It's a Verdin!

I posted my description and a link to this blog to the birding remailer for Texas and the answer overwhelmingly is Verdin!

Most birders did not even have to look at the (poor) pictures because of the Verdin's distinctive field marks.*  The size, the yellow head and the (someone called it) drab grey body were all it took for these folks to identify it as a Verdin. Except for the Bushtit (which is the same size and similar shape but lacking the yellow) there is no one quite like this little guy.

So thank you everybody: I'm a better birder than I was yesterday.


* From the Cornell Lab of Ornithology website, All About Birds: "Field marks are the distinctive stripes, spots, patterns, colors, and highlights that birds have in such abundance and variety."

Mystery Bird

It is very spring-like today, almost 70 degrees, blustery, with lots of plants responding to the 1.4" of rain of Sunday by rapidly becoming vibrant shades of green. The wild mustard in the yard is getting taller by the minute. Deer don't seem to eat it so I guess it will be time to mow, soon.

I walked over to Inspiration Point, hoping to see something different, and in the shrubs nearby I could see a small bird, alone, appearing to be in the process of finding microscopic edibles on the leaves. S/he (no idea) was mid-sized warbler size, smooth-looking, no wing bars, yellow head blending back to smooth medium grey. Light belly.

By the time I focused the camera he was somewhere else. he finally stopped to preen and I was able to focus but by this time the low sun was almost directly behind him. The pictures I did get were too dark to be of use in identification but after tinkering with the contrast and lightening up the midtones, I have four very poor examples of bird photography that may allow for an identification.

Any ideas?

What a Surprise!

I was surprised to find this anemone by one of the water valves. It seems too early:

If we continue to get bits of rain and we do not see a stretch of freezing weather similar to last year's pipe-burster, we should have a really fine display of bluebonnets:

(The five-fingered lupine-looking leaves)

We have American goldfinches all winter but we seem to have different populations at different times, and occasional stretches of no American goldfinches at all. We have a new group taking advantage of the water feature near the Nature Center, and the black oil sunflower seeds.

Male on the left; female on the right. Nobody is very flashy this time of year.

Random Picture

While looking for a particular picture (which I have yet to find) I found one of my favorites of the Hermit thrush at Inspiration Point.

Rain

It is grey, it is humid, and we have had nearly a half-inch of rain since Saturday. Today it is blustery and feels and smells like Spring. This is the weather that is ahead of the next front, it feels like it's coming in from the Gulf, and it's quite pleasant. (Another day of this and everyone will be begging for sun.)

Titmouse at Inspiration Point

I haven't had a chance to sit quietly at Inspiration Point until a few days ago. It had been getting into the lower 20s-upper teens at night, so to make the rounds of the water features, I waited until the midday temperature warmed enough for my finally acclimatized thin blood.

Apparently the Black-crested titmouse didn't much care that there was a skim of ice on the water at Inspiration Point. As I waited for the water to cascade through the series of small pools and top off the main tank, I caught a few pictures of one in search of a quick dip.

Here s/he surveys the area from behind before committing to bathe.

I guess the area was deemed safe because this was my next shot:

Perhaps I anthropomorphize but it looks to me like it might be a bit chilly in there.

The little guy (or gal) shook out and took off before I could get an "after."



Happy Thanksgiving!

Lechuguilla

The lechuguilla plant is in the agave family (same family as our century plants). Its botanical name, Agave lechuguilla, reflects that relationship. Its beautiful green color and the way the leaves nest into each other and curl back in at the top are both reminiscent of leaf lettuce, hence the name, which means “little lettuce.” Actually, the leaves are thick and leathery and each leaf is tipped with a sharp spine. The lechuguilla leaves have strong fibers, which were used by pre-Columbian people and more recently, Native Americans, to make twine which can be woven into mats and used to make shoes, nets, and the like. The plant is not particularly common in Sutton County—you are much more likely to see it closer to the Pecos River near the Rio Grande, and in New Mexico.

If you ever visit Seminole Canyon, the Texas State Park and Historic Site just east of where the Pecos joins the Rio Grande, you can see mats from lechuguilla fibers on the floor of the Fate Bell shelter.

Based on where I’ve seen (and not seen) lechuguilla plants, you can imagine my surprise when, while taking pictures near the Round Tank, I noticed in the background of  one picture what looked like a couple of lechuguilla plants.

I have personal experiences with lechuguilla from hiking in and near the Carlsbad Caverns National Park. One time I ended up with the tip of a leaf in my shin and although I thought I had pulled it out, I still had a little black spot. About three months later I had a warm, reddish bump in that spot, and then the tiny black tip of the lechuguilla leaf popped out of my leg. No surprise to me, then, when I read that lechuguilla was a danger in the early exploration of the Southwestern U. S, both to horses and to riders unfortunate enough to fall from their horses.

Like the more familiar century plants, it takes several years of stored energy for a lechuguilla to bloom. I read that the plant sends up a stalk as much as 15 feet tall, and a mass of pink or yellow flowers grows on the upper part. In the picture I saw, the flowers looked a lot like those of the sotol.



Perhaps one of these years our lechuguilla plants will bloom. Pink flowers would be nice.

Tools of the Trade

Wildfire Tank aka Cattail Pond

Well, it happened. The natives have turned invader and some of them need to go. Those cattails that started as a few blades of grass-looking spears have taken over most of the surface and all of the bottom of the Wildfire Tank. We think they grew up from some fluff delivered a few years back by a visitng Belted kingfisher, because the plants showed up a few months after the visit.

After much research, I found papers and articles that say the cattails are native, papers and articles that say they were brought here from Eurasia, experts who state that only herbicides will kill cattails and list which ones are guaranteed to kill (for a while, anyway), experts who give non-herbicidal ways to control them...

I settled on a combination of shovel, bypass pruners, hands, and Wellies. One of the suggestions was to draw down the water as far as possible, cut the leaves off at the base, then bring the water level back up to at least three inches above the cut. I'm assuming the theory is that without green above the water's surface, they will die. Having tried this, I know that it helps slow the spread but every last leaf on a particular rhizome/runner complex has to be submerged, and their runners can run pretty far.

I did draw the water down significantly; you can see the water line in this picture (lower left, grey color):

As you can see, the cattails have done a fine job of filling up the tank.

At its deepest the water height is within an inch of the tops of my Wellies (rubber boots heretofore only used for caving). Before cutting I decided to dig, starting with the area of soil and rocks at the base of the birdbath (showing in the next picture) and working my way into the water. After almost three hours of digging and pulling (and landing on my rear end in the water more than once as a result of pulling) and becoming quite muddy about the shirt and face I now have two piles that look like this: 



The pile on the left came from the right of the birdbath. The pile beyond & left of the birdbath, including the cattails that are upright, came from the tank directly below the birdbath.

The system of roots includes thick mats of very fine roots that not only hide the long, cord-like runners but provide the perfect medium for the seedlings. Some of the root mats I pulled up hid fine, green-grass-looking baby cattails.

Lower right you can see the runners. Then there are the spaghetti-looking roots. Anything greenish grey-brown soil-colored is a thick mat of fine roots.

Today it is not even 60 degrees so no wading, but I will be hauling the pulled plants to somewhere where they cannot propagate.

Denizens of the Round Tank



Striped whiptail lizard

Southern leopard frog with Gambusia

 

 

12-Spotted skimmer dragonfly

Scrub jay

Roadrunner camo

Ants

We like our Harvester ants, because Texas horned lizards (Horny toads) like Harvester ants. Although we see Horned lizards on Eaton Hill on occasion, they were once so common that children captured them, raced them, made thread leashes for them and paraded them around, and otherwise entertained themselves with the little guys. I had one woman tell me that as recently as ten years ago she had a Harvester ant hole by her porch and she used to sit on the porch and watch a large Horned lizard snap up ant after ant after ant, oblivious of his audience.

Horned lizards eat only Harvester ants so we keep an eye out for ours, and unless they have a mound where some small person can accidentally get into them we are happy to have them.

Above the Native American Village we have an access road that looks like this:

Walking along this road (this is, by the way, the same road as the one with the fossils) on my way to check water tanks I was looking down and happened to notice a small leaf moving along the ground. Kneeling for a closer look I found this ant, hard at work bringing home the bacon, so to speak.

In the next picture you can see he's getting close to his destination, as he is now in the tiny rocks that the ants have removed as they've built their home.

He's close! The main entrance is the dark area beyond the larger rocks, but he is right on top of a smaller side hole. (If you cannot see him, the small reddish-brow spot near the center of the picture is the leaf and the ant is just this side of the leaf.)

This is pretty much the same picture, only a lot closer.

He's on top of the leaf, now, and at this point he disappeared under the leaf and nobody came to help and the leaf didn't make it any further into the hole.

IT RAINED LAST NIGHT! 0.3 inches

Cooler Weather

It has cooled off some, at least at night and in the morning. We are still seeing temperatures in the 90s but the nights are in the 50s and the cooler mornings smell like fall. The light is different, too, with dawn being later and the sun slower to shed its splendor on the Hill. We had a grey morning, too, which was quite a treat, offering as it did a different perspective on some things. The ground, for instance--being primarily limestone, we see fossils regularly, but when the light is softer and slightly aslant I can walk the vague, crushed limestone "two-track" and see fossil after fossil, primarily bits of bivalves but entertaining nonetheless.

 

[I put my finger in for scale but allow me to apologize for its condition--the volunteer fire department has been fighting a large grass fire east of here and I haven't had a lot of luck getting all the fire dirt off my fingers, which normally look cleaner than this.]

I spotted this chunk of fossil on my way back from the water feature at Inspiration Point, where I saw pretty much everything but the porcupine him- or herself.

Quills floated on the surface of the water, drifting slowly amidst the reflections:

In the small pools down which the water cascades due to the solar recirculating pump, there were these: 

Upper right and lower left you can see porcupine droppings

I then hiked past the House and around to the tank on Wildfire Run, which we now call "the cattail tank" as often as we call it the Wildfire tank, as the Narrow-leaf cattails we received so long ago from the Belted kingfisher are trying fairly successfully to take over every last bit of it. I was hoping to see the Black-neck garter snake and in my disappointment I almost missed this sign of his/her continued growth and well-being:



May s/he live long and prosper



                                  

Hot-Hot-Hot

It hit 100 degrees before 11:30 this morning.We do have a whiff of a breeze, which helps, and the Nature Center itself, the Eaton House, is shaded by live oaks. In spite of the heat we are seeing some signs of migration, having spotted a couple of Rufous hummingbirds and a Ruby-throated hummingbird. We are keeping the nectar feeders full and continue to put out watermelon and other fruits to help keep the hummingbird feeders free for the hummingbirds.



The Director took this picture of a Rufous hummingbird waiting for the nectar feeder

When I returned from running water to the rock tanks, I caught this Texas spiny lizard "shading" himself in the shadow of the Eaton House:

This morning I sat on a shaded low log bench by the round tank below the flag, waiting for whatever might show up. I was hoping for a chance to photograph the Black-necked garter snake that I saw there last week when I was not carrying a camera. I watched a Rock squirrel taking a drink, and I've never seen one down here before. I sat long enough to be startled by a White-tail deer "whoofing" and taking off as a breath of air carried my scent to where s/he was resting, and an Axis deer began yelping somewhere over my left shoulder.

There are some puffy white clouds casting shadows here and there and a 10% chance of rain this afternoon and tonight. One can always hope...

How Dry is It?

Our summer has been hot and dry. We are in a drought year that has had less rain than any one of the years of the drought of the 1950s. In this part of Texas the 50s drought is remembered by old timers as a helpless time, when livestock starved and people lived on the edge of ruin while spending their days burning the spines from prickly pear cactus to allow cattle to have something on which to feed. *

Birds and mammals are having a tough time. No rain means no insects for the birds. The trees and shrubs that produce fruit—Hackberry, Texas persimmon, Evergreen sumac—are struggling so there’s very little food there. On Eaton Hill we have water features that we are intentionally allowing to run over occasionally in order to create some puddles and damp ground, not just for butterflies but for things we normally think of as pests, such as gnats and mosquitoes. The lack of insects has allowed us to see more skunks, as they have to spend more hours on the prowl for food. They are being seen in daylight hours, although not in the middle of the day as yet. Only the reptiles seem to be behaving “business as usual.”

Spiny lizard on live oak. This picture is right-side up



Our mesquites have an abundance of bean pods—it’s Eaton Hill’s best year since I’ve been here. However, this is not the case in other parts of the county and apparently a dry year doesn’t automatically mean a good mesquite bean crop. Browsers such as White tail deer eat the beans.

A side benefit of the horrible conditions is we at Eaton Hill have been able to help and have been rewarded with sights not seen until now. We have been providing water as usual, but we have also been extra vigilant with hummingbird feeders, and unlike other summers we have continued to put out seed. We have created a bird-friendly microclimate in the yard of the Nature Center that has included watermelon and other fruits and the orioles have come out of hiding! We have had Orchard, Scotts, Hooded and Northern orioles, and Summer tanagers, some sharing a chunk of watermelon while others attack the nearby hummingbird feeders. (The hummingbird feeder attacks and our sympathy for the poor hummers is what led us to try the fruit buffet.)

 

Male Bullock's oriole

 

Male Scott's oriole waiting his turn above the fruit



The seed has attracted large groups of Painted buntings, and earlier it was not unusual to see two or three pairs of Painted buntings sharing the board with the sparrows and House finches, White wing and Inca doves.

Male painted bunting and Clay-colored sparrow at the House 



Make no mistake: We want it to rain. But while we're waiting, it's good to have reasons to rejoice. 

*During a visit to Fort Lancaster near Sheffield, I was looking at the Elmer Kelton books for sale and I asked the ranger for advice as to which one I should read first. Knowing I had just moved to Sonora, he said without hesitation, “The Time it Never Rained. It will help you to understand the place you moved to.” Thank you Mr. Ranger I have recommended that book many times since. My copy looks like this:

Originally published by TCU Press.



Sutton County Days

Sutton County Days moved from August to June and our main community-wide event of the year is now past.

It includes a parade and Eaton Hill entered its first float, a stock trailer with a giant bird nest, a bunch of kiddos in bird wings and head feathers that they made themselves, and some bird watchers. The birdies and their watchers threw small plastic bugs and snakes and spiders to bystanders. Several families were involved in the building and WE WON Best Overall Entry!!!

Developments

The Black-capped and Bell's vireos are back. Also the Scott's oriole, the Hooded oriole, Black-chinned hummingbirds, Painted buntings... This spring and summer have brought with them more than flowers, bright greens gone to scorched, and birds...they bring developments.

Eaton Hill Wildlife Sanctuary is working toward being a stand-alone non-profit organization. We will be officially known as the Eaton Hill Nature Center. We are working on having a small store, nature-style, with walking sticks, cards, notepads, and other gift items. We have formed a "Friends of Eaton Hill" group, and will form a group of volunteers to help us with our programs and hopefully allow us to have staff for regular Nature Center hours.

And on Monday April 25th we had a very successful open house and fundraiser!  A professional actress, Michele LaRue, was touring this part of Texas and she read for us The Apple Tree, a Mary E. Wilkins Freeman story from the early 1900s. The Eaton family came to Sonora at the turn of the 20th century, the Eaton House was build then, and the event took on the flavor of the turn of the century and apples.

We were able to introduce our new Board of Directors, seven dedicated individuals who bring with them teaching, nature, business, organizational and art skills. We have our Annual Photography Contest coming up (accepting entries until this Monday the 20th of June) and we will have a float in the Sutton County Days parade Saturday morning June 25th.

And we continue to pray for rain.

Painted bunting in the Nature Center garden

Angelo State University to the Rescue!

In 1973, what was then Sonora Junior High became the keepers of the Orville G. Babcock geology collection. Dr. Babcock, whose degree was in entomology (insect study), collected rocks, minerals, and fossils wherever he went. He carefully recorded everything he collected by date, description, type, who collected it and where. He built three cabinets of twelve drawers each to hold his collection. Anyone who spent any time in Mrs. (Carol) Love’s classroom since 1973 knows what the collection looks like.

When Mrs. Love retired, the collection gained a new home at the Eaton House. It’s a terrific addition but there was one slight hitch—many of the samples were no longer in their proper places, the ledger was old, fragile and easily damaged, and the cabinets were in need of a good cleaning.

Enter Rebecca and Dominick, two Angelo State geology students who spent two days of their winter break helping us to organize Dr. Babcock’s collection. Rebecca set up a spreadsheet and has transcribed the ledger so we can now look things up on the computer. The ledger pages have been scanned so someone can look through them without handling (and possibly damaging) the original. Dominick removed each drawer, took out all the samples, cleaned the drawers and replaced their contents. Based on additional papers, they have determined the original order of the cabinets.

Dominic studies a specimen before he returns it to its rightful place. The top part of Dr. Babcock's 12-drawer cabinets can be seen behind Dominic.

We are extremely fortunate to have this collection. Eaton Hill plans to make it accessible to anyone, from geologist to grade school student.



Cold Weather

Whenever cold overnight temperatures are in the forecast, how cold is important. If the temperature spends too many nights below 25 degrees, we have water valves that can freeze. Our water lines are "freeze line"--expandable--but all the valves are metal and unless they are open, the slight expansion of freezing water will split the metal. And that's a mess I don't care to deal with...

On my way down the trail to the Birding Hut, where there is a water valve, I spooked an Axis deer. Now I am normally not a fan of Axis deer, as they are not native and are a bit hard on the resources. But I am always game for watching critters who think they aren't being watched so when I heard the sound of a large animal rustling in the leaf litter, I stopped dead in my tracks. After my eyes adjusted to the details of my surroundings I saw this:

My stillness was eventually rewarded when I received this curious look:

With this and two other does was a young buck. At first I thought he was posing with one front foot up, almost like a half-hearted point from a bird dog, but when he moved and didn't put the foot down I realized he was injured. Since he was young and sleek, not sick-looking at all, I'm hoping he picked up a thorn or something and that he will heal up well and soon.

On to 2011

It does not seem as long ago as Thanksgiving when I last posted a blog entry. The people of Eaton Hill (the Director and I) have succumbed to the oh-my-where-did-the-time-go syndrome. It is pretty common around December/January of each year...

We have had visitors--both regulars and travellers (I looked it up. Either way. You'll know why the older style soon enough)--and we have been gone some, mostly with family for holidays. Except for concern over cold weather issues such as filling bird feeders and keeping water valves from freezing, we basically let the Hill do what it always does--there are birds and animals and plants being birds and animals and plants. I can pretty much guarantee that if a deer poops in the forest and nobody's there to see it, the little pellets will be there when somebody finally does show up.

We've had some very cold weather--one night the temperature made it into the teens. Today it is beautiful--there is some moisture in the air and the day started rather grey but the temperature is now 55 degrees F and the sky is a pale blue with an occasional shredded cloud drifting along. Earlier today I was downhill at the Birding Hut. There's a sort of a water trough limestone and mortar water feature that needed to be topped off. I turned the water on a trickle so there would be critter-enticing water noise and sat on a log downwind from the tank, with my back to the sun, camera at the ready, hoping for photogenic birds or deer (I had just spooked some Axis deer on my way down the trail).

A long time ago, when I was in 7th or 8th grade (recall the earlier "traveller"), I had an Alfred Hitchcock short story book. I do not know if the stories were written by Hitchcock (he was still with us then), collected by him, or published with his name attached by agreement with some publishing house but I really enjoyed scaring myself (and sometimes, reading aloud, myself and others) with this book. Oddly, I only remember one story and I do not remember the whole story, just the really creepy parts.

There were, in this story, small, brown, dessicated creatures sneaking up on the hapless (they are always hapless) victims, the creatures' dried up little feet making scritchy noises in the pebbly desert sand as they approached, perfectly camoflaged and invisible except as movement on the outskirts of the victims' field of vision.

Whenever I hear a particular kind of a sound I think of that story, and that sound can still evoke a mental shudder.

That sound was straight behind me about 15 feet away from my log. After my initial start, I slowly turned my head, trying to minimize movement and maybe see what made the noise. Just on the edge of my field of vision (seriously) something small ran through live oak leaf litter. It stopped and became invisible, then ran a few feet before becoming invisible again. Lucky for me it was travelling the way my neck turns so I could pick up the movement and follow it a few feet to the next spot.

And I finally caught this picture:

Hermit thrush

 And all I can say is... Whew!