At long last I’ve found a Praying Mantis in my garden. My sons tell me they’ve seen others, but this is the first I’ve personally encountered in the yard and likewise documented. Nothing counts until I get a picture of it, even if others have been around for years!

Praying Mantises are notorious for being fierce predators — cannibalistic ones at that. Beware the nearby sibling or mate — it might become a fast snack. If you are in the mood for horror this Halloween, explore the many images of Praying Mantises offered at Environmental Graffiti. They gave even me the willies.

Praying Mantises really should be as iconic as pumpkins, spiders, zombies, and ghosts when it comes to Halloween. They are fast and sneaky and downright horrific in their voraciousness, the way they pierce and decapitate their prey and gnaw on body parts. And FYI, I draw the line at letting one near my hummingbird feeders.

Here’s another predator, this one in our family. Much like a Praying Mantis, he eats everything, though unlike the insect version, he has yet to eat his sibling. In this photo he’s about to bravely enter a zombie fallout zone…

where lurking zombies chased him over haystacks, through mud pits, and across ponds as he ran for his life. Thankfully he did not become a zombie himself, arriving to safety with life intact. Good thing he was well fueled ahead of time, eating as much as he does.

Zombies, as you know, will accept a variety of body parts, but they show a particular preference for brains. Point being, my son eats everything, but Zombies don’t.

Here at home, our garden protects us from Zombies, and we have a sign to prove it. But every once in a while a Zombie might sneak past….This is the predator who ate the finger off the Zombie hand that lurked in our fruit bowl. Now it’s even more of a Zombie hand.

In this pond lurks the Unknown Predator, the creature that ducks just out of sight every time I try to catch a glimpse, no matter how stealthily I approach. It just rustles plants to show me it’s there, flaunting the fact that it is sneakier than I am. It’s not the Creature from the Black Lagoon, though — I retain that status. Perhaps it’s the Swamp Monster, or Nessie, or Godzilla. Or Jaws.

How about a nice creepy spider image for Halloween?

I almost walked right into that feast. I ducked just in time.

At least Dragonflies always look like they are smiling at you. Just before they eat you.

Happy Halloween, garden predators, zombies, and everyone else!

If you live in the Austin area, I highly encourage you to sign up for the 2012 Habitat Stewards training, an outstanding National Wildlife Federation volunteer program that is locally sponsored by Wildlife Austin and Travis Audubon Society. As always, we have a fantastic group of speakers lined up this year to cover such topics as:

• Creating wildlife habitat
• Native plants
• Native landscaping design
• Local fauna
• Planting and maintenance
• Texas water concerns
• Riparian restoration
• Invasive plant removal
• Soil
• And more!

Habitat Stewards are volunteers. We have fun giving back to the community — helping create or restore habitat, playing in the dirt to prep beds and plant, teaching kids and adults about wildlife and native plants, and more. It’s incredibly rewarding, and our birds and butterflies are most grateful!

As you can see from these images of last year’s Stewards class, our training takes place both in the classroom and out in the field. The classes will be held Thursday evenings and Saturday days during the month of September. Training starts next week! Registration is $50, which includes all materials and some light refreshments.If you are interested in becoming a Habitat Steward, sign up fast — we only have a couple of spots left, and classes start next week!

You might be aware that last month I moved Great Stems from Movable Type to WordPress. I didn’t realize that the feed would be disrupted, but of course it was. That means some readers have missed out on all the latest posts, and I feel terrible about it!

This post is dual-purpose. One is to remind readers that there is a new Feed link on the sidebar if you want to be easily updated when a new Great Stems post is created (scroll to the bottom of the sidebar to “Feed Me, Seymour”). The other is to test our attempt to revise the previous feed to ping all those who haven’t yet updated.

Of course, I hate to create a post without a photo, so I’m sharing one of a turtle we rescued this morning. My teenage son was learning to drive at the time, so let me just say that it was ONE LUCKY TURTLE. Actually, technically at that point I was back in the driver’s seat, but a few minutes earlier it might have been a big splat on the road.

Our two young pet snakes are just delightful and still growing. Morse, now over 2 feet long, sometimes types with me at the computer, snugly wrapped around my wrist. He might just be the most docile, lazy corn snake in all the docile corn snake world. I don’t want to use the word boring, but he at least makes boring look good. He is just so nonchalant about absolutely everything.

Normally when the snakes shed, they do it in the privacy of their habitat. One day I took the snakes out to feed them, and Morse, a motley-patterned corn snake, started rubbing his cute little head all over the towel I had him on.

Next thing we knew, we were watching the full shedding process, something I’d never witnessed before. The shed skin rolled off him like old-style stockings, until toward the tail’s end it reversed and extended as Morse pulled away from it. Shedding done, Morse was quite ready to eat!

Walker, the corn/rat snake hybrid, has all the expected instincts of a snake, and that makes him great to observe, because he is certainly observing you and everything else. I like to wander around with him so that he can safely explore new things. Though we feed our snakes thawed rodents, he attacks his dead prey with all ferocity. We use tongs so that we are not handling the mice directly, and if I hold onto the end of a mouse for a just a couple of seconds after Walker’s latched on, he quickly coils all around the mouse, constricting it just like all good constrictors do. I have got to videotape it sometime.

Walker and Morse are destined to be teaching snakes. They had their first classroom visit of sorts at the Master Naturalist training this past spring. Here my friend Christine tried to take a picture of Walker, but of course Walker had other ideas.

Sssssimply wonderful!

If you know me, you know that I’m fond of things with wicked spines and prickles. So whenever hiking, cactus always seem to catch my eye. Here are a few beauties and oddities I spotted over the past few months.

Prickly Pear in a tree

Emerging blooms on Prickly Pear

Big bloom, small pad

Lace Cactus

Mickey Mouse with a Mohawk

Pretty in yellow

Spheres

I just love cactus. They really have a way of getting under my skin.  🙂

As anyone who has read Alice in Wonderland knows, a caterpillar on a mushroom is an odd-enough sighting.

For me, it is no less odd to find a caterpillar on a mushroom in real life. I have seen exactly one. This means nothing about how common or uncommon it really is, mind you. It just means that I’ve only seen one. Ever.

The caterpillar-on-mushroom above was found at Bright Leaf Preserve, a guided-hike-only preserve here in Austin that is truly a Wonderland itself. The caterpillar, without much investigation on my part into its actual ID but could be a Haploa moth species, looked to be consuming the mushroom, evidence being the amount of frass sitting right there on the cap. The caterpillar didn’t seem to have to move much, that’s for sure — certainly not to poop.

As for the mushroom, it seemed to be some type of Boletus. On the same hike, we found another mushroom of similar type:

I am really struggling to ID Boletus mushrooms, so I asked for help. Sue Meltzer, author of Texas Mushrooms, told me it might be Boletus rubricitrinus, based on its reddish cap and yellow flesh. I asked about why the mushroom looked so flat, and Sue told me: “Mushrooms change during their life cycle. When fresh, they are very round, and the caps open and flatten as they mature to allow them to more efficiently disperse their spores. Picture a pretty girl lifting her skirt as she sits down until it is spread all around her. The color of the cap also fades as 1) the diameter increases, and 2) it becomes sunstruck. For a field guide, we always shoot photos of young, fresh mushrooms. That is because if you want to eat them, you should only choose them in that condition. Older mushrooms become bitter (this is also true of Portobello — I won’t buy them unless I can see that the gills are pink to pale brown. Once they are dark, they are very bitter). Also, mushrooms get attacked by insects and your caterpillar. Flies lay eggs on them which hatch into maggots. But the basic characteristics (in this case) yellow flesh and red cap; bruising to blue very quickly, are stable.” Sue, thank you! For those interested in mushrooms commonly found in Texas, Sue’s book is a wonderful and useful resource — I very much recommend it. But oh, I have so much to learn — mushrooms are not easy! 

Also, a note of thanks to WiseAcre, who offered words of condolence at having mushroom ID troubles. He compared it to a “frustrating, head-banging exercise in futility.” I get that.

All sorts of fungi sightings have peaked my interest lately. My favorite is perhaps the Bird’s Nest Fungi growing right here in my backyard, under some poppies and other plants. These little mushrooms are so named for how they look like miniature egg-filled nests. The “eggs” are actually called peridioles, inside of which are spores. I’m amazed I noticed the tiny cups at all, and I owe it to the weeds in my garden bed that I found them, as the removal of said weeds prompted the discovery of what lay underneath.

Bird’s Nest Fungi often appear in colonies, and mine were no exception. The “nests” serve as splash cups, and raindrops can easily disperse the peridioles. I ran across a video of such spore dispersal — it’s pretty nifty.

Speaking of nifty, have you seen a Puffball? If you tap on the top, a cloud of what looks like dust or smoke comes out. That so-called dust is actually the spores being dispersed. Look closely and you can see it in the picture.

Here’s another view, again with visible spore dispersal. This Puffball was found in Bright Leaf Preserve on the same hike during which the Wonderland caterpillar was discovered.

 Fungi are fantastic, even if I do get a headache from all that banging my head in trying to ID them. Sometimes it’s even hard to know you are looking at a fungus at all!

The rain was awesome this past weekend. That was the most pitiful excuse for an umbrella, though.

Nolan and I had a great time with kid and adult bird lovers at the Celebrate Urban Bird Festival this weekend (which conveniently shares the same weekend as the Great Backyard Bird Count). It rained — nay, it poured — for part of the time, affecting overall turnout, but you won’t ever catch me complaining about rain.
 

During the festival, I got to help kids “dig” up plastic worms with chopsticks (like an Ibis), pick rice “insects” from a log with tweezers (like a Wren or Warbler), strain duckweed from the surface of water (like a duck or shoveler), and experience other bird bill adaptations. I also helped kids discover what it’s like to be a migratory bird, facing all sorts of dangers to (hopefully) get to safe habitats. Some of the other activities at the festival included birding (of course), hiking, live bird demos, bird feeder projects, and bird drawing. My son drew me a picture of a most wonderful cardinal and waterfowl scene, but alas, he won’t let me share it online. But he spent an hour on it — believe me, it’s excellent.

After the festival, Nolan and I toured the Austin Nature and Science Center, one of my absolute favorite places in Austin. At last I was able to bring out the camera, and waiting to pose for me (or to see if I’d be silly enough to drop food) was one of our most successful urban birds, the Great-Tailed Grackle.

Grackles aren’t everyone’s favorite bird, but I actually like them (provided I’m not walking or parking under a giant flock of them). For one thing, they actually are quite striking, especially the large males with their dark iridescent blue feathers.

See that bill? It’s a generalist shape — not too long, not too narrow, not too flat, not too curved. That means it’s multi-purpose, letting a Grackle eat just about anything it wants — grains, insects, slugs, worms, small mammals, fish, frogs, eggs, pizza, popcorn, hamburgers. And that’s a big reason why Grackles have adapted so easily to an urban environment. They particularly appreciate sloppy humans.

The Austin Nature & Science center is actually home to a variety of Texas birds, reptiles, invertebrates, mammals, fish, and amphibians. Many are orphaned or injured animals that would not survive in the wild, and they are lucky to have a safe haven at the center. Whether you love wildlife, fossils, dinosaur exhibits, and ponds, or are just a naturalist at heart — this is the place for you. Bring your kids, grandkids, and the kid in YOU! Clearly I need to do a full post on the center. Someday soon!

This Valentine’s Day, I completely failed at making my heart healthy but I did make my heart happy. One word: chocolate. Actually, two words: Chocolate Cheesecake. How about three words: Chocolate Coffee Cheesecake. Said utterly divine cheesecake was shared with my husband, and I even generously let him have the larger portion. This generosity on my part might not have happened on any other day of the year, mind you — I am, in fact, a fan of chocolate — and nevermind the fact that a delightful 2nd-grade class shared with me a piece of Tres Leches cake just prior to the lunchtime date. Needless to say, I best plan lots of veggies for dinner tonight. And no one tell my kids how much dessert I’ve had today. Tell them instead that lots of veggies = lots and lots and lots of love.

I looked back at various heart pictures I’ve posted in the past, and I decided my love of native Texas plants just had to be shared again. All natives, all different plants. Can you ID them all?

So I finally got a picture of one of our friendly neighborhood opossums. It likes to visit the sideyard pond for a drink from time to time. I’m thrilled, because in one week’s time, I managed to get three wildlife photos I hadn’t had before — a rattlesnake and scorpion last Saturday, and now an opossum!

Now there’s a face only a mother could love (well, and me — but then again, I’m technically a mother, so I guess it counts).

Since Virginia Opossums are the only opossums living in Texas, there’s no question what species we have in our neighborhood. Virginia Opossums are our one North American marsupial. The young are born about the size of a bean, and they immediately crawl up to mama’s pouch to nurse and continue growing. When full grown, they will be about the size of a housecat. And then they’ll eat all sorts of anything — insects, fruits, berries, and even small mammals, birds, and reptiles. Perhaps that’s one reason why opossums do well in an urban environment (that and the fact that so many people still feed their cats outdoors, and opossums are big fans of cat food).

Opossums are sometimes called “living fossils” because they haven’t changed much in the past 50 million years. Here in Texas, they are our oldest mammal species. What’s nifty is that their lower body temperature makes them highly resistant to rabies and rattlesnake venom. 

Aside from that adorable nose, whiskers, and grin, check out the feet. Strong claws and opposable thumbs make opossums great climbers. They’ve even got a prehensile tail.

If frightened, an opossum might hiss at you before running away, quite an alarming sight if you get a good glimpse of its 50 teeth.  But when truly scared, an opossum can go catatonic for many minutes to a few hours (hence the term “playing possum”). Its heartrate and breathing slow down dramatically, so it is actually more in shock than just feigning death. 

Opossums are some of our most misunderstood urban animals. They are shy and non-destructive, and they are unlikely to carry rabies, but they will visit your patio if you leave cat food out. They might even share the cat food bowl with your pet. Sometime I might tell you the giant-rat story from my youth, but today I’ll just spoil the surprise and tell you that it turned out to be the most adorable juvenile opossum hiding in our curtains and not a giant rat at all. Ever since then, I’ve had quite a fondness for opossums. Just look at that cutie!

Yet more trees and shrubs in the ground — I wanted to take advantage of the fact that it is still winter, a great time to prune woody plants and plant woody prunes others. Of course, it being winter means that I mostly planted sticks.

Sticks are not the easiest to take photographs of — and not the easiest to admire in photographs, for that matter. But there is something remarkably fun in having your neighbors walk by as you dig a big hole in the ground and then put in… a stick.

Here’s my Texas Ash stick. We (and by we I mean my husband) dug a hole among the roots of one of our ancient Arizona Ash trees, the idea being that the Texas Ash will one day take the place of the non-native, way-past-mature Arizona Ash trees that were probably planted the same year the house was built. My job was dealing with the Texas Ash’s encircling roots, which I discovered upon removal of the plastic planter. What a tangled, sad, sad mess. I ended up having to cut quite a few of those roots so they wouldn’t lead to the tree strangling itself. I’m counting on the hardiness of the Texas Ash to recover.

For the birds, I chose a Red Mulberry tree. Plant in hand, I walked around the yard looking for a perfect spot. It turned out that the perfect spot was near our yard’s other Mulberry tree, which I’d apparently forgotten we’d had. Ah well, the more the merrier!

The Red Mulberry already has just a few leaves showing themselves, and a bug nymph stopped by for a visit.

And who wouldn’t want this adorable Mexican Buckeye? The challenge here is not stepping on it. I’ll need to put a cage around it else I manage to do just that.

Aside from budgetary reasons, the reason I plant small trees is that they have a better chance of adapting to Texas’ inconsistent water conditions and extreme temperatures than larger trees do. Their roots will grow where they find nutrients and space, instead of circling around each other because of forced confinement, like the Texas Ash we bought rescued.

Sticking with small plants also allows me to increase native diversity while keeping costs low. And I’m patient, knowing they’ll take a while to grow. I’m mostly patient, that is.

Though I primarily grow natives from Central Texas, of course, I’m experimenting with a couple of species that belong more in southern Texas, mainly because global warming is affecting our hardiness zone. A hard freeze might cause some dieback, but as I said, it’s an experiment. Mexican Olive is one I’m very excited about, if it makes it.

Among other Texas plants new to the yard, we added American Smoke Tree, as well as the shrubs Berlandier’s Wolfberry (it has thorns!), Coralbean, Narrow-Leaf Forestiera, and probably a couple of others I’m forgetting.

I keep saying that I have no more room for trees, and I really do think that if all these trees grow as planned, I’ll likely be at that point almost officially (I have one or two more remaining on my wishlist). Well, there’s always room for more understory trees….