Summer School

Sonora has a "Good Samaritan" summer school going right now, and the kiddos each spent most of a school day with us on the Hill. For four days we hiked, explored, observed, played games, painted rocks...

A group of middle schoolers use magnifying glasses
to get closer to some rocks and minerals.

Although we had fun all four days, it was only on Thursday that we had a small enough group to bring out the "student cameras." We broke into two small groups with one camera for each group. After being encouraged to take pictures of something interesting that might need some explanation (the rest of the story, what is this, etc) each hiker took 4-5 pictures then passed the camera to the next hiker.


Here are some of their pictures:

Old Glory

Flag Works

Our flagpole has needed painting for some time, now, but when the cable broke and the flag came down, finding a person who can paint flagpoles and re-rig them became a priority. With Memorial Day approaching, we needed to hustle.

We found Steve Gooding, who does both, and just before Memorial Day he was on his way to another job not too far from Sonora.

Here are some pictures of how we spent Friday before Memorial Day:

Priming on the way up.

Priming closeup

Painting on the way down.
While at the top, Steve strung the new cable,
which is 1/2 the diameter of the old
and so much easier to handle.

While Steve painted we were able to get a friend to repair the winch, which was then re-installed and loaded with the new cable. When everything was set to go and Steve and his crew were ready to head to the next job, we gave the pole the weekend to dry.

Dawn on Memorial Day found us raising the flag then lowering it to half-staff:

We immediately rushed off the Hill to see what Old Glory looked like from the Interstate!
At 12:00 noon Old Glory was raised to full staff...

  ...and isn't she grand!

Thanks, everybody!!! 

What's wrong with this picture?

We've had almost two inches of rain in May! However, the rain last night came with high wind and this morning this is what greeted us. The cable is broken and we now need to find a person to replace the cable when s/he paints the pole.

But we have had almost two inches of rain...

Frogs and others...

Today was algae treatment day. We are still using the bacteria additive, even though we do have a few (or not so few) algae-competition plants in two of our tanks. The hot weather gave the tank at the flag a serious algae bloom and it's being treated once a week for now. The Southern leopard frogs seem to have no issues with it; I almost felt guilty about skimming the algae.

It looks like they ought to get caught in the stuff but they seem not to mind and while I was there one of them jumped out of the algae and onto the edge of the tank.

One of the frogs' predators made its presence known:

This is a shed from a small Black-necked garter snake. They find tadpoles and small frogs to be yummy.

    



Plants and insects

Yesterday, on my way to the round water tank below the flag, I tried to do photographic justice to the blooming yuccas falling away down the hill in front of me. The following is not so great but hopefully will give an idea of how splendid they are:

I rarely get good pictures of insects, so I don't often even try to take pictures them. When I arrived at the tank I caught this stunning Flame skimmer dragonfly! They seem rather bulky compared to other dragonflies and damselflies, sort of the B29 Superfortress of the dragonfly world.

I abandoned the skimmer for the Gray hairstreak because it was a steely blue-gray and it had that stunning orange spot setting it off from the delicate pinkish-white flowers amid which it foraged.

This is not the best picture ever but you can see the antennae on the right side of the butterfly which means the orange spots are not the head. In this next picture I lost the head, so the tail end looks like a sinister face with a black beak of some sort, short ear-like antennae and ominous orange eyes. 

I would think twice before I ate this.

The hairstreak was run off by this hairy-looking fly. I have no idea what kind of insect it is but I thought it was one of my better insect detail pictures:

Yuccas Bloom

Some of the Buckley yuccas didn't get lopped by deer:

Earth Day Action

At nearly the very last minute we announced that anyone who wanted to observe Earth Day by digging dirt and moving rocks on Eaton Hill was welcome to do so. We planned to focus on a water feature that would take advantage of a 1/4" copper tubing that pops out from underground. The tubing starts who knows where and terminates in a valve that is leaking. At first we were going to make it stop, but we figured out a way to make it more bird- and butterfly-friendly by digging along a concrete retaining wall and adding flat rocks.

The call was answered by three young men representing Sonora's 7th, 8th and 9th grades. Here they are when they started:

The dripping line is in the lower left. A white enamel plate has been catching the drip for the birds. The red roofs of the Elementary and Intermediate schools are visible in the distance.

They used the wheelbarrow to relocate the turf and soil and bring the flat rocks from their stack on the other side of the parking area.

After two hours in the sun and the heat (and it was definitely sunny and hot, unseasonably so) we had a good start on our new water feature:



More Spring

The Texas Stars are already going to seed:

And the deer are huge fans of  Buckley yucca flower stalks before they get a chance to become flowers:

Sometimes the decapitated yucca stalks recover:

And the Blue curls are almost uncurled.

They're Here!

The Black-capped vireos are back!

More Spring Flowers

Texas Mountain Laurel (Sophora segundiflora)

Texas Star (Lindheimera texana)

Blue Curls (Fiddleneck) (Phacelia congesta)

Arnica (Plains Blackfoot) (Melampodium leucanthum)

Geraniaceae (Geranium Family)
Geraniums get their name from geranos, meaning "crane."
After they bloom the fruit formed by the pistil looks like a crane's bill.

Gaura (Wild Honeysuckle, Bee Blossom) (Gaura suffulta)

Prickly Pear Cactus with Texas Bluebonnet (Lupinus texensis)

Spring on the Hill

We are seeing signs of spring on Eaton Hill. We've had some warm days and over 2 inches of rain in the last month, so the air has moisture, giving us some beautiful foggy mornings. There is green almost everywhere, and a few of the multitude of bluebonnet plants have started blooming. Agarita has gone from tight coral-colored buds to yellow flowers and I do wish there were a scratch and sniff component to blogs so you could experience the deeply sweet, heady fragrance that insects find irresistible.

Robins have appeared at the water wall at the Native American Village:

And there are many, many flowers showing up.

Including bluebonnets!

It's a Verdin!

I posted my description and a link to this blog to the birding remailer for Texas and the answer overwhelmingly is Verdin!

Most birders did not even have to look at the (poor) pictures because of the Verdin's distinctive field marks.*  The size, the yellow head and the (someone called it) drab grey body were all it took for these folks to identify it as a Verdin. Except for the Bushtit (which is the same size and similar shape but lacking the yellow) there is no one quite like this little guy.

So thank you everybody: I'm a better birder than I was yesterday.


* From the Cornell Lab of Ornithology website, All About Birds: "Field marks are the distinctive stripes, spots, patterns, colors, and highlights that birds have in such abundance and variety."

Mystery Bird

It is very spring-like today, almost 70 degrees, blustery, with lots of plants responding to the 1.4" of rain of Sunday by rapidly becoming vibrant shades of green. The wild mustard in the yard is getting taller by the minute. Deer don't seem to eat it so I guess it will be time to mow, soon.

I walked over to Inspiration Point, hoping to see something different, and in the shrubs nearby I could see a small bird, alone, appearing to be in the process of finding microscopic edibles on the leaves. S/he (no idea) was mid-sized warbler size, smooth-looking, no wing bars, yellow head blending back to smooth medium grey. Light belly.

By the time I focused the camera he was somewhere else. he finally stopped to preen and I was able to focus but by this time the low sun was almost directly behind him. The pictures I did get were too dark to be of use in identification but after tinkering with the contrast and lightening up the midtones, I have four very poor examples of bird photography that may allow for an identification.

Any ideas?

What a Surprise!

I was surprised to find this anemone by one of the water valves. It seems too early:

If we continue to get bits of rain and we do not see a stretch of freezing weather similar to last year's pipe-burster, we should have a really fine display of bluebonnets:

(The five-fingered lupine-looking leaves)

We have American goldfinches all winter but we seem to have different populations at different times, and occasional stretches of no American goldfinches at all. We have a new group taking advantage of the water feature near the Nature Center, and the black oil sunflower seeds.

Male on the left; female on the right. Nobody is very flashy this time of year.