Last week I was able to escape into the field for a few hours to a local field site and in between counting trees, logging dbh, and estimating height, I scoped out some of the things going on in the area. This isn’t a place anyone would regularly trek, especially given a lot of the […]
The Nature of Apalachicola River Wildlife and Environmental Area
The allure of the area around Apalachicola is that there are so many public land recreation opportunities that you really can’t go wrong with just about anywhere you decide to go. Our first full day of Spring Break we opted to start out our explorations at the Apalachicola River WEA because it had both car […]
Meeting the Pitcher Plant Mining Moth (Exyra semicrocea)
A few years ago I heard about pitcher plant mining moths on a podcast, probably the In Defense of Plants podcast but I can’t figure out which episode, and I’ve wanted to see one ever since. We’ve been out to the pitcher plants at Watson Preserve and the Pitcher Plant Bog in the Big Thicket […]
Sounds from Apalachicola River WEA
I thought I’d share a few short videos I took from our first day in the Apalachicola Area. Rain had moved through the day before so the area was quite soggy and water was moving through the area quickly. I wish I’d taken a few photos at least of the very flooded areas there was […]
Snippets from Florida
Eventually I will get around to editing photos and once my phone photos finish uploading to Flickr I can do more detailed posts, but for now I’ll highlight a few items from our week in Florida. As I mentioned in my post earlier this week, it was quite chilly when we arrived in Florida. Certainly […]
12 Miles in Sam Houston National Forest
*write up is at the end of the post!* Trees are banded white to symbolize red-cockaded woodpecker nesting trees. Japanese climbing fern, an invasive species, that has covered the forest here. They may have treated this area but likely it is only brown from winter freezes—it will definitely be back. Sparse-lobed Grapefern, Sceptridium biternatum American […]
Easter 2021 at Mission Tejas State Park
White fringetree, Chionanthus virginicus Every time I look back at photos from last year I can’t believe I never wrote about hikes or trips here on the blog. Burn out was flaming high and the only way to tame it was to lay low and focus on other priorities. Thankfully I’m getting back into the […]
Along Beech Creek
I know we’re about to get really going with spring and all that it has to offer but today we’re going to go back to October and into the Big Thicket with a jaunt along Beech Creek in the Beech Creek Unit of the Preserve. Lobelia cardinalis was the star of the creek, the only […]
Extreme Low Tide at Pine Gully Park
On Sunday we made a trek to southeast Houston to Maas Plant Nursery in Seabrook. Unfortunately the trip was a bust, a lot of plants weren’t out quite yet for spring and their native plant selection was lower than it has been in years past. We’d promised Forest a trip to a playground and just […]
