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Rufio the Rufous Hummingbird
It was early September and we were eating dinner and Forest was in his usual eat a bite-turn around to look outside mode and he said he spotted a hummingbird that was red. We figured he had just seen the ruby part of a ruby-throated and didn’t think much about it. The next morning I was working upstairs and had a glimpse of the now dead mimosa tree that the hummingbirds always love to perch on and saw something rust colored. It sat there long enough for me to realize Forest really did mean a completely red bird, not just a throat. Chris was out in the field somewhere and…
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Changing Seasons
The season switch is hitting me hard this year. It’s happening and I am not experiencing it how I normally do. Suddenly it is dark by 7:30 and with some cloudy and wet weather it is more like 7pm. Paired with this, my bike riding endorphins have disappeared with a schedule change the last few weeks. I had been able to get out at lunch for 30 minutes most days of the week and if not I would go after dinner. Losing the light in the evening means I haven’t gone as much in the evenings and when Forest switched teachers a few weeks ago she now often does Zoom…
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Grief & Worry
Last night after dinner I retreated to my bed to finish up a book I was reading. I was at 90% done and was making my way towards the end. I spent a good hour or so curled up in bed, quietly reading as the early autumn sun retreated for the evening. Eventually I got up, took a shower, and then made my way downstairs to my phone, thinking I would casually check a few things before getting Forest ready for bed. I saw a text from my mom, the tear emoji, and swiped to see what was tied to the rest of it. What was tied to it was…
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Exploring the Denali Highway and Brushkana Creek
The season shift here has kind of thrown me for a loop. The light is shifting, the days are shortening, and that has made me pull inward and want to focus on other things. So much for all these photos I had ready to share! It’s a rainy evening here in greater Houston, where we are going to miss the massive cold front everyone else is getting. It is going to fizzle out an hour or so west of here. Guess we will be sticking with summer for a few more weeks until hopefully the next front. Another reason I’ve been not-so-interested writing here is that my right shoulder has…
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Cypress-Tupleo Slough Explorations in the Big Thicket
As I continue to see how crowded so many western outdoor spaces have gotten this summer with everyone seeking outdoor places to go, I’ve been glad that we live in area that sees less crowds. In general so many of the southern and eastern forests are less trekked than popular haunts out west or in New England. And summer really changes that up because who wants to walk in humid, moist forests when temperatures are in the 90s and 100s? Not too many, that is for sure. Our second trip to the Big Thicket had us traipsing a bit past the pitcher plant bog and off into an exploration of…
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Late August Pollinators (and Friends)
Common Whitetail, Plathemis lydia If early summer felt like a bit of a drought in regards to pollinators, August and September always make up for it. This, I should know. And back with a fury they came! The gulf frits are busy as ever, searching for nectar, laying eggs, and generally enjoying life in the yard. I even happened upon a chrysalis by chance one day–I looked over and there it was! Clouded Skipper, Lerema accius on a Carolina cherry laurel And a good old house fly, Musca domestica, sat still long enough to show me it wasn’t a nasty old bugger and instead was a pretty insect worthy of…
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A Brush with a Saddleback
There are three saddlebacks on the backside of this banana leaf—but we actually found a total of four later on! I have always wanted to see a saddleback caterpillar, Acharia stimulea, in person. Chris found one in the field a few years ago and texted me a photo of it and that has been the closest I’ve ever come to seeing one. Last week that changed. Forest and I were in the garden and he was asking for some of the small bananas that fruit on our pink banana trees. He likes to play with them and has since he was a toddler. So, I walked into the flower bed…
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Life Lately | August 2020
Thinking: My first thought is—I was overly ambitious to want to try a 10 mile bike ride at 1pm during a heat advisory day (I’m drafting this on Saturday)! *Laughs in Texas in August* I cut it short to 5 miles and hope to do the other 5 this evening. Tomorrow (or today when this posts) I’ll go earlier. My second thought is, Hurricane Laura delivered us barely any rain from a far outer rain band on Wednesday afternoon and that was that. The shift into Cameron, Louisiana really put most of the Houston area out of the range of anything and other than some storm surge in Galveston it…
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Snow in the Thicket
In late June we trekked back to Watson Preserve and the Big Thicket to see what might be blooming in early summer. I’d had word that the snowy orchids, Platanthera nivea, were blooming and they were a species I had not seen before. Chris says he had seem them but I wanted to get my own glimpse. They weren’t a disappointment! Found primarily across the coastal south and southeast, east Texas is their western most part of their range. Found within pitcher plant bogs, wet savannas and seeps, these are species you will only find in certain locations and of course being that these locations are increasingly scarce, the orchids…
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Exploring a New Section on the Lone Star Trail
Flowering Spurge, Euphorbia corollata Last weekend we ventured out to do a new to us section on the Lone Star Trail. We originally wanted to hike starting at the Cotton Creek Cemetery Road trailhead near Huntsville but when we pulled up to turn down the road we found it looked like it went through a ranch and there was a no tresspassing sign. A man in a truck pulled up after he saw us sitting there contemplating our next step and after we told him what we were looking for he said that it was down a different road behind us. I pulled up the PDF maps and he was…