Jealous!

I've seen several painted buntings down at our cabin place. I've never seen them before either. Beautiful birds.

I saw bluebirds, painted bunting , summer tanager, crested Titmouse, chickadee, scrub jay,, cardinal , vireo today.

Mara: Are these western bluebirds? I have never seen a bluebird in my 30 years in Austin. The scrub jays at Pedernales SP might as well be someone's pets, they have so little fear.

Our favorite spot.s.... fond memories,,,, Leona, and others,.... Paradise Pond, and CHARLIE'S PASTURE.... all have board walks. ALL have locals and guests willing to help spot rare birds,

"The Port Aransas Birding Center offers one of the best birding experiences on Mustang Island. Once you have visited the location one discovers why locals and guests alike keep coming back to the Leona Belle Turnbull Birding Center. The Birding Center is located off of Cutoff Rd. where the the road curves. Turn onto Ross Avenue. Drive down Ross Avenue past the R.V. park then past the Port Aransas Community Park and Pool to the end of Ross Avenue. There is a trolley stop right by the parking lot entrance to the Port Aransas Birding Center. The Birding Center is right next to a water plant."

Bossy, love your pet post and chafing dish post, CUTENESS TO THE MAX!

Thank you so much, ms red Byrd

Leona as in town in Leon county? If yes, our farm is in Dew, north of buffalo

is the birding center in port Aransas close to rockport?

all I ever notice in either of our houses are cardinals and the blue ones that get in the cat food (mockingbirds?)

I saw both eastern and western blue birds. We are in a overlap area of their ranges.

yes, near Rockport, Leona Belle Turnbull. We loved it!.

Now that I know bluebirds can be seen here…I've never seen a flycatcher in the city either. Take a drive in the country and they're all over the place.

We saw Eastern Bluebirds on our cabin property in Gause quite a bit in the spring; none since it got hot though. Just the occasional bunting and tons of cardinals.

This brutal heat we’re having and wildlife:

Yesterday, Mr G called me over to the window — he saw a Hummer acting strange at the feeder. The poor little thing was actually panting (but also shaking). He perched on there doing that for about 10 minutes, beak open, breathing heavily. I read that birds can die or get heat exhaustion, including brain damage, when too hot. He was gone after we turned our back for a minute, so we went out to make sure he hadn’t fallen off. Didn’t see him, but I’ve been worrying about him all night.

On my family’s ranch growing up, we kept horses inside with fans, and cattle had big trees, lean-tos, and automatic watering troughs for fresh, cold water. But I see lots of people not giving their livestock any shelter and pastures with no trees. I don’t know how these poor animals survive it.

We bring neighbor’s kitty into the A/C during the day, he’s grateful. He gets on daughter’s bed under the ceiling fan. :) Even what little breeze we get in the shade feels like when you open a hot oven door and the air hits your face.

so sad... we love our hummers and fur babies.

That reminds me to go fill my bird bath and fix my others. I use some forever filling dog bowls the for birds water source.

Miz, how do you know your neighbor’s cat doesn’t have fleas? :D

Omar

I was thinking the same thing.

We checked first thing! I’ve not seen one yet, but am constantly on the look-out since we have two indoor kitties ourselves. That’s not a problem I want to deal with! :)

He tries to photobomb all my pictures. :D

I’m spamming this thread. :D

I had to get on my old iPad, and came across this picture. I love it so much, wanted to share.

This was years ago, at my old house ... I had Cenizos and bees and butterflies loved them. When I took this picture, there were 20 or so flying around and on the blooms. I know I took more photos, but can’t find the others.

This was a few yrs later. They bloom so sporadically, but when they do, what a show! I had originally trimmed them up tree form, but then decided to let them be shrubs (and later enlarged the bed), so this is the in between stage. They were completely covered with bees here.

Ahhh. I miss them.

Beautiful. Those barometer bushes are not to be trusted this summer. I saw a bank of them that did a tiny bit of bloom and I think we got a tiny bit like a millionth of an inch of rain. A bit heavier than dew but the term rain is a misnomer.

My four cenizos have had two bloom bursts since springtime (one just last week, but I missed it cuz I was out of town -- drat! DH sent me a pic, but definitely not the same as in person). Tons of bees when they bloom, but no butterflies at all. I'm jealous of those Giants fluttering about, Miz_G. I may think about training them as trees next year in order to get a bit more planting room beneath.

I believe Mule Fat (Baccharis salicifolia) has been the most bee-attracting plant that I've seen yet... It's a native shrub in the SW that grows up to 12' tall, and is chock-full of tiny, creamy white flowers (that resemble Gregg's Mistflower in shape, if not color).

Mara, what is this word you speak of ... rain? :D Seriously, I wonder if we’ll ever get any again this summer.

Javiwa, I loved the nice branching of mine in tree form, but oh, man. I had to cut shoots every few days. They send them out fast! Those in the pic up there were after letting it go for a couple of weeks.

Blakrab, that’s an interesting plant, I don’t think I’ve ever seen one.

The only Baccharis I have is B. neglecta , AKA Poverty red also known as Consumption weed and Rosevelt weed.

Miz_G: I tried training my esperanza into a tree several years back and ended up with the same look (tree on top, shrub beneath) as I couldn't keep up with clipping back the lower growth. I just let it sprawl how it wants now. However, as hinted to above, I may want/need more real estate in my beds for butterfly attracting plants, so may be more diligent about keeping the esperanza cleaner.

My first pipevine swallowtail sighting, loving on my pink pentas!

...beautiful, unmistakable flash of blue.

Oh, how beautiful! I haven’t seen one of those in years.

Hmm, well that might have actually been Baccharis neglecta (Poverty Weed), then. It is native to northern Mexico & the Southern US. But with some ~400-450 species in the Baccharis genus (of the Sunflower/Aster Family)...it's hard to know for sure? But I think most all look quite similar, and bees probably all go frenzy for any of them! And based on its descriptions, behavior, and habitats - I would guess that it IS more likely to be Baccharis neglecta.

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Botanists know poverty weed as Baccharis neglecta, one of some 400 Baccharis species in America. The genus name comes from the Greco-Roman god of wine and dance, Bacchus. But the god also represented the fertility of the earth, and, predictably, this plant grows readily across the state. Another member of the species-rich aster (or sunflower) family, poverty weed is most likely to appear on disturbed ground

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Roosevelt weed is a tall shrub with many willow-like branches covered with very dark green, linear leaves. After warm rains in late summer it produces a profusion of creamy white flower clusters which are followed by silvery plumed seeds that cover the plant with a white cloud.
But the qualities that made it useful then make it an increasing problem now. Both B. halimifolia and B. neglecta have become aggressive invaders of rangeland and disturbed sites from the Blackland Prairie to South Texas

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The genus Baccharis is mostly centered in tropical and warm-temperate South America. Up to 450 species are thought to exist, of which 21 are listed in the online Flora of North America.

Mine bloom in the fall only.

I COUD NOT FIND UNDER NAME THAT PLANT, PLEASE ID

2018 · More Info

2018 · More Info

Lambs Quarter.. Will seed around. good eating when young

THANKS SO MUCH, MARA. I LOOKED AT LINK,TOO. IT WAS SO FRUSTRATING SORRY...., CAN NOT YYPE.

IT IS NOW GONE, YAY1

I was watering my plants when I found something that was definitely not a flower.

I feel like my smallish backyard is cicada central! I went around my perimeter fence gathering cicada husks. I got to 34 before I stopped because I kept dropping them.

On one end of the spectrum we have discarded insect skins. Let’s take an adventure to the opposite side of that spectrum - toasted coconut pineapple cake. I made this for my roommates birthday and thought it was relevant to post here because of the adorable cactus candles!

Usually the trees are screaming with them but it has been a really quite year no cicada or katydids...well, hardly any. Nights are quite and days too.

Finally seeing some Praying Mantises (Manti? What’s plural for them?).

Cleaning the claw after I put him back. He was on my hand, then crawled up my arm and into my hair.

At our old house, I had a vine next to my hummer feeder and found a PM lurking there, trying to catch a hummer. I had to move the feeder. If you don’t know why, don’t look it up! Trust me.

So very cool! I love the story DH tells me: when he was a kid, he caught a PM in the yard and brought it indoors, dropping it into an open-top terrarium (you might know where this is going). He didn't realize it was a female that proceeded to lay eggs (unbeknownst to DH and much to DH's mom's consternation). He returned home from school one day to the sound of his mom screaming (or swearing, more likely!): the eggs hatched, and there were baby PMs all over his room. :)

That’s hilarious! :D

I guess mom had not given him the birds and the bees AND the praying mantis talk.

Spot it? Yes, that’d be a Tree Frog IN OUR LIVING ROOM.

One of our kitties was going nuts meowing, which alerted me to it. I was able to catch it and put it outside. Kitty thought she was going to get a nice, crunchy breakfast this morning. Sorry, cat, not on my watch!

Another neither here nor there. Beautiful cumulus clouds, which I’m watching inside my A/C car. So beautiful, Homer Simpson kinda clouds.

ETA: pic I took the other day. Love the grey clouds w/blue sky

Nice. We got about 5 minutes of sprinkles this morning.

Was watering patio plants and noticed my Mandevilla decided to use Perilla as a trellis.

This M stem ...

Already to the top of this P stem ....

I had planned to use it as a hanging basket, but never did, it’s just sitting on the patio (pic from June) ...

I love how determined they are to climb. :) Mr G has a Go-Pro camera with time lapse feature, wish we’d known to set it up. Would be neat to see how many days it took, and watch it wrap around in slow motion.

We’ve had some wonderful rain and lower temps!

My Hyacinth Bean is very happy. Hummers have been all over it lately.

Hard to tell from this distance, but every salvia in this bed is covered in bumblebees all day and night. You can see the black specks (bees) on the salvia in the far left here:

Dynamite CM up there has really struggled in the heat, but is staying tough. Before this rain, and during 100+ temps, I did a slow drip every day.

Above bed, brand new in April:

Another new-to-me critter, this one on my swamp milkweed: Candy-Striped Leafhopper.

WOW , not that well camouflaged unless he is amongst a lot of tropical fishes.

It pretty much did stick out like a sore thumb amidst all those skinny, light green leaves. I've got the plant netted with tulle to keep the monarchs from laying any eggs on it (until it grows and flowers), and at first I wondered how this little piece of plastic got under the netting, then up onto the top surface of an upper leaf. :) IRL, it's much more brightly colored than pictured.

That looks very much like the critter that's been chewing up/sucking on my pickerelweed. It hides inside the leaf curl where it does its damage until the leaf is gone and only a bare stem remains. Not to fear: A dragonfly is hunting from atop the pickerelweed's only flower. With nature's most efficient predator providing sentry duty, I'm not at all concerned.

Javiwa, that is one pretty bug!

MsRed Byrd, can't wait to see your Rangoon creeper photos!

Irving: We have tons of dragonflies around, and they don't appear to be doing their job! ;) Pretty leafhopper is still sitting there -- it had better leave my milkweed alone.

Since you put it that way, leafhopper may not be the daily special on the dragonfly's menu. Do dragonflies prefer flying insects to jumpers? If dragonflies don't eat them, that leaves more for the anoles, chickadees and wrens.

From cursory reading, it appears dragonflies predominantly hunt/eat flying insects. So, I suppose the leafhopper puts itself in harm's way if it happens to hop into a dragonfly's flight path.