80AcresOnline

If you’re one of the people who hate and fear all snakes, this might be a moment to remind yourself that this one is merely an image in the computer, as well as a small, slender, agile reptile that is harmless to us humans.

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Because of time constraints (working on copy edits for new book) and weather, the brief walk on the land Saturday didn’t produce any usable bird pictures and I didn’t see any snakes or lizards, but I did see wildlife, large and small:

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We’re already drying up, though much is still green and flowers are still blooming…the long-range forecast is for a “mild drought.”   Last summer, in the worst of the drought, we reworked the backyard water feature (which had become overgrown with water irises, among other things.)   We started it before we had the 80 acres, designing it for wildlife use from the beginning, with sunny, shady, quiet, and fast-moving sections of varying depths and shapes.   In the extreme drought that ended last fall, it was crucial to our wildlife, because neither of the small guzzlers out on the 80 acres was big enough to sustain a good population of amphibians or odonates.

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Crane flies are odd insects with long legs relative to their body size–they’re mistaken sometimes for giant mosquitos, which they aren’t.   For such delicate looking creatures, they’re important in the ecosystem:  crane fly larvae feed mostly on fungi, decaying organic matters, sometimes on plant rootlets–some are predatory.   The adults are food for birds.  There are roughly 1600 species of these guys north of Mexico.

Here’s one of our craneflies I’ve seen just about every year:

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Engelmann’s Daisy, one of the old native prairie plants that cattle love to eat.   We’re trying to get it established again–so far, in a protected location:

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The end of a drought brings amazing flower displays–both in variety and in number.   Here are a few of our beauties, up close:

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Back on April 20, I happened to see a dragonfly, just out of its nymphal exoskeleton, clinging to the stone border of the lily pond.   An hour earlier and I could have photographed the whole sequence, but I have a partial sequence.

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Always fun to find a new (to us) species for the list, even when it’s a small assassin bug:

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Along the fencerows and in the creek bottoms at this time of year, you’ll see sudden puffs of white on shrubs that range from waist high up to about 15 feet.  The first white-flowering shrubs–with discrete “powderpuff” flowers–are Rusty Blackhaw Viburnum, Viburnum rufidulum, a native here which is being destroyed by development.  That’s because developers and land managers think of anything but large oaks as “brush” to be cleared away.

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It’s not fully open yet, but we count “first bluebonnet” from the first “bonnets” being open, so this counts.  You can see one not as far along in the background.

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