

 
Even though I had previously known NOTHING about dragonflies, with a little online research I figured out this was a clubtail dragonfly based on the shape of the tail (duh) and the widely spaced eyes.  I read multiple reports about yellow clubtails that looked exactly like this, so I posted that as our observation.

Note the wide spaced eyes which are characteristic of this type of dragonfly

An expert on dragonflies from Vancouver wrote on our observation that yellow clubtails do not exist in the new world.   Oops.  I had somehow missed that.  Fortunately another dragonfly expert from the metroplex jumped in and said it was a plains clubtail.  Well, alrighty then.

However, in all of this back and forth and close scrutiny of the picture I realized there was a wing sticking down below his chin.  What was that doing there?  Sure enough,  looking at an earlier picture in the series, we could see him using his front leg to stuff a bug into his mouth. 

I had never thought much about what dragonflies eat, but now know first hand that dragonflies are carnivorous.  They are serious predators of other insects including gnats, mosquitoes, moths, butterflies, and even bees. At least according to one site, they can eat their own body weight in as little as 30 minutes.  They can be a real threat to bee colonies, devastating a colony in a very short period of time.  Of course, the good news is that they can also keep down the mosquito population.

The other thing that happened on several occasions was the opportunity to make multiple observations from one photo.  Usually that was for a plant we were not paying attention to while looking at a bird or insect.  However it also went the other way.

We realized after several days that we did not have a picture of a prickly pear cactus.  That is not totally surprising, since we were spending most of our time in more wet areas that are not favorable to cacti.  It seemed like we should have a prickly pear observation, so we checked out some Army Corps of Engineer land along an equestrian trail just northwest of here.  We did not go far since the previous day's storms had left everything very very muddy.  However, we did find a prickly pear and lots of interesting wildflowers.

Yes, there is a prickly pear cactus behind the grass

Wildflowers near the 2499 trailhead of Pilot Knoll equestrian trail:  Texas bull nettle (white flowers in the center), Indian paintbrush (orange flowers in the back), prairie spiderwort (purple flowers in the front).  The buds in the front are unopened Arkansas lazy daisies.  I don't know what the tall vertical plants in the front are.

What surprised me was an unexpected discovery I made after returning home when looking more closely at a blow-up of the cactus picture.  One portion of the cactus was covered with bugs.  

Bugs on a prickly pear cactus

That was great.  The bugs were potential additional observations, but I figured it would be nearly impossible to figure out what kind of bugs they were.  Here is when Google came to the rescue.  I almost immediately discovered that these were called prickly pear cactus bugs (geez, that was almost too easy).  The larger orange and black bug at the top is the adult and the smaller, round bugs below are the nymphs.  Apparently these have been studied to death as possible ways to control prickly pear cacti.

This only begins to scratch the surface of the many new (and admittedly mostly useless) factoids we learned from these five days of  nature observations and the additional days of research to make the identifications.

Even when we were not observing new species, we were having a great time.  After the recent storms, the Corps of Engineers was letting a lot of water out of Lewisville Dam.  The herons and egrets love this since it is great fishing for them.   We spent a long time one afternoon watching these beautiful birds.

The great egrets were easy to spot and plentiful.  

Great egrets

Seeing so many of them now, it is hard to believe great egrets were hunted nearly to extinction in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries for their plumes. 

Great blue heron on the Trinity River in LLELA

The birds dive almost effortlessly into the water for a fish then fly back to a perch with the fish in their beak.

Going after a fish

Successful fish grab

Great blue heron flying back to a perch with fish

After manipulating the fish until it is aligned correctly, they swallow it whole.  Just standing there on the bank we watched this over and over again among dozens of birds.  What a spectacular sight on a beautiful April afternoon...and only ten minutes from home.

Spring Garden Update at 2 Months

It has been exactly two months (2/9 and 2/10) since I planted the first of the veggies in the garden this spring: lettuce, spinach, carrots, onions, broccoli, and kale.  The beans were planted a month ago (3/8).  The cucumber seeds and the tomato and pepper plants were planted three weeks ago (3/18 and 3/19). 

Plan for Spring 2017 garden using the square foot gardening approach

 


With the possible exception of the cucumber (which is growing, but very small) and some of the spinach, everything is doing great.  I have more salad greens than I can possibly eat, even with salads every day. (Note to self, plant less lettuce next time.)

Garden on 4-9-17

There are plenty of other things to enjoy besides lettuce and spinach.  I keep making kale chips, but the kale plants are still going strong.  The broccoli may be ready to be picked.  This spring's carrots and onions are still too small, but I am harvesting both carrots and onions from last fall's plantings.  

I am not the only one enjoying the garden goodies.  Bun, our not-so-wild Eastern cottontail, is enjoying castoff carrot tops, kale leaves, and broccoli leaves.  I always pile them in the same place on the patio near the chaise lounge, so he now checks that spot every time he goes in and out of the yard. 

4-3-17  Bun posing for a picture while eating carrot greens

Hopefully these sacrificial offerings will fill him up before he attacks other foliage in the backyard that we do not want him eating. 

4-11-17  Broccoli heads are looking promising.  Tomatoes and peppers are growing.  Kale is taking over the world.

Even the tomato and pepper plants, both very much warm weather plants, are flowering and beginning to set fruit.  In fact, one banana pepper that just appeared this week is already several inches long.

4-11-17  Banana pepper on the plant that was decapitated by hail on March 26

 
However, the current big story of the day centers on the beans. Both the bush beans and the pole beans are growing like mad. 

3-25-17  --  The beans, planted on 3/8, are just beginning to grow.

 

4-10-17 --  Two of the pole beans have made it to the top of the trellis.  The bush beans are happily bushing.

After just starting to grow onto the trellis about a week ago, the pole beans have been racing to the top.  Sunday afternoon there were two pole bean plants approaching the top bar, with the one near the center clearly in the lead.

Sunday afternoon, 4-9-17, a race to the top

When I looked out the window Monday morning the plant near the center had made it to the top. Surprisingly, when I went out a few hours later to take pictures, BOTH of them had made it to the top.  These two had climbed more than 4 feet in a week.  It is easy to see how the bean part of "Jack and the Beanstalk" got started.

4-10-17  Photo-finish to the top

4-11-17  The lettuce was beaten down somewhat by hail and rain overnight, but the beans look no worse for wear.

Despite the hail storm of nearly biblical proportions on March 26 and yet another (although much smaller!) hail storm last night, the garden is super lush and doing great.  Fortunately I did not heed the advice of several of the local gardeners I follow on Facebook.  A common question posed to that group several months ago was "When should I plant to avoid frost/freeze?".  A common response was "Wait until after Easter", which was supposed to be a general rule of thumb for planting every year.

I don't understand this advice, given how variable the date for Easter is from year to year.  I guess it is true that I would have avoided any frost/freeze if I had waited to plant everything until NEXT week, i.e. after April 16, since the latest freeze ever at DFW is April 13.  I am glad I took the chance and planted when I did.  Although a touch early for several of the plantings and especially the beans, which are a warm weather crop that cannot tolerate frost, I planted most things at about the time suggested for this area by North Haven Gardens  nursery. 

Of course, that gamble was especially well suited to the weather this year.  Even though the average last freeze in DFW is about March 18, the last official freeze this year was January 8, a new record.

I hope this doesn't mean we will have record heat this coming summer.