North American Butterfly Association: Butterfly Count starting Lick Creek Park!

Last Saturday a group of Rio Brazos Auduboners and TMNers participated in the North American Butterfly Association’s (NABA) Butterfly Count at Lick Creek Park.  Why were we out there?  From NABA’s website:

“Three of the main goals of NABA’s Butterfly Count Program are to (1) gather data that will monitor butterfly populations, (2) give butterfliers a chance to socialize and have fun, and (3) raise public awareness by hosting events that will increase general interest in butterflies.”

The nice thing about watching butterflies is that they get up late… so we began the count at 9:00am!  We started off by walking down Iron Bridge Trail and the group quickly spread out.  Now, the other nice thing about going on a butterfly count is that it’s a great chance to learn butterflies.  I was one of the people in the group that doesn’t really know a lot… the big ones are easy but the medium-sized orange and black ones all look the same to me.  But this weekend, I learned how to tell two of the little orange and black guys apart!

Compare a Silvery Checkerspot with a Pearl Crescent.  A Silvery Checkerspot will be a little larger and have more oranges and browns on the wings.  A Pearl Crescent is going to be a little bit smaller and mostly orange and black when the wings are open.  When the wings are closed, you can kind of see the same thing.  Thanks Bruce for all the pointers!

A Silvery Checkerspot (left) and a Pearl Crescent (right) with wings open.  Note the Checkerspot has more browns and is lighter orange than the Pearl Crescent.

A Silvery Checkerspot (left) and a Peral Crescent (right) with wings closed.  Note the lighter wings on the Checkerspot.

Cool butterflies that were seen include those in the picture below.  Note!  I did not take these (or any) pictures… I stole them from Rick!

Common Buckeye!

Gray Hairstreak!

Great Purple Hairstreak!

Pipevine Swallowtail!

It’s also not just about butterflies.  When they’re few and far between we all start looking at other things.  It’s nice when you get a few people together who know a lot about a lot of stuff and they’re more than happy to share their knowledge!  Crossing the bridge over Lick Creek on Deer Run Trail, Dwight pointed out the potholes in the streambed from where male sunfish have hollowed out the area and are guarding their own nest site.  That’s not something I would have noticed on my own or if I did, I wouldn’t have known what was going on.  Thanks for pointing the fish out, Dwight!  

Fish potholes in Lick Creek.  You can see five potholes in the upper right corner of the photo in the red circle.

Other notable finds were a singing Summer Tanager and several Red-eyed Vireos along Deer Run Trail and a Six-lined Racerunner along Iron Bridge Trail. 

Six-lined Racerunner along Iron Bridge Trail.

And how can I forget dragonflies!! 

Common Whitetail!

Halloween Pennant!

Female Roseate Skimmer!

After Lick Creek Park, the group broke up into smaller parties to continue the counts in backyards and other parks.

All in all it was a great day to be outside, learning butterflies and seeing what was out and about in the park.  Thanks to everyone who came out!  And thanks, Rick... for letting me steal your wonderful pictures!

Resources:

Books / Publications:

Kaufman Field Guide to Butterflies of North America

Butterflies of Central Texas  The link takes you to Amazon but you can find this locally at state parks, Martha’s Bloomers, and even HEB.

Texas Parks and Wildlife Publication:

Introduction to Butterfly Watching

Website:

North American Butterfly Association

Animal Tracks: Past and Present

One of the great things about all the recent rains is the muddy areas along the edges of streams.  I know, I know… it’s not really that great if you’re walking through it but what if something else was walking around?  Muddy stream banks are great recorders of critter activity.   Rick and I recently went down to the Navasota River along Sulphur Springs Road to look for birds.  Well, Rick was looking for birds.  I get easily distracted when I look down.  We found several well-preserved tracks along the muddy river bank.  Some tracks are obvious, like dog or raccoon tracks.  From these tracks we know someone was walking their dog earlier in the day.  And sometime before that a raccoon left his little human hand-like prints while bringing his meal down to the water to be washed. 

                                                   

Dog tracks (upper left) and raccoon tracks (lower left) along the muddy banks of the Navasota River.

Great Blue Heron tracks are also pretty cool to find.  That’s my foot for scale in the picture below.  We all know they’re big birds but knowing they’re almost eye-to-eye with me is a little disconcerting!  These tracks are easy to ID because there’s nothing else that big around here regularly that could make them.

    

Great Blue Heron track (with my foot for scale!) along the Navasota River.

 

Other tracks are  a little harder to figure out.  See the picture below.  Are these beetle tracks?  Worm traces?  Obviously they were small critters that don’t mind crawling on ripples in the mud near a river.   

                     

Insect tracks and ripples in the mud along the Navasota River.

And don't forget plants!  While plants don’t actually walk they can leave traces in sediment.  This grass from Lick Creek Park left circular traces in the sand when the wind blew.  This is one case where the critter that made the trace is actually in the picture!

                               

Grass blown by wind leaving circular traces in the sand along Post Oak Trail at Lick Creek Park.

Modern tracks are easy to deal with.  For the most part, we know what made them and we can see the environmental conditions those tracks were made under.  So what about ancient traces?  Rick and I went to Leander, TX, to see some dinosaur tracks along the South Fork San Gabriel River.  Ancient tracks are a bit harder to figure out sometime.  Ok, not dinosaur tracks!  Those are obvious!  The tracks below are about 100 million years old and made by a dinosaur called an Acrocanthosaurus.

 

Dinosaur tracks along the South Fork San Gabriel River, Leander, Texas.

So what can these tracks tell us?  Well, just how modern tracks are created, the dinosaur had to be walking in soft sediment.  Also, in order to be preserved, the tracks had to be covered rapidly.  Ever seen footprints at the beach?  Usually they’re gone by the next day because the tide comes in and washes them away.  The rocks the dinosaur tracks are preserved in is a fine-grained limestone.   I also found mudcracks and an oyster fossil nearby so the area around Leander, Texas, 100 million years ago was a muddy environment with shallow water that periodically dried up.

 

Mudcracks, ancient (left photo) and modern (right photo) along the South Fork San Gabriel River, Leander, Texas.

Unfortunately, you won’t find dinosaur tracks in Brazos County… our rocks are too young!  What tracks can you find around here?  Check out the websites below for with common tracks from Texas Parks and Wildlife.

From modern tracks to ancient tracks, there is a lot we can understand by taking a look down once in a while.  Sorry Rick and all those birds in the trees!

References:

This article describes the dinosaur tracks in Leander, Texas.

http://impactnews.com/austin-metro/leander-cedar-park/the-earliest-signs-of-life-in-leander/

More on the Glen Rose Formation:

https://www.lib.utexas.edu/geo/ggtc/ch2.html#gr

Animal Tracks PDFs from Texas Parks and Wildlife:

http://www.tpwd.state.tx.us/publications/pwdpubs/media/pwd_bk_k0700_0517.pdf

http://www.tpwd.state.tx.us/publications/pwdpubs/media/pwd_lf_k0700_0001.pdf

Summer is Here! Now Get Inside!

Well, it’s officially the start of summer so that means it’s time to stay inside and avoid the heat!  Where I grew up it was during the wintertime that you had to get used to being inside.  We’d get our first big snowstorm at the end of October and it wasn't too unusual to get our last measureable snow sometime in late March or early April with the potential of being snowed in for a few of those days.  I remember going from the house to the car and the car to the house, limiting my outside time to just a few minutes because it was too cold.  It’s taken a few years but I now practice my “winter” during the summer down here.  Instead of avoiding the cold, I’m avoiding the heat!  Now, doesn’t seem as bad as previous summers but unless you plan early morning activities it’s just not that fun to be outside.   So… what to do if you still want to experience the outside?

Webcams!

Webcams are a great way to visit other places and learn about different areas without ever leaving your house.  I’ve listed some interesting nature related webcams below.  There are literally thousands of webcams from all over the world.  There’s even a camera to view people trying to cross Abbey Road, Beatles-style.  

The nature cams show nature at it’s finest, unedited and live.  It is a little glimpse of some area you may never have thought about physically visiting or even knew existed.  But someone knew about it… and thought the world needed to know about it, too.

 My favorite cams from below are the Sea Otter cam from Vancouver and the Barn Owl cam from Texas.  If have a favorite nature webcam post it in the comments!

Enjoy the webcams and stay cool!

Terrestrial and Extraterrestrial (!) Webcams:

NASA!  Streaming the International Space Station:

http://www.nasa.gov/multimedia/nasatv/iss_ustream.html#.U2FD6q1dVuB

National Park Service webcam looking into Upper Geyser Basin (with Old Faithful!) at Yellowstone National Park:

http://www.nps.gov/features/yell/webcam/oldFaithfulStreaming.html

Critter Webcams!

Giant Panda Cam!  He eats a lot of bamboo…

http://nationalzoo.si.edu/animals/webcams/giant-panda.cfm?cam=panda03

The Vancouver Aquarium has a Sea Otter cam:

http://www.vanaqua.org/learn/see-and-learn/live-cams/sea-otter-cam

Student led aquatic cams from mostly Florida:

http://teens4oceans.org/index.php/gallery/webcams/

National Park Service Brown Bear Cam from Katmai National Park in Alaska.  The cam is not active just yet but they’re showing a great video of the bears catching fish on the river:

http://www.nps.gov/katm/photosmultimedia/brown-bear-salmon-cam-brooks-falls.htm

The Georgia Aquarium has a Beluga Whale cam:

http://www.georgiaaquarium.org/explore-the-aquarium/interact/web-cam-belugas.aspx

The Florida Museum of Natural History has three butterfly and two bat cams!:

http://www.flmnh.ufl.edu/discover/life-on-earth/live-critter-cams/

Bird Webcams… because putting a camera in a nest box or near a nest is easy!:

The Cornell Lab of Ornithology has a Barn Owl cam located somewhere in Texas:

http://cams.allaboutbirds.org/channel/42/Barn_Owls/

Rio Grande Valley Chapter TMN has a feeder cam:

http://sabalpalmsanctuary.org/feedercam/

Hummingbird cam from Maryland:

http://www.hummingbirdwebcam.com/

Frogs in the Yard… Well, Mostly the Neighbor’s Yard

Rick and I have had several frogs visit the yard over the past year or so.  With all the rain we’ve had in the area I’ve been hearing frogs calling at night in the pond a few yards away.  Wanting to know who was out there I used the TPWD website listed below and just tried matching the calls.  So far I’ve identified calls from the Sheep Frog, (call), Northern Cricket Frog (call), and Green Frog (call).  That’s a lot of variety!  The TPWD site is great for identfying calls.  Most of the time (at least for me) I'll hear a frog and never actually see it.

One little guy that we have seen in the yard is the Gray Tree Frog (call).  We found him camped out on the septic system box.  He hung around for a few days and left us to find a better septic system box somewhere else. 

 

Gray Tree Frog

Another notable frog in the area is the Rio Grande ChirpingFrog (call).  I’ve heard this sound ever since I moved to Texas a few years ago.   Story time: back in our old house near Houston, Rick and I heard this weird noise from outside only to find a Southern Flying Squirrel in a tree.  I was convinced they made this strange little chirping sound… until I started to hear that sound all over.  Coming to the realization that Houston is not overrun with Southern Flying Squirrels the critter that made the little chirps remained elusive until recently when members of Rio Brazos Audubon were having the same problem identifying the sound.  One of our own, Mark McDermott, suggested the frog might be making the chirp.   We finally got the answer!   Thanks, Mark!

Toad Adobe!

Going a little bit off topic but still a fun project for the summer…. You can build your own toad abode in your backyard or garden!  Rick and I went to McKinney Roughs Nature Park in Bastrop and there was one in the demonstration garden.  It’s a great way to encourage those wonderful insect-eating critters.  You can buy one or they’re easy enough to make.  All you need is an old flowerpot and some rocks (see the picture below). Also, it’s a great kids project where they can paint or glue stuff to decorate. 

Currently, my toad abode remains empty… I even recently put in a pool to make the place more attractive but so far no tenants have dropped in.  But it’s there and hopefully one day we’ll have a resident toad.

Left: Toad abode from McKinney Roughs Nature Park.  Right: My toad abode with newly installed toad pool.

ID Help!

Any idea what this frog is?  I’ve tried the websites listed below but nothing really fits.  I'm leaning towards a Cricket Frog (Acris sp.) even though I can’t see the characteristic dark triangle on the head (although, from some of the pictures I’ve looked at online it’s sometimes hard to see).  This little guy was seen at Lick Creek Park crossing Raccoon Run trail near one of the pools of water. 

Cricket Frog?  Seen at Lick Creek Park this week.

Interested in Helping Out?

If you're interested in frogs and toads, Texas Parks and Wildlife has a program called Texas Amphibian Watch where you can be a citizen scientist can collect population data.  The website has a short video (about 9 minutes) covering the importance of frogs and the basics of the program.

What frogs can you hear at night?  Ever had toad visitors to your yard?  Share your stories in the comments section below!

Resources!

TPWD Frog calls:

http://www.tpwd.state.tx.us/huntwild/wild/wildlife_diversity/texas_nature_trackers/amphibian_watch/amphibian_species/

Frogs of Texas listing:

http://www.herpsoftexas.org/view/frogs

Toad Abode Information:

http://www.nwf.org/news-and-magazines/national-wildlife/gardening/archives/2006/backyard-houses-for-toads.aspx

TPWD Amphibian Identification Resource List:
http://www.tpwd.state.tx.us/huntwild/wild/wildlife_diversity/texas_nature_trackers/amphibian_watch/references/