refuge

The rufous begin their migration across the gulf of Mexico (hurricane free right now).

And new residents move in with the colder weather, cranes, ducks and geese. The heron above was probably here all summer. Bird individuals are hard for me to distinguish.

The water levels in Scuzzy have returned to normal levels again after a dry spell of a week or so. The resiliency of the wetlands is astonishing. Tadpoles and adult frogs are back in areas that 2 days ago was hot, baked, stinking mud. The water is crystal clear now though; organisms like bacteria and microscopic plants haven't yet colonized to the levels to make the water cloudy. In the picture above you can see the swirls of duckweed (on the Left) pushing against the resident snotweed beds(on the Right). This area is loaded with small fish and bullfrog tadpoles; full of new nutrients at the boundaries of old versus new.

The colder nights are bringing the spiders closer to the human habitations. The feared black windows mostly are only out in their webs long after sunset. Preying mantis are hunting small moths attracted to porchlights.

Did you know there are just under 6,000 species of ladybug? This one is in the "oblong, or maybe convergent ladybug" family. I used to think ladybugs and mantis were only released by rose gardeners to control aphids. Turns out there are plenty of wild ones too!

A whole bunch of these guys turned up at my attractant lights Last night. Absolutely no idea what they are, stymied my trusty computer program too... some sort of moth, I think.

My neighbour has been blaming the squirrels for stealing his grapes. While cleaning the ditch of beer cans, I stumbled on this pile. Sigh, I guess some humans figured they were tasty, found out they are not store bought, and threw away a whole year's worth of growth...The ants are working on recycling them now...

Bats are even harder to get a good picture of than birds are. This guy was hunting over clear ditch (where the musk rats are found) and was huge. There are many species of these mammals around, they hunt small flying insects just before nightfall, but never easy to see well in the wild.