Not Kudzu

Driving along the interstate sometimes I see trees that look like they've been taken over by Kudzu. Kudzu has reached Texas, but not deep into the heart of Texas, so I was confused. Especially since Kudzu does not attack one tree in the middle of a Kudzu free area.
I found the answer.
I have spoken of three vines here on this blog and they are the culprits. This morning I found two trees that had been grown over by none other than Saw Greenbrier. I'm not quite sure how they made it up 20 plus feet into a tree, but there it was.
The first Black Willow I found was hard to identify due to being completely covered in Mustang Grape. The grapes are the main culprit in the Kudzu like tree attacks, they can go from one tree to another and create a thick blanket over the tops effectively killing the trees after a while.
The Snailseed can get really high in the trees, but they have bright red berries and don't generally fill the tree so they aren't quite so bad. They're even quite pretty.
So you may see Kudzu in Texas, but more likely than not it's not Kudzu.

"Winter" "Fall"

I have been looking for things to identify, and aside from easy things that are all over the US at various stages of the year I haven't found anything new for a few days.
There's clover; the cowpen daisies are still blooming (though pitiful looking); we had some visiting cardinals; and then there are the unidentifiables.

This one has been growing and green since August at least. It's a very common yard weed, and I don't see it growing past six inches. It's very pretty, not annoying like the following plant, and if it has noticeable flowers they're winter or spring bloomers. It has an odd half-circle stem and has eluded identification for over three months now.

And here to the right we have another sneaky little plant. This one is green with little stripes of purple on the leaves in summer and is now a nice red-orange - the stems especially. It spreads over the ground by rooting it's long feelers into the ground. Now that it's dry you can actually pull up the thick mat without any resistance and the yard looks better without it. You can't mow it out because it's a creeper so it doesn't get high enough to be mowed.

Whatsit... maybe...

I'm pretty sure I saw a Golden Eagle.
The only problem is since it wasn't nearby I can't be sure, but it was the biggest bird of prey I can remember seeing in a long time and it looked about the right color.
Interstate spottings are the most difficult to identify.

Orange Dragonfly

I've already said how you identify a damselfly as a damselfly: thin 10 segmented abdomen, squarish thorax, big eyes, two sets of wings (same size).
But this appears to be a dragonfly.
How do you tell the difference?
1) The eyes are touching. Dragonflies eyes touch, while damselflies end up with a slightly hammerhead kind of look.
2) The wings were always resting open, damselflies generally hold theirs closed.
3) The "tail" doesn't have enough segments, if you can't get close enough to count just remember that damselflies' wings aren't long enough to cover the end of their abdomen - dragonflies' are pretty close. They usually have thicker bodies too.
4) The wings are not the same size, the rear wings are slightly bigger (not that you can tell from this picture though).

That being said, I'm not quite sure what kind of dragonfly it is... just that it is one and that it is orange.

House Sparrow

One of the more common birds around the Americas is the English Sparrow or House Sparrow. Native to Europe and Asia it has spread throughout the world and is now the most widely distributed wild bird. While they have a wide range from
They're about 5-7 inches long with stubby dark beaks and stocky bodies. The males have a grey stripe on the top of their heads, a small black stripe from the beak to the eyes, brown mullet, black goatee, white to grey belly, and orangy-brown wings, back, and tail. The females are shaped the same but look like someone took a can of brown spray paint and shoddily covered up the colors of the male.
The easiest way to tell a sparrow from farther away is to wait for it to fly. A sparrow flies like a bird who's had one too many drinks - with all its bobbing up and down during flight.

They are fairly noisy birds and are fierce protectors of their nests. Beware: if you get too close to a nest you may be dive bombed.
They are seed eaters and frequently may be found on the ground eating.

As the name "house" may suggest these birds only truly thrive near people, they are rarely found in uninhabited forests and prairies but are easily found in grasslands and trees around homes and farms. These Sparrows were first introduced in Brooklyn in 1851 when they let loose about a hundred sparrows from England. By 1900 they had reached the Rockies, that's how well they acclimated.

-And when I say wide range, these little brown birds can be found from the Northwest Territories in Canada to Argentina (though not really in a chunk of northern South America).

Greater Roadrunner

Don't let the name fool you, this is the only type in Texas. The Lesser Roadrunner is only found in Mexico and Central America.
I spotted one of these driving home the other day, it really caught my eye with it's messy head that looked like a bird with a bad haircut. On my double take the roadrunner obligingly came out of the long grass and gave me a good look. The one I saw was a juvenile, getting close to full grown but not quite there yet.
Roadrunners grow to an adult size of 18-24 inches. About half of their bodies are their tails that are held stiffly angling upward and are wide with white ends on the outer feathers. They resemble super-skinny chickens and are brown with white streaks throughout their upper body. They have long grey pointy beaks and long legs and feet. Their feet are different than other birds; instead of three toes in front and one in back, they have two in front and back. The unkempt look is from a small tuft on the top of their heads. They have a chattering call that sounds like clicking and like a woodpecker pecking.

Roadrunners are very useful birds, they are omnivores and like a nice snack of poisonous bug or snake. They like to eat scorpions, spiders, and rattlesnakes. According to the information I have found they will even team up to kill larger snakes. They will also capture, kill, and eat other birds as they sit at bird feeders.

Meep Meep - good runners they certainly are... up to 20mph sprinting. Understandably they generally prefer to run over flying.

Henbit

Apparently the extra warmth here after a period of not-as-warm has fooled a few plants into growing and blooming at the wrong time, though they look a little pathetic.
This is one. Henbit, or Henbit Deadnettle Mint, is usually a early spring bloomer and a winter annual, but among some of the patches I've been finding there have been one or two and there with a few blooms.
It's pretty obviously a mint, it has a stiffly perfect square stem and a strong smell when crushed. I'm not sure how to describe the smell, it's like a cross between pine and fresh catnip. They only grow between 4 and12 inches high and look quite flimsy with it's skinny stem and large leaves and top-heavy flower head. The stems are a dark purple color for the most part (not to be confused with Purple Deadnettle which has purple leaves as well), and the whole plant grows from a taproot*.
The leaves are opposite and lack petioles on the upper part of the plant. They're deeply incised with a scalloped (and crinkly) look to them. Where the leaves connect to the stem there's a fuzzy looking area that looks like it used to hold flowers.
The flowers are pink to purple and grow in whorls, they are tubular and about 1/4 - 2/3 of an inch long.
Henbit is more likely to be found growing in buffalo grass than the softer bluegass or other soft northern-type grasses. This means it can grow pretty much anywhere down here, but its range reaches up to Canada/Greenland and it has to compete a little more in some of it's range.

If you suspect you've found a mint in Texas, this website is quite nice. It has good descriptions along with photographs of all the species and subspecies.

*Taproot, in simple terms: a single root. Think carrot or dandelion, not tree or clover.

Whatsit called... Witch's Brooms

I was reading about these about a month ago, but I put it out of my mind until recently when I saw one.
It's a freak of nature - disease, deformity - that causes a woody plant to have an unusually dense patch of growth that looks similar to a nest or, in the case of some trees, the end of a witch's broom. They believe it may be caused by organisms introduced into the plant because when a piece of a witch's broom is grafted onto a healthy plant that formerly healthy plant goes nuts and gets its own witch's broom.

Red-Eared Slider

This is a turtle native to the United State's south, but has spread to many parts of the world due the use of these as pets. They're a type of pond turtle and spend a lot of their time in the water and mostly come out to bask in the sun or lay their eggs.
They grow between 8-12 inches, males are smaller, and have the distinctive red patch on the sides of it's head right near the ears. Their shells are flattened, which is one way to tell it apart from a box turtle, and is a dark brown-green with yellow to brown patterns. Their undersides are yellow with brown spots, not that you'd probably ever see it, but just in case. The visible skin - head, tail, and legs - are green with yellow lines that, while irregular, run pretty much head to tail and thigh to toe.


Fun Facts:
Apparently the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles are supposedly red-eared sliders.
Turtle shells are primarily made of their ribs.
They do not hibernate, they brumate which is a type of lower activity with occasional waking up to drink water or occasionally surface and eat.

The Monarch

Probably one of the most recognizable butterflies ever, here we have the Monarch. They are multivoltine as well and most of the ones here right now are in the middle of their great migration.
The larvae have vertical yellow, white, and black stripes, but the adult (as you can see) is black with white spots. The chrysalis are smooth and bright green with what looks like a little necklace about 2/3 of the way up it. They adults have the stained glass look with the orange and black and the top tips of their wings are spotted like their bodies.

Monarchs are milkweed eaters and can be found anywhere where milkweed can be found from southern Canada to most of South America and even on many pacific islands - including Hawaii.

Red Admiral

I wasn't kidding when I said there were a lot of butterflies around here lately. There are many of them that either winter here or stop by on their migration to Mexico.
This Red Admiral one was nice enough to pose for the camera. Red Admirals live all over the USA (truthfully from Guatemala to Alaska and Iceland), but come south for winter around October and begin to leave around March.
The larvae are dark with thin yellowish horizontal stripes, and are kinda bumpy with vertical circles of spines.
The adults are 1.75 - 3 inches and are dark brown to black with a few white spots on the tips of their forewings. They also have the orange bars on the bottom of the hindwings and through the middle of the forewings, when the wings lay flat the orange looks like a partial circle.
They like nettles a lot as caterpillars and flowers and sap as adults.



I think this would be a good time to learn a new word: multivoltine.
Let's break off a piece I'm sure we all can understand, "multi" it has to do with something happening more than once. A butterfly that is multivoltinous has multiple life cycles in one season, more than one brood.
I find it interesting how these butterflies that were born in the north and have known nothing else still know where to go in the south when winter comes, and those that were both in the south know where to go in spring. It's an amazing thing.

Puss Caterpillar

It has a name as ugly as it looks. Yup, that's a puss caterpillar for you. I've seen a couple of these around, but never knew what they were (besides caterpillars). They are also known as a Stinging Asp.
They are the caterpillar form of the flannel moth, which is a very very fuzzy yellow moth of average moth size - about an inch. Actually, a better word than "fuzzy" would be "hairy" because both the caterpillar and adult are so overabundantly hairy. They look like tribbles!
The larvae are about 1/2 - 3/4 of an inch long and tan to light yellow usually with a slightly darker stripe down the middle. The easiest way to tell if you've identified right is to touch it because it has a layer of venomous stinging spines under the top layer of soft hair, but you really don't want to do that. While the sting is hardly ever a serious concern it travels to the lymph nodes then to the chest and can cause excruciating pain. The sting can cause a welt that looks much like an allergy shot reaction or right after a TB test before it sinks in.

Puss caterpillars are a southern thing, I can't find any record of it farther north than Missouri. They're fairly common in Texas as they like the pecan, persimmon, hackberry, and oak trees.

This is one to watch out for as it looks so innocently fuzzy people are much more willing to pick them up, even thinking it might not be a living being at all - only a piece of fuzz.

Whatsit called... Weep Holes

Weep holes are found frequently around here, and I'd never heard of them before. The main reason you find them so often is brick is such a common building material down here, and the more opportunities you have to see something the more times you see it.
If you're looking at a brick home and see, along the bottom, regular areas between the bricks that look like someone forgot to mortar... you're looking at a weep(er) hole.
These little things look a little odd at first but they serve a purpose, which is good because otherwise people would be crazy to be putting holes in their foundations.
They are run offs for accumulated water to leave the base of the home and not sit within the walls. They can provide an opening for bugs or even snakes to enter the home, but many newer buildings are adding screens to help with this little problem.

Southern Cloudy Wing

This is another species of little butterfly or skipper, technically it's a skipper but my brain is wired to "either moth or butterfly." I couldn't even tell you how to tell if something is a skipper or butterfly. The handy-dandy helpful note I found said things like "short wings" "forewing and hindwing may be held at different angles" and "hooklike extensions on the antenna." It's probably naughty of me to think this was since I'm trying to learn about nature, but to me skippers are butterflies and probably always will be.
There are several different types of Cloudy Wing skippers, the Confused Cloudy Wing being the closest in appearance. While I would have loved to talk about a confused butterfly, I did not see one of those... I saw the Southern species.
They're small, only about 1.25 - 1.5 inches long, and a dark grey. They have some little blocks of white on the bottom sides of the wings. Not circles, but patches with blocky corners. They have thick margin trim and hooked antenna.
The Southern Cloudy Wing has two broods a year this far south and they can be found from March through November. They like open areas and are fast fliers that prefer to stay low to the ground.
Despite the name these ones can be found as far north as Wisconsin and Massachusetts.

I'm going to be adding this link to my helpful link post, but I'll put it here too.
Butterflies and Moths of North America

Little Yellow Butterfly

I'm not kidding, that's the real name of this teeny-tiny butterfly. The last couple days have been butterfly central. I had to get a butterfly book from the library and have only managed to identify four (two I already knew): Monarch (easy), Black Swallowtail (had to be reminded), the Little Yellow, and tomorrow's topic. That just scratched the surface, there have been more butterflies than I can even keep track of. The Little Yellow, though, has definitely been the most prominent.
They're 1.25 to 1.75 inches long and a dull light yellow. The top side of the forewing has a black smudge on the tip, but you hardly ever see it because they're flitterers, they don't travel far for any flight, and because they always rest with wings together. The wing tips are edged with a light brown line and there are some small splashes of light brown on the wings too. They have yellow antenna with brown tips.

They can be found anywhere from Mexico to the US south.
As adults they really like the necter of asters, which would explain why they're out all over right now - what with the unidentifiable asters all over the place. Their habitat is open areas like roadsides and fields.

Muscovy Duck

AKA: The Turkey Duck.
Frequently found in public parks this lovely specimen is pretty much ugly as ugly can be.
They are larger ducks, males getting up to nearly three feet and females commonly around two feet. They're dark with white wing patches, and they have the bare red turkey face that just might make them distinctive enough to ID from, I dunno, 50 feet away. Muscovy have claws/nails on their dark feet and a wide tail that is reminiscent of a turkey with it's tail down.
It's native range is lower Texas through Mexico, but they adapt easily and can even handle temperatures down to 10* Fahrenheit. If you see them wild in a park up north, while they may be wild, they (or their parents) were likely brought in by people so as to have something other than mallards.
There are domesticated varieties of this duck but some of them are hard to tell the difference between wild, feral, and domestic. Domestic types are normally lighter colored and fatter, but if you're dealing with a duck that lives off people feeding it I'm not sure if you could tell if it was bred chunky or just over fed.

On a neat note though: Turkeys and Muscovy Ducks are the only two domesticated ducks that are native to America.

Phoebe

If you take a map of the USA and draw lines straight east and south off of the Dakotas that chunk if Eastern Phoebe territory. Now maybe they're only there in summer, maybe even only in winter, but if you're real lucky you might find yourself in year round phoebe-land.
That just happens to be where I am, in the thin phoebe belt, I will get to hear their sweet raspy song all year long.
Phoebes are small songbirds that look rather squat with round puffy heads. Their under side is light colored with dark grey head, back, tail, and wings (though they have small white markings on the wings). Phoebe's have dark grey legs and beaks as well.
They prefer open woodlands, fields, and shrubbed areas where there are lots of tasty bugs for them to eat. They might eat some fruits or small animals (like frogs) in the absence of enough bugs.

Phoebes are flycatchers and are in the same family as the Scissortail.

Aster

Between the internet, two large wildflower books, and two hours of my time... I still don't know what particular kind of aster this is. It could be a Frost Aster or a Southern Saltmarsh Aster, but sometimes identification can be hard when the plants are mowed short. There have been similar plants growing about 3 feet tall on the side of the road, but the lack of leaves on the short plants means I can't even be certain if they're the same kind.
This particular kind of aster has flowers about 1/2 inch wide and is compound. The ray flowers are a light lavender (though some of them are almost completely white), and the disc flowers are yellow. Two more helping things: when the ground is dry the petals curl back and make the flowers look like little buttons, and the stems are purplish.

I've seen pictures of this kind on the web but this is always noted as "unidentified aster" or "unknown aster," so maybe it's a variant.

They're very common plants, so it's good enough to be able to recognize them as asters.

Mistletoe

Even though I had never seen wild mistletoe before I knew what this was as soon as I saw it. I'm not sure how long the mistletoe has been there, if it grows quickly or if the leaves had just been hiding it until now.
While I couldn't truly have a positive ID due to not actually knowing much about the plant these are the few things I noticed right away and are pretty much give-aways.
1) It's parasitic. This bunch seemingly popped out of a tree branch without any roots, vines, etc. It's called a pendant bush, which is pretty self-explanatory.
2) Bunches of white berries.
3) Leathery, ovate leaves with rounded tips. Also referred to as "tongue shaped."

Mistletoe doesn't have to be a parasite, but that's how it's most commonly found. It does have roots, but these roots like to go into live branches as well as soil. The entire plants grow between 2-5 feet.
The leaves are thick, 1-3 inches long, and grow in pairs. The fruit grow in bunches of up to 10 berries. The flowers are small, inconspicuous, grow in sets of three, and appear in spring, the berries ripen in December.

There are so many interesting stories and myths about mistletoe. There's the story that mistletoe used to be a tree until it was used to make Christ's cross and was blighted into a parasite. There's also the one about Loki and Frigga, and the superstition that it conferred fertility. You should look it up, there's more about mistletoe than I could fit into a reasonable blog post.