Outdoors
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Thunderbird Falls Trail | Eagle River, Alaska
Jumping ahead in our Alaska adventures (mostly because I wanted a simple set of photos to edit. I looked at Denali photos and the billions of bear photos and thought that was too much at the moment!) we’re going to hike on the Thunderbird Falls Trail just outside of Anchorage in Eagle River. We’d arrived in Anchorage that morning via the Alaska Rail into Anchorage, rented a car, checked into the hotel, and headed for a few hiking adventures on the outskirts of Anchorage in Chugach State Park. Since it was Labor Day, the trailhead was rather busy. In my assessments online it seemed like this was in a quieter…
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Atala, Eumaeus atala | Wildlife Wednesday
Over the last week or so I’ve been deep diving in our backup hard drives. The goal is to look for certain photos for my friend Eliana but as I’ve been sifting through photos I’m finding all sorts that we never edited—especially photos Chris took. Along the way I’m shuffling over files that I want to edit but I know I’ll be going back through the drives to pick out favorites and revisit some items. One of those sets were these handful of photos you see above of an atala butterfly and several larvae. We had seen them at Mounts Botanic Garden in West Palm Beach in March of 2008.…
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Flora, Fauna, & Fungi on the Carlanna Lake Trail
Because I take too many photos these days I’ve broke down the Carlanna Lake Trail into two posts, with this one focusing on the flora, fauna, and fungi we found. This was seen not far from the trailhead parking lot and honestly, I’m not sure what it is. iNaturalist suggested cotoneaster and the closest one I think that would be is Late Cotoneaster, Cotoneaster coriaceus. It is native to China and so I’m thinking this is an escapee from the neighborhood nearby. Again, not 100% certain on the ID. Large-leaved Avens, Geum macrophyllum Slugs, so ubiquitous in the temperate rainforests–I think this one is an Arion sp. Oxeye Daisy, Leucanthemum…
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Carlanna Lake Trail | Ketchikan, Alaska
When we woke up on Wednesday of our cruise we found ourselves in Ketchikan. We’d been there for a bit it seemed though I don’t think we were supposed to have been there until 7am but we had clearly been tied up at the dock for a while. Though, as we came to find out when we left port later that afternoon, the crew had everything down to a science and we were out of port within 30 minutes of the final call to board the ship. Our dock was just west of the main area in town and there were already tour buses ready for those who were preparing…
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Horned Passalus Beetle (Odontotaenius disjunctus) | Wildlife Wednesday
Last week I was out watering the plants on the potting bench when I spotted a beetle coming out of the compost pile. I had a hunch it was a horned passalus beetle and so I took a few photos and threw it into iNaturalist just to verify—I was right! I’d come across one at Lake Livingston State Park a year or two ago so I was already familiar with the insect, which gave me my initial hunch. Horned passalus beetles feed on decaying wood so I suspect this one was actually ingesting the pieces of wood that used to form the perimeter of the compost bins. Those perimeter pieces…
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Echinacea purpurea | Flower Friday
Every time I see coneflowers I am drawn to them. They are one of the long-standing bloomers in a garden and are tough plants and yet I cannot grow them at home unless they are inside our edible garden. You see, the deer love them, too. When we moved in to the house my mom divided some of hers to give to me and now those plants are long gone. I think we may have tried once or twice more before finally giving up on our chances of growing coneflowers out in the open. I am finally growing some inside the edible garden and they delight me every time I…
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Bird Blind Happenings at Pedernales Falls State Park
Over the 4th of July weekend we headed for the Hill Country and did some swimming in the Pedernales River at Pedernales Falls State Park. After a few hours of that in the morning we opted to drive over to the bird blind and sit there while we ate our lunch. Black-chinned hummingbirds, Archilochus alexandri, zipped from feeder to feeder and then to the small tree and shrub branches to rest. Luckily the glass in the bird blind was fairly clean so it allowed for some fairly clear photos of the birds. Then a Ladder-backed Woodpecker, Dryobates scalaris, made an appearance and it took me a few tries to get…
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Pearl Milkweed Vine, Matelea reticulata | (Wild)Flower Friday
I’ve come to really appreciate the milkweed vine species, particularly the more common one in my area, anglepod, aka: Gonolobus suberosus. It grows freely in our yard and in the garden and even gets colonized by oleander aphids like other milkweed species do. Out in the Texas Hill Country, the pearl milkvine, Matelea reticulata, is more common and a delight to see when hiking in the limestone hills. Endemic to Texas and Mexico, you won’t find this species too far east of I-35, though the USDA Plants Database has one county in east Texas listed that the species is supposedly found–who knows!? iNaturalist only shows central and west Texas and…
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Beluga Whales | Wildlife Wednesday
Beluga whales—something that was definitely not on my agenda of things I anticipated seeing while in Alaska. Humpback whales, porpoises, sea otters, sea lions, seals, possibly orcas—those were all things that were on our radar and for the most part we came across all of them. The orcas were the only things in that list we didn’t see. When we disembarked our ship in Seward we opted to take the scenic Alaska Rail to the Anchorage airport where we would pick up a rental car. Instead of taking the highway between Seward and Anchorage via buses, the railway would be more scenic and offer up chances to sip coffee and…
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Black-Billed Magpie| Bird Creek at Chugach State Park
I’ve decided to write up posts from Alaska in whatever order I feel like. It felt limiting to try to process photos in order and write them in sequence and so I’ll be sharing as I find inspiration. My first inspiration was from our last day in Alaska and finally getting some good photos of a black-billed magpie. I know my Mountain West readers are like “Um, Misti, these are super common over here!” and to that I’d reply that we don’t have them in Texas! Range maps look like a straggler or two might show up in the far north of the Texas Panhandle but that’s about it. I…