Well, I'm officially above 2000 observations. That includes 1800+ from various outings since I first started contributing to iNaturalist, along with 200+ observations from old vacation photos and such. (I'm not done adding old photos, but I stopped for a while because it was hard figuring out geocoordinates for some of these photos that don't already have that data recorded in the metadata.) So assuming 1100+ new observations since my last post about 7 months ago, I'm averaging about 150 new observations/month (or 5 observations/day), down from over 200 observations/month in my first few months.
The decrease is probably mostly due to weather, I think. It's been rainy a lot of days since fall, through winter, and even today has been on the verge of rain all day. I don't mind taking photos occasionally in the rain, but often the flowers close up and animals hide, and it's hard to get shots with the rain and the low light and the wind. And even when the rain stops, the trails are muddy. I don't mind walking through mud in boots, but trails get destroyed faster when you walk through them when muddy, and I try not to destroy them if I can help it.
Anyway, I'm still mostly taking photos in Memorial Park and occasionally in Hermann Park. I tried to go down to Buffalo Bayou Park once or twice, but it's not as enjoyable nowadays with all the different parts of the trails closed due to flood damage.
I remember summer being good for dragonfly observations, and then came the rain and clouds. In October, it started to seem like I wasn't seeing a lot of new stuff. The flowers were winding down and leaves began to wither and fall. So I started mixing things up a bit by looking under logs and then doing night hikes armed with a UV light in November, which was quite enlightening. Starting in December, I started checking out other places, including Brazos Bend SP, Armand Bayou Nature Center, Galveston Island SP, Anahuac NWR, and Brazoria NWR to see more birds and sea life. I even added some polygon-based iNat places for ABNC and GISP so that I could clean up IDs and follow what's going on at those places. (There are some really good photographers at the two NWRs in particular, but also at the other places.) But now that things are greening up and blooming again, I'm mostly doing my observing at parks back in the city, which saves me the long drives.
I'm still finding a lot of new stuff almost every time I go out to look for stuff. Of 40+ observations I made yesterday, more than a handful of them were things that I had never seen before. Today I even requested a taxon to be added for a beetle that I observed. In the last week, I actually requested another new taxon for another person's oak gall, and I flagged a misspelled fungus taxon, and doing that has made me understand even more how this is very much a community-driven platform.
I also realized what a great community is here as I started to old photos from various other locations and found that people were there to identify the local species, and as I put in new bird and shell observations and found lots of people quickly identifying those. That really makes me feel like part of a meaningful collective effort.
In another month or so it'll be the City Nature Challenge (https://www.inaturalist.org/projects/city-nature-challenge-2019-houston) again, and I'm looking forward to participating in that. But in the meantime, I'll be out when I can, looking for all the new stuff that spring brings!
a little green/blue-brown-yellow heron, probably no bigger than a dove, fishing in the shallow part of a pond at dusk. in photos 6 and 7, you can see the reflection of the moon in the water. the heron has a small divot in its right eye.
one of the bigger spiders I've come across in a while, mostly yellow (amber when lit from behind), with two black front legs, dark brown racing stripes on his head, and somewhat of a brown and yellow chevron pattern on the top of his abdomen, which is covered with fuzzy white hairs underneath. he was hanging out in some giant ragweed (Ambrosia trifida) when i first spotted him. he started crawling around as he saw me photographing him, but he stayed close to trail instead of moving into the dense vegetation.
I've never seen two different kinds of dragonflies perching on the same plant stalk before. these dragonflies would even dart off to hunt and then return to the same perch. this observation is for the purple dragonfly. (the orange dragonfly is observed here: https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/14930514.) photos 8-12 show the dragonfly wiping its eyes/face after skimming the water.
a small green lizard hanging upside down with hands free. i was surprised to see this lizard hanging out in the grass, and I've never seen one hanging in such a way. i thought maybe there was something wrong with its hands, but they look okay in the photos.
a small plant topped with a cluster of green and purple flowers. there were a few of these plants scattered individually along the trail.
a dark butterfly with colorful spots feeding from trumpet creeper (Campsis radicans) flowers
a pale blue male damselfly attached to a yellow-brown female. they were at the bottom level of a man-made water cascade. i watched for a few minutes to see if the action would intensify, but they just danced around the area. i don't understand what exactly what was going on here. if the female wasn't interested, how long would the male hang on? if they were already done, why was the male still hanging on? there were at least 3 other males of the same species hanging around in this area (https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/15254900), though they didn't seem to notice the female or had already conceded. there was also another damselfly of a different species hanging close to these two for some reason: https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/15254899.
dark a wasp that cut and carried off part of a flatsedge (Cyperus) leaf
an oak near the end of its life
an orange-headed lizard
there were lots of these big black and yellow bees visiting these purple flowers (Pontederia cordata, captured separately here: https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/16062186)
This hawk came by this morning and hung out on my balcony. It must have noticed the house sparrows and other birds that hang out here occasionally and tried to get a quick breakfast, though there was no meal to be had this time.
the dull tan shells/exuvia of cicadas that we commonly see don't really hint at how colorful the actual animals are. this one flew across the trail, up into a buttonbush (Cephalanthus occidentalis). it has all sorts of colors on its body, along with almost neon green veins in its mostly clear wings.
there were a lot of these mating pairs in this pond this afternoon. i spotted at least 3 distinct pairs at one time.
it seems like a lot of Sesbania drummondii plants I come across nowadays will have these ant mimic nymphs hanging out the pods. these are 2 different individual bugs on 2 different individual plants from different sections of a grassy area, maybe 50m apart. even though the first bug (photos 1 to 3) is shown on a leaf, it started off hanging out on a pod and moved because it was startled (by me). (it pooped or otherwise exuded a clear liquid from its back end when it saw me approaching.) it's interesting that both Sesbania drummondii plants have leaves with chew marks in them, but these bugs probably don't have the proper mouthparts to chew like that. it doesn't look like the second individual is actually feeding on the plant at the time of the photo. so i'm not sure if the bugs actually feed on these plants or just like them for non-food reasons.
a couple of mushrooms found on the underside of an overturned log. they appear to be rosy colored on top and are white underneath with a pore pattern that reminds me sort of like a loofah maybe.
a slightly iridescent bronzy olive spider with a long-legged fly (Sciapodinae) prize. the spider was originally on the underside of this fuzzybean (Strophostyles helvola) leaf, but i coaxed it to the top to get some photos. the spider seems to be missing a couple of front legs on its right side. in photos 4 and 5, another long-legged fly comes to take a drink from a droplet of water on the leaf, but reconsiders as the spider focuses its attention on it. after the spider goes back to the underside of the leaf, the long-legged fly returns to get its drink (last photo).
a plant with yellow flowers with long bracts and pinnately lobed leaves. the ants and/or aphids seem to like this plant (photo 3).
a plant with many pink flower heads and narrow leaves
a millipede found after rolling over a small log, under UV lighting (365nm). i saw lots of millipedes crawling in and around the mulched trails. they were all about 2cm to 4cm long, and their legs and antennae all fluoresced a bright green under UV (even though it looks more blue in these photos for some reason), and they fluoresced much more brightly than just about anything else i came across other than manmade fibers and trash. some of the millipedes also had some fluorescence on the rest of their bodies, especially between their segments (though the one in these photos does not). some of the millipedes were curled up and/or not moving much even when prodded (i'm assuming because it was about 10 deg C), while others (like this one) moved around fairly quickly. i'm not sure if all of these millipedes were the same kind, since I didn't observe these under good visible lighting (but i bet this one is like another one that i photographed later: https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/18365375). in these photos, the thing glowing a dull blue is a polypore fungus growing on the underside of the log.
a bee-like fly hanging out on a ragweed plant (Ambrosia trifida, observed separately here: https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/18365364). it was a cold day, and the fly wasn't moving much.
lichens (i think) growing on a buttonbush (Cephalanthus occidentalis). parts of the lichens captured in photo 1 glowed orange to red under UV (365nm) in photo 2. usually i associate red fluoresence with chlorophyll. i scanned around with the UV light for the other lichens in the rest of these photos, but either i missed them or they didn't fluoresce. i'm not sure if these are all the same species. just guessing, i would say they look like they are different life stages of the same kind of organism.
a medium to large dragonfly hanging out low on the ground and on fallen leaves. when the dragonfly landed, it would drop its wings in a 3-stepped movement. i didn't see many dragonflies today, but i did see a second one of these: https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/18667915.
an orange mushroom with gills that fluoresce green under UV light (365nm). it was growing in the soil near a rotting log. the first 3 photos were taken after sunset, about 30 minutes after the rest of the photos.
a small dark spider found after rolling over a log. its abdomen was a velvety black with 4 to 6 dimples on top.
an orange and black bug with white or silvery spots on its abdomen. one of several creatures hanging out in this patch of flowers (Bidens).
a small brown insect that flew onto the boardwalk as i was walking along. this was a relatively shady part of the trail, within a stone's throw of water.
a medium-sized white bird. it seemed to be wading around this shallow section of the pond while kicking or vibrating its legs in the water, probably to stir up the bottom of the pond a bit in an attempt to reveal hidden snacks. i don't think i've ever noticed a bird using that kind of fishing technique before. the water seemed to be particularly murky today.
an insect feeding from white flowers (Mikania scandens), one of several small creatures in this patch of flowers. in between flowers, the insect seemed to vibrate up and down (photo 2) for some reason. it seems to be missing its left front leg and right middle leg.
a large gator hanging out on the shore by a lake, perhaps watching the sunset
there were a couple of deer hanging out together in the forested wetlands. these were the first ones that i encountered that day. i also came across maybe 2 or 3 other individuals that seemed to be wandering about on their own. they were quite jumpy. when fleeing, they would raise their bushy tails, which are white underneath. the last photo is a hoof print from a different location (the shore of the bayou).
at about 4 inches wide, this was the largest such orangish shell that i found.
a group of large dark birds with blue-green eyes, yellow beaks, and black webbed feet, hanging out on a dam(?)
on the left side of these photos, very large white birds with giant orange beaks swimming in the water as other birds join the party
there's a leech on the right shoulder of the turtle in the top left quadrant of these photos
i heard a couple of birds loudly calling at each other, and one of them seemed to be flying at and harassing the other. (i'm not sure which one was harassing the other.) this observation is for the bird on the right that is black and white. it flew away to the south (to the right), leaving the other bird (with the red head, observed here: https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/19646176) to continue to poke around on this tree branch.
some sort of tiny creature, maybe sesame seed or rice grain sized mostly floating near the surface of the water in a swampy section along the wooded trail that has been filled with water since recent rains. the creature has two projections (breathing tubes? or maybe antennae?) poking out of one end (not sure if it's the head or rear end, though i'm leaning towards head) that touch the surface of the water. in the photos, i think it's sort of curled up like a cooked shrimp. mostly it would float like this, but occasionally it would swim around, maybe in the way that a mosquito larva might though maybe more purposefully. (it was so small, i didn't really get a good look at the movement though). there may have been 2 or more of these floating around in the water with mosquito larvae and other creatures.
a small rusty velvet ant walking purposefully along the leaf-littered ground
a water bug with eggs on his back. i was only able to notice him because of the eggs plastered on his back. when i first when to get a closer look, i moved some vegetation, and he dove down into the water. later, he stuck his rear end back up, but i wasn't able to see his head under all the debris in the water. only much later when i came back was i able to see his head under the water.
a plant with yellow flowers. the undersides of the petals are streaked with pink. there are 6 different individuals captured in these photos from different spots along this field. the smaller plants have relatively unlobed leaves, while the larger ones have distinctly lobed leaves.
i never realized until looking at these photos that birds can have whiskers. this bird was rather bold as birds go. it just sort of looked at me while i took photos from just a few meters away. it was still there when i moved on.
a green snake with yellow stripes basking on a log. i was preparing to take a second photo from a different angle when it decided that it did not like me looking at it and slithered into the water nearby. as it went along, it passed by at least 2 other similar snakes, and probably more, and they all fled from their positions, too.
a plant topped with clusters of purple flowers. the first 5 photos are different angles of a lone plant, and the last couple of photos show a nearby patch of similar flowers on a small mound.
a couple of ducks perched up in a tall pine, near a hawk. the ducks later flew down to a shallow pool of water where other ducks were feeding.
a damselfly that catches and eats a crane fly over about 5 minutes. the damselfly has an olive to bronze thorax and abdomen that is sky blue on top and whitish underneath.
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