A Few Hopeful Sightings

Thursday, April 21, 2016

The pollinators are still far fewer and further between than they were three years ago. These four appear to be among the most common in central Bexar County right now:

This European Honeybee has a large American Basketflower all to itself. An Orange Sulphur is fairly well camouflaged on an Engelmann's Cutleaf Daisy. A Checkered White found the tiny flowers of a Texas Vervain particularly appealing. Probably the most common butterfly in the area right now is the Red Admiral. This one happens to be feeding on the nectar of an extremely annoying non-native invasive Hedge Parsley, also known as Beggar's Tick.

These photos were taken on a walk along the Mission Reach of the San Antonio River upstream from the VFW Blvd trailhead to Roosevelt Ave on Tuesday, April 19, 2016.

Click on the first photo in a post to open the photos in slideshow view.

For the Love of Nature

Wednesday, July 31, 2013

Medina River Natural Area,
El Chaparral > Nogales > Rio Medina > El Camino trail loop

Today's photos:

It is that time of year again in South Texas when everyone is beginning to wonder if Autumn will ever arrive and bring cooler weather. In spite of the seemingly endless high temperature and to some extent, because of the high temperature, the South Texas landscape retains a vibrant character. My intense curiosity and passionate love of Nature irresistibly draw me out to experience the rich beauty of her elegant living tapestry:

• The first three photos are of a Snowy Egret feeding in the pond beside the El Chaparral Trail.
• The fourth through sixth photos are of Purple Threeawn. The inflorescence has fully matured losing its characteristic purple color and is beginning to disarticulate.
• The seventh and eighth photos are of fully ripe, bright orange Granjeno berries.
• The ninth photo is of a Turkscap patch with a couple of Common Wild Petunias peeking out in the center of the patch. The Turkscap are one of the more abundant flowers blooming in the hot, dry weather right now providing a rich source of nectar that will help the pollinators survive through the harsh South Texas summer.
• The tenth photo is a Common Mestra butterfly on Canadian Wildrye.
• The eleventh through fourteenth photos are of a Gulf Fritillary butterfly enjoying the Turkscap nectar.
• The fifteenth photo is a Cloudless Sulphur butterfly on an Alamo Vine flower.
• The sixteenth and seventeenth photos are a Turkey Vulture soaring high overhead.
• The eighteenth photo is the shell of a freshwater mussel with a couple of river worn rocks on a mat of algae at the edge of the river.
• The nineteenth photo is an overview of the Medina River. This is the large pool looking upstream form the "River Crossing" interpretive area.
• The twentieth photo is a Texas Rose-bellied Lizard.

Pure Enjoyment of the Moment

Friday, July 5, 2013

San Antonio River, Mission Reach, Confluence Park Trailhead downstream
to the 3.6 mile marker*

Today's photos:

On this long 4th of July holiday weekend, here is a set of photographs to celebrate life:

• The first photo is an Alamo Vine flower.
• The second photo is a Snowy Egret searching for food at the top of a riffle.
• The third photo is an inflorescence of Sideoats Grama (the State Grass of Texas). A tiny caterpillar of some sort has woven itself inside a web pulling the spike of the  inflorescence into an oval. I would have liked to have seen how the caterpillar accomplished this.
• The fourth and fifth photos are of a Little Yellow butterfly on Orange Milkweed flowers. These milkweed blossoms were attracting numerous butterflies. Another common name for this plant is Butterfly-Weed, for obvious reasons.
• The sixth photo is a Bordered Patch butterfly on the Orange Milkweed.
• The seventh photo is a Bordered Patch butterfly on a Maximilian Sunflower. The Common Sunflowers have been in bloom for a couple of months, but the Maximilian Sunflowers are just beginning to flower.
• The eighth and ninth photos are of a Yellow-crowned Night-Heron.
• The tenth photo is a Killdeer.
• The eleventh photo is a Neotropic Cormorant.
• The twelfth photo is a Blue-fronted Dancer (Argia apicalis) damselfly I managed to photograph inflight. This damselfly was being very cooperative while I took its photo as it hovered in more or less the same location until I turned away.
• The thirteenth photo is a slider turtle sunning itself on the recently exposed bedrock along the riverbank. From this distance the rock appears to be a relatively soft limestone aggregate. This section of the bank on the west side of the River just south of the Theo Ave bridge was severely eroded by the May 25th flood, but it revealed this fascinating rock formation.
• The fourteenth through sixteenth photos are of Partridge Pea flowers.
• The seventeenth photo is a Standing Cypress that is still in bloom.

* Along the San Antonio River Greenway Trails, there are small, roughly three inch diameter circular bronze insets with a number embedded in the center of the trail generally every two-tenths of a mile. These numbers indicate the distance in miles from the center of Main Plaza downtown. So, the 3.6 marker on the east bank trail south of Theo Ave. is 3.6 miles along the trail from Main Plaza.

The mile markers, beginning with zero, also are located north of Main Plaza. If one started at the 2.4 marker north of downtown and walked downstream to the 3.6 marker south of Theo, the total distance walked would be six miles (2.4 miles + 3.6 miles).

Summer Solstice 2013

Friday, June 21, 2013

Hardberger Park, Oak Loop Trail

Today's photos:

Given all the rain that has fallen here the past couple months, the vegetation is about as green and lush as I've ever seen it along the Oak Loop Trail in Hardberger Park. I walked the trail today in preparation for leading a nature photography hike tomorrow morning.

Photography is the art of selection and elimination. Everything included in the frame of a "good" photograph should work together to communicate a unified theme. Generally, there is one dominant object or small set of objects that establish the theme of the photograph in much the way a topic sentence establishes the theme of a paragraph. Whether the photographer intends it or not, the viewer will interpret every else in the photograph in relation to the dominant object(s).

• The first photo is a Snapdragon Vine.
• The second photo is Two Leaved Senna.
• The third photo is a Common Buckeye in flight. I always try to take at least two and usually three to five frames of a photograph with slightly different focus in each frame, but sometimes, like this photo, there is only time to get one frame. This was one of the "lucky" ones were it worked.
• The fourth through sixth photos are a Texas Rose-bellied Lizard. Sometimes the animals cooperate. in this case, the lizard had run out on the trail in front of me, saw me coming then turned around and ran back to the top of a stump where it let me take a series of photos.
• The seventh and eighth photos are Zexmenia flowers.
• The ninth photo is a study in contrasting texture with the bark of a Live Oak tree in the foreground and an Ashe Juniper immediately behind the Live Oak.
• The tenth photo is a detail of a Tasajillo cactus with a small spider web woven on it.
• The eleventh and twelfth photos are blossoms on a Velvet-leaf Mallow.
• The thirteenth and fourteenth photos are a Sleepy Orange butterfly.
• The fifteenth photo is of the flowers on the top of a Whitebrush, also known as Beebrush. The way the sunlight was striking the flowers caught my eye initially, but I also realized fairly quickly there were no bees on the flowers. Given the well publicized declining bee population this is particularly worrisome. As the common name implies, theses flowers are particularly attractive to bees. These flowers appear barren without at least a few bees on them gathering nectar.
• The sixteenth and seventeenth photos are a Northern Mockingbird perched on the dead branch of a tree. There is only a slight, but significant difference in the composition of the two photos. In both, the bird and the tree are the related dominant objects. The first photo isolates the bird and the tree with only a hint of the distant horizon along the bottom of the frame. The second photo has the same basic theme, but includes more information. This particular tree is located on the side of a hill and is in an open area (there are no other trees close by surrounding it).
• The eighteenth photo is the inflorescence of Silver Bluestem.