Butterfly and Wildlife Gardening And Photography In Houston Texas
Category Archives: Canon 7D I’ll admit, this guy scares me although he’s supposed to be rather friendly. It’s a Texas Longhorn. Any animals that has horns this big, and throws out spit when it is shaking off the flies on its head makes me nervous. I might be the only animal that’s nervous around this big guy as the…  There sure are a lot of birds I’ve never seen out here before. We’re staying at Country Inn and Cottages out in Fredericksburg, Texas. The one bird I saw today that I was unable to get a picture of was a Summer Tanager. Maybe I’ll get lucky and get a picture tomorrow. A very common… I didn’t realize the impact of the drought on the Wildflowers. The Wildflowers, normally in full bloom right now, are pretty much either non-existent or have very limited blooms. In terms of photography and my vacation, time to move to plan B. Since the Wildflower photography opportunities are so limited, I’m going to focus on…  Before I start getting the emails, no animals (or reptiles) were harmed during this photo shoot (the Snake was released into the woods after I took a few pictures). Leecy was helping me in the garden this morning and saw a small Garter Snake, at the same time I was hunting a Broad Banded Water…  Anyone know what type of eggs these are? These are on my Redbud Tree. These don’t look like any type of Butterfly eggs that I’ve seen before.  All but a couple of Monarch Caterpillars have gone to the Chrysalis stage. I think Leecy said we have about 45 or so Chrysalises in our Butterfly Enclosures. You’ll notice in this picture that there are two Caterpillars that did not make it to the Chrysalis stage (on the left hand side of the picture)….  It won’t be long now. I think if we didn’t have this little cold front, these little birds would probably be leaving the nest tomorrow. Of course I did say I thought they would leave the nest by this weekend and I was wrong about that. Look how far they’ve come. It’s amazing how fast…  Our Sassafras tree is really putting out some nice, soft leaves. I was casually checking the leaves to see if any Spicebush Swallowtail Caterpillars were feeding. I then saw this small insect, but I have no idea what it is It was definitely eating the leaf, but I don’t even know where to look to…  It was a cloudy, overcast, somewhat windy day, so not the best day to take pictures. Leecy pointed out this Carpenter Bee (I think that’s what it is, not a Bumblebee) flying around the Wildflowers. I wasn’t really expecting much from the pictures, but I’m actually quite pleased with how they turned out. While I…  It won’t be long now! Those Carolina Chickadee babies look like real birds, Carolina Chickadees even. There’s 4 birds in that nest, so they are starting to run out of room to be comfortable. It was just a few days ago that they were just little pink masses with a tuft of hair. I finally…  We have our first set of Monarch Chrysalises from the original female Monarch we saw back a few weeks ago. I’d say we have about 20 Chrysalises right now, and at least 20 more to go (the Caterpillars are still eating). I’d like to say we’ll have plenty of Milkweed once they eclose, but I…  Leecy made a new bird-type feeder. I think she said it was for the Tufted Titmouse (she’s taking a nap so I can’t ask). I have no idea if they will eat off of this thing, but I do know we’ve had two of them gorging on the meal worms I “thought” I was leaving…  I was watering the grass today and saw something quite unusual in the bottom of the pool. This is an adult Small Mouth Salamander, that is roughly 5.5 inches (14 centimeters). I almost never see them unless I’m digging a whole in some moist soil, or when they happen to get caught in the pool… I haven’t posted anything about our Purple Martins lately, so I thought I would try something new for them. I was complaining yesterday that I need a new video camera since my current one is so old. Then it dawned on me, why not use the videocam capabilities of my Canon 7D? I decided to…  What a difference a day makes! Today was a beautiful day, nothing but sunshine. That, in turn, brought out the hungry Monarch Caterpillars. I was totally surprised when I went outside to check on them and found out that they were clustering on the two remaining Milkweed plants they had not already devoured. I’m going… |
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