Beware of other critters, too

Please try not to run over that large tortoise who is currently insisting on traveling straight down West Walker Street.

I picked him up near Cypress Pointe and deposited him in a safer area, but when these guys get a mind to head toward a particular destination, they often can't be redirected, and it sometimes doesn't end well.

Beware of local area snakes right now

My husband and I met some friends for dinner Monday evening at Mamacitas on NASA Road 1.  Sitting in the passenger seat on the way home, I noticed a bit of road debris out of the corner of my eye.  "That's an odd shape for a strip of retread," I thought to myself.  As reality came into sharper focus, I bellowed to my husband, "HOLY SH*T - I JUST SAW THE BIGGEST WATER MOCCASIN EVER!" 

Twenty-four hours later, a similar encounter, only this time on our West Walker Street sidewalk a short distance from the LC police station.

Sitting there like the serpent in our suburban Garden of Eden.  I was walking our dog just after dusk and I didn't have a clear view of this critter while we were out there.  I had to come home and upload the cell phone pic before I could declare what the species was (the picture was taken with a flash, which made the details easier to see).  

You don't really need to declare the species - if you live in these parts, the safe thing to do is treat any snake you see as venomous, every time, regardless of what you can see of it.  Now that I can view the image on the computer, I'd put money on it actually being a nonpoisonous water snake.  Nevertheless, in the dark, it acted much like a moccasin, refusing to yield the right of way.  I was afraid that some hapless soul would come jogging down the sidewalk in the dark and get struck by it, so it had to clear the area.  I was compelled to put a bit of a beatin' on it before it would agree to return to the retention pond.  (He's OK though.  Just a bruised ego.)

So I saw two big snakes in the space of two days - why?  Well, the rains have been good this summer and wildlife is flourishing as a result.  We have quite a robust collection of juvenile hoppy toads (Bufo bufo) and they enjoy cruising on concrete surfaces, which brings out the snakes.

They tend to do a lot of this when environmental conditions are favorable.  And then they get eaten by other things.

Screengrabbed from Wikipedia.  

Mind also that the work crews have now buried at least one section of that new pipeline in the Interurban easement. This work is taking for-ev-er, but as soon as they get that pipe laid, they'll be removing their mile-long segment of board road.  And what I expect is that an entire summer's bumper crop of snakes is going to come boiling out from underneath all that lovely man-made habitat as they pull it up.  Maybe just in time for the grand opening of the adjacent Public Safety Building.
:-)

Ah, memes... who thinks of this stuff?!
:-)

A take on local snakes, Part 2

WOW - did you see that KTRK story on the coral snake that was found inside a League City residence?

This image above looks like one of those crazy annoying advertisements you'd see on the right hand side of your computer screen as you're trying to read the REAL news - but it's not.  This IS the real news.  Judging from CAD records, the home in question was on the west side of League City in the general vicinity of Clear Springs High School.

The coral snake identification mantra (used to distinguish them from less harmful snakes that mimic their protective coloration):
Red touches yellow, kill a fellow.
Red touches black, friend of Jack (or "fellow be back"). 

Screengrab courtesy of KTRK.  

Just in case you're freaking out right about now, rest assured that this kind of event is *extremely* rare.  Profoundly rare.  It never would have occurred to me as a possibility, and I do know a little bit about local snakes.  The chances of this happening in League City are probably less than the odds of winning the lottery and then forgetting to claim the prize money.  Coral snakes are extremely evasive, extremely reclusive - they avoid humans like the plague.  In all of my years of camping and hiking on the upper Texas coast, I've only ever come face to face with one of them - and even to see one deep in the woods (Lake Houston Wilderness Park, one mile from the park headquarters) was so rare that I had to text just about every friend I have in North America to share the unprecedented news.  People around here usually go their whole lives without a coral snake encounter, even if they are hunting and fishing enthusiasts who spend a great deal of time outdoors.  Coral snakes are deadly but their bites happen so infrequently (i.e., never) that no antivenin has been manufactured in more than a decade.  To discover a coral snake in a suburban home??  That is unthinkable.

In contrast, finding the likes of this guy around here is fairly routine.  This is a non-poisonous water snake we rescued one day a few years ago in Heritage Park down by Butler Longhorn Museum.  He was tangled in some fishing line and the young child next to me helped to un-do the damage.  I'm wearing gloves in this pic not because the snake is harmful but because he was listless (being throttled with fishing line will do that) and so I was initially cautious about the potential for zoonotic diseases.  

I wrote "A take on local snakes" more than three years ago and since that time, I've been humbled by the sheer number of people who are possessed by an abject fear of snakes.  I can see those fears laid bare in their search strings:  They assess the snake risk before deciding to move to Texas (career opportunities be damned).  They assess the snake risk before even stepping one toe onto the beach at Galveston.  They assess the snake risk before visiting any local park, no matter how much concrete it contains, no matter how developed with urban or suburban improvements it may be.  I never realized how extensive these concerns really are.  If you are one of those people, you can rest assured of one thing - your odds of finding a coral snake in your own suburban home are basically nil.

This is the closest most people are ever going to get to that type of experience.  

How to clean a birdbath

The simple delight that they generate is unprecedented.

I have my front-yard birdbath up against my home office window.  The birds can see in, but they are so acclimated to the situation that unless our dog rushes at the window, they don't mind the human and canine proximity.  They come and enjoy, every day at dawn and dusk like clockwork.  

I explained how to attract birds to a birdbath in this post.  If you live in modern suburbia, it's really a no-brainer.  We now engineer subdivisions to drain rainwater so efficiently that a residentially-installed birdbath will often be the only source of standing water for quite some distance.  Birds have little choice but to use them.

WOO-HOO!!   POOL PARTY!! 

These shots were taken from inside my home, through my front window.  Camera info here.  

Other critters will visit the bath as well.  Here a brown anole does his best to look ferocious.  This particular species is invasive on the upper Texas coast, but anoles are generally indispensable in a southern suburban garden because of the number of harmful insects that they eat.  Brown anoles tend to remain close to the ground whereas the green Carolina anole will climb.     

However, if you keep birdbaths on your property, eventually you're going to have to deal with a build-up of algae and lime scale.

My back yard birdbath, looking rather yucky.  I keep an additional bath in our back yard because I find that, on hot days, birds will peck open my tomatoes to get at the water within.  In other words, they aren't so much interested in eating the tomato itself as they are in getting hydration.  Therefore, I offer them this option.  Those are volunteer tomatoes growing to the left of this bath.  

Even if you flush out your birdbath(s) daily with clean hose water, every couple of weeks you're going to have to scrub them to get rid of this gunk.  It's easily done, as this photo sequence shows.

Detach the bowl and set it on the grass.  Use a plastic bristle brush to remove the loose stuff.  

I use ordinary vinegar to remove lime deposits (it's cheap - about two bucks a gallon or less at the grocery store, and you'll only need about a cup for any given birdbath cleaning).  I add a bit of vinegar to the bottom of the bath, swish it around with the brush, let it sit for five or ten minutes, then scrub with the brush again. 

Repeat as many times as needed with new applications of vinegar until all the scale is loosened and/or dissolved.  You can't always see scale when the bowl is wet, but you can feel it with your fingers as you are scrubbing (it feels rough to the touch whereas the cleaned ceramic of the bath will be very smooth).  

Then simply replace the bowl and re-fill until next time.  

And there will be a next time.  

What monarch butterflies teach us

Answer:  That each and every species is similarly characterized by a natural and unchangeable range in individual ability to thrive.

I bet you were assuming that I was going to say something along the lines of "that we should love and cherish Mother Earth and conserve her precious resources".  But that would be a shallow analysis, indeed.    

Ten days ago, I did not predict a good outcome for this particular caterpillar, who chose to attach her cocoon rather haphazardly to the side of this large planter.  It fell way short of an ideal location, exposed to both the weather and potential sources of physical damage (e.g., my running dog brushing up against the planter).  The individual in the cocoon surprised me by emerging in the visibly flawless condition shown above, but then failed to display physical vigor.  I could have easily reached out and grabbed her, as she seemed to lack a reasonable startle reaction.

This is what I've noticed most strikingly after a few years of fostering monarchs - an incredible diversity of competency when it comes to executing the basic functions of their life cycle.  They come from the same parents at the same time in the same environmental conditions with the same unlimited food source, and yet their individual outcomes are always wildly different.  Some of them do the most inexplicably boneheaded things (even though they don't have bones).  Sometimes as I am talking to them I ask, "Dude, what were you thinking?!  You can't possibly survive in your own self-selected conditions.  Why would you intentionally throw your own life away like that?!"

Of course, I have asked the same question verbatim of a number of people in my life, as human being show exactly the same diversity in competence when it comes to executing their life cycles.  It's all just a reflection of that most fundamental property of all life:  the DNA naturally produces a riot of possibilities, some of which will ultimately be selected for, and some of which will not, and there's nothing that anybody could (or should) do to change that. I suppose I just expected a narrower range in outcome possibilities in a much-less-complex organism such as a monarch butterfly.  But no.  This is how we all are, bones or no bones.  

He makes my latest butterfly look tame on the issue of self-preservation.  

Creature from the suburban lagoon, Part 2

Following up on my original post where I didn't yet have the varmint identified, it turns out to be a nutria, more accurately referred to as a coypu.

The white hairs around the schnoz are a dead giveaway.  He lives in the drain pipe under Cypress Pointe at West Walker Street.

Given that I found him, I feel entitled to name him.  I think I'll call him Constantinople.  Constantinople the coypu.  

So we can relax that there will be none of our trees cut down as there would be with a beaver, although there might be some burrowing to contend with, because these guys love to dig all kinds of stuff up.

But surely you didn't think I'd conclude this post without subjecting you to a bunch of other photos of lagoon-related creatures.  Yesterday might very well have been the nicest day of the entire year - well worth a 2-mile ramble around our area.  Here's a short tour of some of the other critters I encountered on the way.

A couple of quackers.  I suspect from the edged blue wing markings and their shyness that they are American black ducks.  

Mourning doves, only because they are so photogenic.  

Firewheel (Gaillardia pulchella).  I bet you always wondered about the name of this distinctive wildflower.  

Scissor-tailed flycatcher, also known as the Texas bird of paradise.  The retention ponds were this particular individual's paradise of insects.  

Checkered white butterfly.  Looks beautiful in this photo but its caterpillars would eat my broccoli.  

Red-shouldered hawk at the top of one of the high towers.  Any time you see one of these near Centerpointe's retention ponds, look around for its mate.  

His mate was easy to spot, standing on the southwest fence of Oaks of Clear Creek subdivision, hoping to pounce on and devour someone's kitty or chihuahua.  Sorry for the blurryness of the photo.  

I would think it's a loggerhead shrike, but I don't know why its belly is as yellow as that of a brown shrike.  They are ruthless hunters, and one of their favorite local meals is the not-so-humble Carolina anole.  

Woodpecker, perhaps a red-bellied (their bellies really aren't that red).  The abundant trees in the dog park property and the adjacent cattle tract support a number of woodpeckers.  

Pulled along by my dog, I missed getting pics of an equal number of additional species.  It's really quite remarkable the diversity of wildlife surrounding just those retention ponds and extending down the Interurban easement.  I've always loved that about Houston - it's a riot of life everywhere you look, in defiance of developmental burdens.

A word of warning, however.  With recent increased publicity regarding the dog park property, more folks seem to be showing up to check it out (I've seen walkers and the other day there were two young people riding a dirt bike around it).  It's a beautiful property but it has not yet been tamed.  As such, it contains hazards including poison ivy (above).  Additionally, the Centerpointe retention ponds are perfect habitat for the water moccasin, which is one of the nastiest poisonous snakes on the planet.  Enjoy our area, but keep your eyes open.  

Today is shaping up to be as beautiful as yesterday was.  You'll want to get out and take a few long walks, because the heat of summer and the mosquitoes will be upon us soon enough.  Who knows - you might even spot a shy coypu in the process.  

The missing monarchs

The local decline in monarch butterflies this year has been remarkable.  In a bad way, that is.  In contrast to the past few years, now there are almost none.

I've been growing milkweed and serving as a backyard nursery for wild migrating monarchs for the past several years.  This was one of 2013's newborns, a male.  You can see his busted cocoon under the fence rail he's clinging to.  Hard to believe that whole creature was stuffed inside that tiny capsule just moments before.  

For the past two years, I watched hordes of caterpillars devour everything I could throw at them in the way of their milkweed dietary staple. This is also a photo from April 2013.  

Late April 2014, and this particular milkweed plant hasn't even been touched by a caterpillar (the adult females recognize milkweed and lay their eggs directly on the plants).  I have three large pots of the stuff.  One was well chewed, the other barely, and this one not at all.  Last year, all three were eaten down to the stems.    

I've found only two cocoons so far this year, and one of them is attached haphazardly to the side of a planter and looked to be in substandard condition.  The one above looks healthy - I've noticed that cocoons attached beneath cedar fence rails result in a high rate of successful butterflies.

In contrast, by this time last year, I had at least a dozen cocoons (plus probably many more hidden away that I didn't manage to find).  

According to the folks who monitor the health of the monarch population, their current numbers have fallen to the lowest level ever measured.  A number of causes are postulated, mostly involving habitat loss.

There's no habitat loss in my back yard.  They don't call it milkWEED for nothing - it spreads and grows as a weed, with no cultivation required.  Last year I dug up a bunch of volunteer milkweeds that had seeded themselves randomly in my yard and distributed them among my neighbors, hoping that folks would plant a pot and provide additional food to the fluttery migrants.   

Milkweed is only half the battle, though.  Monarchs also need other types of plants to supply nectar, and flowering plants have been in short, late supply in North America due to the whole polar vortex thing that happened this winter.

Anyway, it's a conspiracy of weather and habitat circumstances that is apparently intensifying their decline, but ordinary suburbanites have the option of making a low-effort contribution to help offset those losses.

I used the term "backyard nursery" above, but in the accepted lingo of monarch enthusiasts, the term is "monarch waystation".  But you don't have to get as fancy as officially registering your site - you could just plant milkweed and flowering plants in your yard.  If you plant it, they will come.  For as long as they are not extinct, at least.

Sign photo courtesy of the Monarch Watch website. 

On that note, I'll leave you with a re-posted video of an emergence from that same fence in 2013.  It's ten minutes long but most of the action takes place in the first 2:20.  The other 8 minutes show how the critter expands its wings very rapidly after emerging.  It's an amazing process.

URL for mobile devices:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FXjRzdZc9zI

Embed:

Creature from the suburban lagoon

There's something in Centerpointe's south retention pond and it's not something that I've seen there before.

Augh, dang!!  I even had my long lens with me on Tuesday's dog walk, but he was too quick and I didn't get a shot.  

I did have two other witnesses, though.  Both my husband and our dog also saw him.  

My best guess is that it was either a beaver or a nutria.

Example photo of a beaver, screengrabbed from this page.

Example photo of a nutria.    

The two are almost impossible to tell apart from a distance unless you can get a clear view of the tail, which we did not.  He quickly swam into the culvert that runs under West Walker and was out of sight.

I know what some of you are thinking - how could we possibly have a beaver right here in our subdivision?!  Nutria maybe - they are invasive.  But beaver??

Oh hell yes!!  They are here on the upper Texas coast, and their urban and suburban numbers are increasing.  This is a pic I took a few years ago inside my favorite local park - which happens to be (brace yourself) *inside* Houston city limits.  

If I had to put money on it, I'd bet nutria.  Time will tell.

Time plus evidence.  If it does prove to be a beaver that has moved in with us, we'll quickly see damage done to the trees in the adjacent proposed dog park.  Beavers are small furry machines of biological destruction.  They will exploit any amount of water and any cluster of trees.  

The taming of the shranole

Here's a sight you don't see every day.

It started with this anole trapped in a garden bucket.  My dog attempted to eat him.  I rescued him from the dog, and then did what any decent gardener would do:  I took him on tour around the neighborhood so I could show him off to the kids.  

See, normally you can't pick up an anole - they are as fast as lightning and if you try to grab one, you're just as likely to fatally injure it as anything, because they will stop at nothing to escape.  But the unique circumstances of yesterday evening led to a different reaction from the anole.  

 It's all a question of relativity.  Once I had him in my hand, his priority became aiming those independently-swiveling eyeballs toward the ground so that he could keep a fix on the dog.  He correctly deduced that the hand, however dangerous it might be in its own right, was simply his better option.

But then something happened.

You'll notice that he's in his bright green phase in these pictures (he was the deepest, most vivid shade of terrified charcoal brown when I first picked him up).  That's because he's totally relaxed.  Here, I think he was attempting to chat with me.  

Reptiles in general are fast learners.  Once they determine that a novel situation is not dangerous to them, they tend to become disinclined to vacate that situation.  I've noticed this with snakes (although I would never be so dumb as to handle a poisonous one).   They may start their interaction with you fighting for their perceived lives, but once you make friends with them, they don't necessarily want to leave.

And that's what happened in this case.  After about 30 minutes of hand habituation, he strongly resisted all attempts to release him back into the wild.  Here I was attempting to set him back into the garden, but he wasn't having any of it.  What better new territory to claim than a willing human?  After all, we do attract yummy flies in abundance.  

From the picture above, he ran up my arm, hopped onto the top of my head, and then took up residence on my shoulder.  I had to get my husband to help me get him safely off and back where he belongs.

Another day in suburban paradise.
:-)

Hawk release at the Dudney Nature Center

This morning's hawk release by The Wildlife Center of Texas was a great success, and came with one heck of an unexpected bonus.

League City's very own unsung hero Sharon Schmalz and friend shortly before release.  The Wildlife Center of Texas is now one of the largest organizations of its type in the nation. 

Unfortunately, all I have of that unexpected bonus is the following circumstantial evidence.

The two rehabbed hawks were scheduled to be released at 9:30 a.m.  The release was a bit fashionably late in its timing, but at exactly 9:31 a.m. (I checked my watch), one of the Clear Creek bald eagles flew directly over the crowd that had assembled to see the hawks.  "This is like having the jets fly over before a Patriots game!" a guy behind me said.  What are the odds of having that happen??  It was really wild, in more ways than one. 

I didn't get a pic of the eagle, but I can offer you this collection of freaked-out laughing gulls.  Nothing like a predator with a 90-inch wingspan to really liven things up in the bird world.  All of the gulls took to the air in abject terror. 

 The hawks were both in fine form, and with their hawkish, indignant gazes, they are so easy to anthropomorphize. 

"Just who the hell do you think you are, lady?!"

"And now you've got everyone looking at my butt, too?!"

Sharon was demonstrating how this young 'un has only one reddish feather thus far, in what will grow to become a much redder tail. 

"These people are insane.  I need to get out of here."

"I think I'm fixin' to get my wish.  Better get ready."

Aaaand he's outa there. 

This resident red-shouldered hawk immediately raised a major vocal stink about the newcomers.

Yeah, that's a bit confusing.  The hawks that were released were both red-tailed hawks, but this one is a red-shouldered hawk.  Two different species.   

When you hear hawks screaming their guts out around League City, they are very often this type.  Red-shouldereds are not shy about making noise.  I'll close with someone's short YouTube which shows this behavior quite well.  Next time you hear that distinctive shrieking, you can impress your friends and neighbors by confidently declaring the identity of the perpetrator.
:-)

Update:  For whatever technical reason, this video embed is not displaying properly on certain mobile devices and iDevices.  Here's the direct URL:   http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r9Zwc3TJyqA