At the time of my last post (at the end of May), I had just finished exploring most of Memorial Park, including the Houston Arboretum & Nature Center. Since then, I've explored pretty much all of Buffalo Bayou Park and east into Downtown Houston where Buffalo Bayou meets White Oak Bayou (the founding site of the city). The Arboretum also re-opened a newly redeveloped area that includes a couple of big new ponds and grasslands/wetlands, and I've explored those quite a bit, too. I've also started to explore parts of Hermann Park and have been retracing some of my previous outings in Memorial Park just to see what's changed.
The weather has changed quite a bit since my last post. It's now routinely in the high 90s (Fahrenheit) in the daytime, which means that I'm usually soaked by the time I've finished taking photos. There have been long stretches of dry days alternating with long stretches of rainy days, plus really heavy rain on July 4th that flooded a lot of the city, including Buffalo Bayou Park. (I've gone back to the Park once after the floods, and there are several sections that were newly fenced off, in addition to the sections that had been fenced off since Hurricane Harvey.) Lately, it's been fairly hazy, too, with lots of dust blowing in from the Sahara desert.
In total, I've made 419 observations since my last post. As in my last post, I'm including my favorite observations from each of my outings, but I also wanted to note few things that have stuck in my mind since my last post:
As usual, the iNaturalist community has been very helpful, and I'm starting to become familiar with individual personalities. I've also started to use more power features of the system. There wasn't an existing Place for Buffalo Bayou Park. So I created one, along with a few others, so that I can more easily follow what's being observed in those places. I learned from another user how to query identifications (https://www.inaturalist.org/identifications?user_id=pisum&for=others), which helps me find past identifications a little more easily than using the standard interface. I've also started using some Observation Fields, which are useful, too, though I haven't fully figured out how to query against them, other then by clicking on an existing Observation Field in an observation, which is fine for now but lacks customizability. I'll figure it out one day...
in photos 1 and 2, a young robin watches me from up in a tree and then looks to dad. the chick drops to the ground, and in photos 3 and 4, dad leads chick away, chirping: "don't pay attention to that human. come over here!" chick chirps back: "okay, okay, dad, i'm coming." i follow. in the next 3 photos, dad is trying to show chick how to dig in the soil (for food?), i think, but chick is too busy looking at me. so dad flies up onto a bench and looks at me (photo 8), as if to say: "what are you doing? you're messing up what i'm trying to do here." but i don't move, and exasperated, he flies up into a nearby tree, leaving chick on the ground (photo 9). chick waddles on the ground towards dad, chirping, and scratches the ground a little bit.
a great big wasp with broken wings. i spotted her while she was feeding from a flower (Rudbeckia). unlike most wasps, she let me get really close, even climbing onto my camera at one point. apparently these wasps are really docile, especially while eating, but i suspected something was strange when she finished eating and instead of flying to the next flower, she dropped to the ground and walked over to the next plant and climbed up and, realizing there was no flower on top, dropped back down and climbed up the next plant, etc. when i took a closer look at these photos, i noticed that the tips of her wings were torn. life is hard sometimes. (other photos of this wasp with a small bug can be found here: https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/13001474)
a bee or wasp drinking from a muddy puddle (which can be seen in more context here: https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/13104172). photos 1 and 2 are the same individual, but photo 3 was captured 10 minutes later and could be a different individual. (if it's the same individual, then it must have been really thirsty in the heat.)
a yellow insect with feathery antennae on a pink flower. i think the flower is a poppy mallow (Callirhoe) -- it even looks like it has mallowish pods in photo 2 -- but it looks like it has 4 petals instead of 5. so i'm not sure. (unfortunately, i didn't take any other pictures of the plant that would help with identification.)
a damselfly with a red thorax
a bug on a yellow coneflower (Rudbeckia)
a couple of dragonflies on twig. the orange one showed up first on the twig, and the lavendar one came up behind her, probably in an attempt to mate. he scooted up to her a bit, but she flew away before he got too close. not impressed, i suppose.
i know there's a water strider (Gerridae) in these photos (observation here: https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/13760941), but what are the green insects that are also hanging out on this leaf? i thought maybe dragonfly larvae at first, but these appear to have long antennae, and the heads are shaped differently compared to dragonfly larvae heads.
a colorful bug nymph on a leaf. the bug has an orangish core, with translucent blue legs and wings and outer body, with black stripes and other accents.
a big copper-gold and black wasp feeding from yellow flowers (Patrinia scabiosifolia).
a red dragonfly with red saddlebags. this dragonfly seemed relatively aggressive. there was an Orthemis ferruginea (roseate skimmer) perched a few feet away (see https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/13970145) that was more jumpy and would occasionally fly near this dragonfly. this dragonfly would attack the O. ferruginea and chase it away each time it flew nearby.
this damselfly was doing something with its rear end. i assume this is egg-laying behavior, but i took a photo of the stem after it flew away (last photo), and it didn't look like there were eggs there.
a large freshwater fish with a stripe down its side and a big mouth. there were a couple of these hanging out with several bluegills (photo 4 and https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/14212359) in some shallows extending from the big pond by the meadow after heavy rains.
a big snake in the water. the first 4 photos actually occur after the rest of the photos, but i think photo 1 tells the story best in a single shot. honestly, i didn't realize there was a snake in these photos until i looked at them back at home. when i was taking the photos, i first noticed the yellow-crowned night heron (Nyctanassa violacea), who seemed very purposefully hunting, walking much faster than these birds normally do. in reality, it looks like it was chasing or following this snake. then the snowy egret (Egretta thula) and the juvenile black-crowned night heron (Nycticorax nycticorax) came along, and i thought it was interesting that they had all decided to fish in the same spot. in reality, it looks like they were helping to corner the snake. i thought the egret and the juvenile heron decided to cede the spot to the yellow-crowned heron, since they moved away, but in reality, it looks like they were continuing to chase the snake, while the yellow-crowned was content to watch from afar. i didn't get photos of what happened next, but a big heron (maybe another yellow-crowned?) swooped down, and i thought it was attacking the egret and the juvenile heron, since they dispersed. but the big heron flew away, not sticking around to claim the spot. so maybe in reality it was attacking the snake, too, or maybe it was telling the other birds not to mess with it, or maybe it even grabbed the snake for dinner? (is that even a possibility?) anyway, life is tough for a snake -- even a big snake -- when you're ganged up on by birds.
plants with lots of yellow flowers, about 1m to 1.5m tall.
this small bee or wasp slipped into a bluebonnet (Lupinus texensis) flower, rolled around a bit, slipped out, and then flew to another flower to repeat the process. luckily for me, some of the flowers had holes chewed into them (possibly from a nearby katydid: https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/14404547) that allowed me to see the bee rolling around inside the flowers.
a small turtle swimming in a pond with larger turtles. photo 3 shows it in the same frame as a snapping turtle (see https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/14597222). i thought this was a baby snapping turtle at first, but the markings on the head and the shell form weren't quite right.
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