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.