dry

The weather right now is cold and dry. Most insects are waiting for the right moment to emerge. Animals are converged near water sources and there are very few new sights to see as everything is on hiatus, just like the people. An exception are the coyotes like this one. I have seen this coyote patrolling this territory before. I watched this one foraging in a fenced back yard (it easily leapt over a six foot fence), and open yard, and into a field of cranes, where it melted into the tall grasses. I could see the mouse trails it was following around the open yard (against the house walls) because of the dry dust. The field has a lot of voles actively kicking out dirt from underground tunnels.

The geese seem to be migrating north in the classic migratory "V" formations. The cranes look like they are staying put and fattening up more in the fields. This unwary one is a little too close to the hidden coyote, but I did not see any hunting behaviors from the coyote, or alarm in the cranes. Cranes are flock birds and use the many eyes to spot predators while others in the flock can put their head down and root out food from the ground.

A popular food choice for the birds would be a beetle. Here you can see beetle tracks in the dust. They look like little tank tracks in the dirt. The biggest and most common beetles right now in the bosque are darkling beetles, but they are mostly hidden in the leaf litters.

This is a beaver track out of clear ditch, over the levee, and into the bosque. Beavers can travel much further than it would seem. This track looked very well used by a family. Some of the beaver dams in clear ditch have been broken open, my guess is by young people, but I can imagine the MRGCD is not too happy about the beaver activity either. They have been mowing the edges over the last few days.

We had a brief flurry of insects with the sun, but today the weather is cloudy. I was not surprised to see elm bud covering fluttering down. The birds that can are trying to eat to stay warm from the cold front coming in soon. The insects that attracted them into the bosque are now vanished without the heat from the sun to activate them.

The buds are likely a form of survival food for the sparrows, juncos and other passerines in the area right now. Many birds are probably reliant on bird feeders and bird baths at the moment.
 

Birds are expert migrators and carry many things around on them in their travels. This purple poop suggests some birds have found a mulberry tree fruiting somewhere (pretty sure not anywhere nearby, but could be an ornamental). The Southeastern US has a cold front over it right now, and I'm guessing we have some small bird visitors here from eastern Texas right now.