Arquivos de periódicos de abril 2019

15 de abril de 2019

Puryear Ranch 2019-04-13 to 14

I was fortunate to be able to join Hill Country Conservancy's EPIC camp out last weekend on the Puryear Ranch just west of Austin. I spent Saturday afternoon and Sunday morning taking photos and listing birds, mostly along Rocky Creek. The ranch has these cool old stone fences that I can't imagine building:

Rock Wall - 1

Rock Wall - 2

The wildflowers were stunning, and I got lots of help identifying plants from iNaturalist's recently updated Seek app. Here are my eBird lists from Saturday afternoon, a few heard-only birds over night, and Sunday morning:

https://ebird.org/view/checklist/S54993479
https://ebird.org/view/checklist/S54993473
https://ebird.org/view/checklist/S54993482

Sunday morning I climbed a nearby hill and took this panoramic photo:

Panorama - 2

Posted on 15 de abril de 2019, 10:19 PM by mikaelb mikaelb | 41 observações | 0 comentários | Deixar um comentário

20 de abril de 2019

Nalle Bunny Run 2019-04-20

Four people joined me this morning for the monthly group walk on Hill Country Conservancy's Nalle Bunny Run wildlife preserve. We spent nearly 3 hours finding 35 species of birds and enjoying beautiful weather and lots of blooming wildflowers. This preserve was loaded with this tiny pink flower which the iNaturalist Seek app identified as Slender Hedeoma. I'm curious to see if the iNat community agrees with this!

Slender Hedeoma ((Hedeoma acinoides)

One aspect of springtime birding in central Texas is that not all of our winter resident species have left yet, and some of them have started to sing after having been silent all winter. We got to experience this today when we heard and finally saw this Orange-crowned Warbler singing while it foraged on the east fence line of the preserve:

Orange-crowned Warbler

Down the hill from the Orange-crowned Warbler near the lake we got great looks at a newly returned summer resident warbler, the Yellow-throated Warbler. I first heard it singing in the cypress trees on the other side of the fence line so I tried playing a recording of its song. After a few minutes it flew right up to us, counter-singing to what it thought was a competing male:

Yellow-throated Warbler

When we were back up at the gate, before we left we enjoyed watching pollinators in a stunning patch of Indian Blanket wildflowers. Here's an American Lady butterfly on one of them:

American Lady on Indian Blanket

Here's our complete bird list on eBird.

Here are a few more photos on Flickr.

And attached are the same photos as iNaturalist observations.

Posted on 20 de abril de 2019, 11:04 PM by mikaelb mikaelb | 11 observações | 1 comentário | Deixar um comentário

24 de abril de 2019

Government Canyon State Natural Area 2019-04-21

I spent Easter Sunday with Meredith Edgley O'reilly visiting Government Canyon State Natural Area just northwest of San Antonio. What a fun day! We covered about 5 miles of the Lytle's Loop front country trail. Highlights included an unseen singing Olive Sparrow (which only got identified here on iNat), a Texas Wafer Ashe tree full of swallow-tail butterfly caterpillars, and a Pipevine Swallowtail laying eggs! See the attached observations.

Here's our complete eBird list.

And here are the same photos on Flickr.

Posted on 24 de abril de 2019, 12:38 AM by mikaelb mikaelb | 24 observações | 0 comentários | Deixar um comentário