Up and Down the Road in Texas

At home I write a lot of blogs about my walks Across the Road. Here at my daughter's place in the Texas Hill Country my walks are Up the Road or Down the Road. These are photos taken from walks in both directions.

This was Up the Road the first morning I was here. It had rained heavily during the night.

I tried to clean my glasses a couple of times thinking that I must have rubbed greasy fingers on them. Then I realized that the glasses were fogging up due to the humidity and temperature. Well, that's annoying.

Juniper berries, although everyone in the west calls these "cedar trees".

I have identified this plant as either Snow-on-the-Mountain or Snow-on-the-Prairie, a Euphorbia species. I read that it is an annual that is poisonous to livestock. Here is an excerpt from Texas A&M Extension:  "The white sap of these plants has long been used to blister the skin or as an intestinal purgative. In most cases, livestock are poisoned by an acrid principle that severely irritates the mouth and gastrointestinal tract. This plant rarely causes death. Experimental feedings of this plant in Texas have shown that 100 ounces produces severe scours and weight loss in cattle, the latter persisting for several months."

Gorgeous oak trees are seen where the juniper (cedar) has been cleared.

I have not tried to ID the rest of these flowers. I'm just enjoying them.

My granddaughter and I saw many of these large  Black Swallowtails  this morning.

Life and Death on a Milkweed Plant

While mowing the pasture the other day I saw a fluttering monarch butterfly.

I thought, "Cool, I'm watching this butterfly emerge from the chrysalis." However, as I watched I realized that for some reason the butterfly had been stuck in this position and now was hopelessly damaged. I helped it out of the chrysalis but its wings were damaged and all it could do was flutter, but not fly.

I continued mowing.

There were plenty more milkweed plants that were teeming with life. That's the Common Buckeye Butterfly and the Alfalfa Butterfly (see my last post).

Here is what the seed pods have inside when they are ripe. (Spinning, anyone?)

I identified this one in Bug Guide.net  as the Small Milkweed Bug (also the Common Milkweed Bug, Lygaeus kalmii). It's surprising how many similar looking bugs you find when you google "red and black bug in CA".

I had to look closely to see the identifying markings. The Guide says: "Adults suck nectar from flowers of various herbaceous plants, and also feed on milkweed seeds(?). Also reported to be scavengers and predators, especially in spring when milkweed seeds are scarce. They have been reported feeding on honey bees, monarch caterpillars and pupae, and dogbane beetles, among others."

Here is more life, but I'm not going to try and specifically ID this one.

And the circle continues...

The other photos were from a couple of weeks ago and I just saw this monarch caterpillar a few days ago on another milkweed.

Birds and Butterflies

Last week it was impossible to go to town or walk Across the Road without running into butterflies. The orange sulphur butterfly (Colias eurytheme also known as the alfalfa butterfly and in its larval stages as the alfalfa caterpillar), I found out by googling, is widespread in North America and can be a significant alfalfa pest in high densities. The alfalfa field just south of where I walk had been cut, the sunflowers harvested, and butterflies were doubling and tripling up on field bindweed flowers and any other weedy flowers they could find.

I thought that I'd be able to get photos of butterflies in flight. Do you know how hard that is? Not possible, at least by me.

But speaking of things that fly, I did get some bird photos. I don't usually see great blue herons in the trees.

The snowy egret is dwared by two great egrets.

Great egret in flight.

On my way home I spotted these cattle egrets which I photographed from the road.