Butterfly and Wildlife Gardening And Photography In Houston Texas
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Category Archives: Camera Bodies I knew after the Purple Martins left last year that I would be upgrading my Purple Martin housing this year. I did have a Water’s Edge 14 room house (they don’t make this size anymore), but with a pole that I had to manually lift from its housing to check on the nests. That’s just…  The title may lead you to believe that I know how to successfully deal with rats or mice invading your bird seed, but in reality, I don’t have a clue. Let me share with you what I have done, and what hasn’t worked. I keep my extra bird seed in these thick, “ant proof,”, hard…  Gardening in Winter is a non-event for many people, but for me, it means it’s the time of year when I get to harvest many of the fruits from my fruit trees. One of the fruit trees I have is a Republic of Texas Orange tree. I started picking some oranges in early January, and…  Amazing how such a simple thing can turn out to be such a great thing. I was out in the backyard today and I hear that familiar Eastern Bluebird call. Sure enough, it was the parents from last year, in their same spot (on my neighbor’s chimney), doing the same thing they used to do…  I heard the distinct singing of these birds before I actually saw them. Then they did come down and visit the feeders I’m pretty sure the mystery bird is a Pine Siskin  An ugly day for photography, but I couldn’t resist attempting to take a picture of a flock of Cedar Waxwings in my Maple tree. It’s not uncommon for me to see these birds at this time during the year, and they frequently hang out in the trees behind my backyard in the woods. It would…  Here’s something you don’t see every day in Houston. A Zebra Longwing Butterfly. According to the wonderful Butterflies of Houston and Southeast Texas book, “The beautiful and unmistakable zebra butterfly is unfortunately a rare visitor to Houston from Mexico and the lower Rio Grande Valley.” It was early this morning and I was letting the…  The Monarch Butterflies are definitely migrating through Texas on their way to Mexico. I’ve been seeing 2-3 butterflies per day. All of them are feeding on the nectar plants. Strangely enough, I haven’t seen any male Monarchs, strictly females.  I like the following Gulf Fritillary Butterfly picture because of my accidental glowing background. The butterfly is on a peach Zinnia, and behind that there was a pink Zinnia, and the blue background was the accidental part which is actually part of a pool float.  A couple of weeks ago I noticed a female Eastern Black Swallowtail butterfly laying eggs on the Fennel. Well, apparently those eggs have now hatched to decent sized caterpillars. There are four caterpillars just on this one stalk, but there were several others on different areas of the Fennel.  i saw my first confirmed sighting of a migrating Monarch Butterfly today. It was well worn color-wise, and had a few tears on the wings. I didn’t have time to try and tag the Butterfly, but I’m hopeful it will be around tomorrow. The experts are predicting another dire year for the Monarchs because of…  I went outside this morning because the temperature was so nice. I was surprised to see so many Butterflies flying around. There was an Female Eastern Black Swallowtail laying tons of eggs on the Fennel, lots of Gulf Fritillaries getting nectar from the nectar plants (Zinnia and Lantana), and a male Queen Butterfly on the…  We had a reasonably strong wind today, and that appears to have brought in some new female Ruby Throated Hummingbirds. I counted at least 5 around the feeders, and they were being very aggressive towards one another. Previously I’ve had a mature male hanging around, but I didn’t see him at all today.  I was out in the backyard early in the morning and I could hear the Blue Jays going nuts in their calls. I kept searching in the trees behind my backyard, and I finally saw what they were so upset about. If I’m not mistaken, this is a Sharp-Shinned Hawk. It was clearly hunting, scanning…  I’ve tried to quickly look up what kind of frogs these might be, but I couldn’t determine the correct species. If anyone knows, I would love the assistance. I’m assuming one of these is a male, and the other a female. They like to hide under one of the rocks in the bird stream. |
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