In the first image, you see what some folks call a pill bug, but I have called them roly polies since childhood. What most folks don’t know about these little guys is that they are not insects. Instead, they are distant cousins to insects because they have an exoskelton and jointed appendages. They are an ancient lineage having been around since the Carboniferous period of the Paleozoic era which began some 300 million years ago. Pill bugs and their relatives during their long history began as ocean dwellers and some of them like our little friend here transitioned to living on land. Armadillidium vulgare in the family Armadillidiidae are also new comers to North America having been brought from the Mediterranean where their kind originated. You can read more about them at Animal Diversity.org.

In the second and third images, you see a member of the genus Araneus. The Arachnids or spiders and their kin, have been around a very long time. The oldest fossil Arachnid existed some 420 million years ago. The spiders appeared in the fossil record some 165 million years ago. (Wikipedia)

Spiders began as land dwellers and lived like tarantulas and wolf spiders of today making their living as ambush or pursuit predators. The web builders came along much later. Somewhere in this individual’s life, it lost a leg to a predator or something trapped in its web that could bite.

The last image is of a White-tailed Dragonfly, Plathemis lydia. Dragonflies have been flying around earth’s freshwater environments for 300 million years. This dragonfly is a member of the Libellulidae, or the Skimmer family. Libellulidae is the largest dragonfly family numbering 1000 species worldwide. 109 species in North America.

All of the above are Arthropods because they wear their skeleton on the outside, and possess jointed appendages and other body parts. They are living fossils of ancient animal lineages that first left the sea to live on land. They are each beautiful in their own way and beneficial to their to their ecosystems.

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I love Bobwhite Quail. They are neat little birds that run along the ground which makes them difficult to photograph. These images were taken in or near the alley that borders my front yard. I am glad to see the numbers of these birds increasing in the area. And I may have more of these encounters if the stray cat numbers continue to stay low.

This bird is a male and is running from me because I tried to follow him and his friend to take their picture. I was careful to approach slowly and not to make any sudden moves. Somewhere in the process, I got too close and they began to move away from me.

Most of my pictures of Bobwhite are like these, quick snaps of a bird on the run. Makes them a challenge, and difficult to photograph without a blind and baiting them to a photogenic distance.

This image shows the male in front and the female following as they scooted out of camera range. She came with him into the yard but she was always far enough away that getting them both in the frame was not possible. Despite the technical frustrations, they are fun to watch and photograph when I can. These live in my neighborhood and it is always exciting to see them doing their thing.

For more information on these birds, you can pop over to the All About Birds website at the Cornell Lab of Ornithology. It’s where you can learn useful things like the family name for these birds has changed from Phasianidae to Odontophoridae sometime in the last 40 years. This site helps me make sure I keep up with the refinements in taxonomy. It is worth a look.

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This first image was taken by the crew of Apollo 8 on Christmas Eve in 1968 as they entered the orbit of the moon. It is called Earthrise. I display it here courtesy of NASA. Its significance is that it juxtaposes the moon and the earth against the blackness of space. It shows just how tiny and isolated our “big blue marble” is relative to our nearby universe.

On 09-15-2006, the Cassini spacecraft out past Jupiter took this picture of “home”. This view was provided by the Cassini Huygens project between NASA, the European Space Agency, and the Italian Space Agency. (Thank you, NASA/JPL/ and the Space Science Institute) The spacecraft was about a billion miles from home when this shot was taken. Our “big, blue, marble” is no more than a pinpoint on the left side of the image where it appears through the rings of Saturn.

The third image shows earth in a view from beneath Saturn taken by the Cassini craft on 7-19-2013. This shows Mother Earth shot from beneath the rings of Saturn. Earth is 898 million miles away. (Once more, thank you, NASA/JPL/ and the Space Science Institute)

I have left out the Pale Blue Dot image taken in 1990 by Voyager 1 as it left our solar system at 3.76 billion miles from home. I recommend that you visit Wikipedia to see the image and their article; and especially, to read the words of Carl Sagan regarding this image and man’s place in the universe.

The fourth image is the Hubble Ultra Deep Field 2014 image which is a composite of separate exposures taken from 2002 to 2012 with Hubble’s Advanced Camera for Surveys and Wide Field Camera 3. It is a composite of a small, but hugely distant part of our universe (5 to 10 billion light-years away). Each of the spots or shapes in the images are galaxies. The milky way of which we are a part is a galaxy. (Thank you, NASA, ESA, H. Teplitz and M. Rafelski (IPAC/Caltech), A. Koekemoer (STScI), R. Windhorst (Arizona State University), and Z. Levay (STScI) ) Note: that a light year is the distance light travels in a year’s time which is 5,879,000,000,000 miles (5.88 trillion). Multiply that number by 5 or 10 billion years, and you will have the distance in miles to the galaxies in the photo in miles which is between 29,395,000,000,000,000,000,000 miles and 58,790,000,000,000,000,000,000 miles from earth.

I have included these images to give you some perspective on this place we call our universe and where our earth resides in all of this. Need I say, that the universe is a HUGE place and we, with all our wants, needs, and desires are but a miniscule part of it all.

As far as we know, currently, earth is the only place in all the vastness of space where life occurs. Ponder that for a moment.

We as a species, as far as we know presently, are the only living things that have managed to create technology to allow us to explore beyond the confines of earth.

By the same token, we have at our disposal the means to vastly alter parts of our planet and create changes that could lead to our extinction as well as the extinction of many other living things on our planet.

One thing we do know, our planet is dynamic and it exists within a dynamic solar system and universe. We have lots of evidence that nothing stays the same over long spans of time.

Since we do not fully understand the consequences of our actions, I would advocate acting in ways that promote the reasoned use of our planetary resources with an eye towards preserving the variety of life on earth. Cost versus benefit is a ludicrous standard to measure the worth of the genetic heritage contained in each and every species on earth. Failure to conserve species diversity means an end to “undesirable” species by extinction which could ultimately mean our own demise.

Until we move out into the solar system, we live on a planet with finite resources. Wise use does not mean infinite expansion of our species’ numbers and economies needed to support those populations. Nor, does the unrestricted exploitation of “our planet” for personal gain promote our ultimate survival.

I like clean air, clean water, and freedom from pollution that can affect my health and longevity. I am opposed to those who burden the rest of us and our planet with practices that create pollution, health hazards, and ecological harm in order to increase their profit margins. I long for the days when we value what each citizen on our planet can contribute to the well being of themselves, others, and our planet rather than piling up meaningless sums and perversions of power to the detriment of all.

So call me a tree-hugger, an environmentalist, or whatever buzzword you wish. What is inescapable is that we live in a universe and on a planet that we should be striving, more than we do, to understand and learn better ways of coping with natural and self-inflicted hazards. To fail at these tasks, means we cease to exist. The universe will continue on its way like it has for the last 14 billion years. The question that faces our species, is will we be there, too?

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I was catching the latest spring wildflowers in the Spring of 2017 when I encountered the butterfly pictured above.

This butterfly is the Juniper Hairstreak also known in scientific circles as Callophrys gryneus. It belongs to the blues, hairstreaks, and harvester butterfly family, Lycaenidae.

In the second image, two Juniper Hairstreaks are visible. There were at least six individuals on this particular Green Milkweed (Asclepias viridis). In all of the pictures I made of these beautiful creatures, none of them show what the tops of their wings look like. You can go to the Butterflies of America website to see what their wingtops look like.

The last image shows 3 butterflies busily nectaring from the milkweed flowers. The shape of the flowers resembled antelope horns to somebody long ago and they hung Green Antelopehorns on this plant as a common name.

These pictures were taken in an area of West Texas known as the Cedar Breaks which is a transition zone between the High Plains and the Permian Basin. There are lots of Junipers and Cedars in this area for these little beauties.

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This little Broad-headed Skink (Eumeces laticeps) has had an encounter with a predator, most likely some bird, that has marred her beauty but saved her life. Skinks are fairly small creatures, this one from nose to the base of her tail is 3 to 4 inches. She would normally be invisible in the litter on the floor of the forest where this picture was taken. She was scampering along the handrail of a boardwalk when I happened along. She was kind enough to pose for me and I have a series of photographs from this magical encounter. Most of the skinks I have ever seen were brief glimpses of them scurrying off at high speed. I was very lucky to be able to spend as much time with this tiny creature as I did.

Notice her yellow racing stripes, 2 down each side and her blue tail. Not all skinks are this colorful, many of the ones I have seen are dingy brown or grayish. The skinks as a group have a shiny, almost glass-like quality to their body scales. I suspect that slick, shiny appearance helps keep the dirt and mud from sticking to them.

If you look closely at the picture, you will see that this colorful, little lizard is missing the end of her tail. Many of the smaller lizards have a defense mechanism where a special band of muscles near the end of their tail can constrict when they are attacked and break off the end of the tail. The tail tip will squirm and wiggle.

The skink is betting its life on the wiggling tail tip distracting the predator while it makes a quick exit to safety. The lizard sacrifices a small portion of its tail in exchange for survival. The lizard, if it lives long enough, will regrow the missing tail to its former glory. And that, folks, is the end of my skinky tale.

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On a recent trip to Fort Collins, Colorado, my wife and I visited the University of Colorado’s Trial Gardens. We photographed these members of the incredible Daisy family during our walk through these beautiful gardens.

This first image shows Cosmos ‘Sonnata White’. The Cosmos genus has over 36 species, and is native to Mexico, the southern US, and Central and South America. Cosmos bipinnatus been a favorite of plant breeders for many years. Cosmos reminds me of a wildflower common throughout Texas and elsewhere called Thelasperma filifolium, Greenthread. As it turns out, Cosmos and Thelasperma are in the tribe Corepsideae within the Daisy family Asteraceae.

Here is a beautiful variety of Cosmos bipinnatus called ‘Apollo Pink’ produced by PanAmerican Seed.

This variety is called ‘Apollo Carmine’. As you can see, the plants are pretty much the same except for flower petal color. The handiwork of plant breeders produces many colorful choices for our gardens! Did you CDB (see the bee)?

Here is a single bloom of Osteospermum ‘Sunny Atilla’ produced by Beekenkamp in the Netherlands. Osteospermum, native to Africa and the Arabian Peninsula, has about 50 species; but, most of the hybrids sold as garden plants in the US are hybrids between O. jucundum, O. ecklonis, and O. grandiflora. Beekenkamp plant breeders used O.ecklonis to produce what you see here.

Here you see ‘Sunny Atilla’ displaying its full range of colors, from nearly white to milky lavender. I love the range of colors in this variety. A symphony of genetics!

Pictured here is a close cousin of Osteospermum, called Calendula ‘Radio’. The Calendula genus has 15 or more species and is native to the parts of Europe and Asia surrounding the Mediterranean. Calendula officinalis is the species commonly cultivated. I like the yellow-orange of the petals of this variety. Read more about the Pot Marigold here and here.

The final image is of the Taishan Orange F1 variety of an “African” Marigold called Tagetes erecta produced by PanAmerican Seed. This species is really a native of Mexico which points out why scientific names are needed to eliminate the questions raised by common or commercial names assigned to a species. This variety was used to decorate landscapes in the 2008 Bejing Olympics. I love their huge, globular flower heads and their rich gold color, beautiful.

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During our first December in West Texas, we experienced an ice and snow storm that left its aftermath on the ground through New Year’s.  During this time, I set up a bird feeder in the Elm tree in the front yard. As you can see, the snow is deep enough to keep Ms. Cardinal from finding something to eat beneath.

She spent some time in the snow, and then would perch in the dead Lantana vines while eyeing the nearby snow for any seeds she could spot that might have spilled from the bird feeder.

Several different kinds of birds came to my bird feeder. Here you see a female Northern Cardinal, Cardinalis cardinalis, and a male House Finch, Haemorhous mexicanus, sharing the bounty of the bird feeder. You can see their opposites at the bird feeder here.

Nothing went to waste because there were plenty of hungry birds who came by and picked up the seeds that others had spilled while feeding.

Ms. Cardinal was kind enough to pose for me despite the cold and busily searching for food. I got to see and photograph many different kinds of birds that spend the winter in West Texas. From the amount of the seeds consumed, my one little bird feeder helped keep many of them from starving while waiting for the snow to melt. I like song-birds and sometimes they need a little help from their friends.

It is now the fall of 2018, and I haven’t seen many cardinals this year. We had snow in early November for about a day. It has been wet enough this year and warm enough that my feathered friends are going elsewhere to eat. One thing you can count on in observing wildlife is that things change and sometimes you get to make pretty photographs and sometimes you don’t. Happy trails, all.

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The frog pictured here is a Green Tree Frog, Hyla cinerea. I was visiting the Fort Worth Nature Center and Reserve on a cool spring morning in 2012 and found this little guy on a sedge leaf growing on the edge of a marsh.  These frogs are found throughout the southern U. S. and Fort Worth is on the western edge of their range. I felt very lucky to see this little fellow because they are usually in the canopy of southern forests far from the ground. This frog was about 2 inches long and about an inch wide. The coloration here is typical for this species but their color can vary from yellowish to dull greenish to slate gray depending on the time of year and their activity. This little fellow was pointed out to me by a fellow hiker and was so well camouflaged I would have walked right by him and missed the chance to take his picture. I have seen this species in its natural environment only once in my lifetime.

This frog belongs to the family Hylidae. This is a diverse group that contains over 450 species and are distributed world wide. As a group, they are slim-waisted, long-limbed, and small in size. Females are generally larger than the males. In North America, members of this family include tree frogs, chorus frogs, and cricket frogs. Most folks learn that these creatures live in their area and learn to recognize their calls as evidence of their presence. The males of each species of these frogs have unique sounds they make to attract potential mates which make the night time forests musical places in the spring time. All frogs have to lay their eggs in water where they hatch and develop for a time as tadpoles, eventually becoming frogs which return to the environments where the adults live.  I was lucky that I happened to be there when this individual was heading back to his treetop home.

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The head waters of the Cache la Poudre River are in Rocky Mountain National Park and it winds its way along 126 miles of scenic beauty to join the South Platte River near Greeley, Colorado. You can climb the mountains along this river on a scenic drive out of Fort Collins along state highway 14.

The formation of what we call the Rocky Mountains is a long complex tale of mountain building, erosion, innundation, and subsequent mountain building (orogeny). The rocks that form the walls of the Cache La Poudre canyon are metamorphic gneiss made from Precambrian age granites of the Ancestral Rocky Mountains which were heated and compressed during the Laramide Orogeny between 80-55 million years ago.

The gneissic banding seen in this photo is not only beautiful but tells the story of heat an compression experienced by these ancient granites on their way to becoming the metamorphic gneiss seen here.

In this image the foliation or layering of the gneiss is visible. The immense pressure and high temperature experienced by the granite while metamorphosing into gneiss is what produced the sculpture you see.

From the size of the rocks in the Cache La Poudre river bed and along the bank in the foreground, you can tell that large amounts of water moving rapidly through this area in the past pushed these heavy monsters down stream.

Scenes like this are why the Cache La Poudre River has been designated a national scenic river.

This is and example of Bird’s Foot Trefoil Lotus corniculatus from the pea family Fabaceae. This plant is both a native and an introduced species to all parts of the US and Canada. It is widely used for hay to feed livestock and serves as a food source for deer, elk, geese, ducks, and pheasants.

This is an example of the Rubber Rabbit Brush (Ericameria nauseosa)
This plant reminds me of Prairie Broomweed (Amphiachyris dracunculoides) that grows all around where I live. Rubber Rabbit Brush will be eaten to a limited extent by livestock but it is valuable to wildlife during the winter.

This is a closeup of the flower head of the Rubber Rabbit Brush. This plant is part of the Daisy family (Asteraceae) but has flowers that do not make you think Daisy flower at all.

In the last image, you see an example of Western Aster (Symphyotrichum ascendens) another member of the Asteraceae family which produces beautiful, tiny lavender flowers with yellow disk florets. The USDA says that this plant is sometimes mixed in with other seed types to help stabilize disturbed or damaged soils. Beautiful as well as useful.

All these sights and creatures can be seen and enjoyed on a short day’s drive up the Cache La Poudre River Canyon just west of Fort Collins, Colorado on state 14. Worth the trip, and good for your soul.

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When we first came to West Texas it snowed right before New Year’s. It was a big snowstorm and I felt sorry for the local birds since finding food underneath the snow was difficult at best. So, I put out a feeder loaded with seeds and during the few days that it was up, I got to meet several new species of birds I had never seen before. This fella is a Curve-billed Thrasher, Toxostomata curvirostre.

I had previously encountered brown thrashers in Fort Worth, and they were notoriously difficult to approach closely enough for a good picture. I was stunned by this bird’s willingness to let me crunch on icy ground within 20 feet of the Hackberry tree in the front yard. Of course, it was pretty cold and the bird feeder nearby was on his mind.

Here he is on the feeder, and you can see that it was designed for much smaller birds. He also seemed to prefer corn because he passed all the smaller seeds over for the kernels of corn he could reach.

The bird feeder was suspended on a single strand of monofilament fishing line and tended to pivot. This little fella persisted in hanging on and contorting himself while he fished for corn kernels. He had to flap a bit to keep from falling off. His size tended to keep the smaller birds off the feeder while he was there, but the two thrashers that visited that day ate their fill and moved off so the others could land on the filling station and tank up.

The next year, we had thrashers visit during November to feast on the pecan crop.

When he got tired of shaking pecans, this guy perched on top of the telephone pole at the corner of the yard. I took this picture because he seemed intently interested in something below. No idea what, though.

These guys have brownish gray feathers on the back and brown speckles on a sandy white breast. They are the only bird I have seen in Texas with those orange eyes. The eyes and the recurved bill are the standout features of these birds.

They range all over the dry parts of the Southwestern United States and on into Mexico. My part of Texas is on the eastern edge of their range. They are part of the Mimidae family which includes the Mockingbirds and all the other species of thrashers. When I first saw these, I was reminded of Mockingbirds. They are lively creatures with intense orange eyes, remarkable. It was fun to get the chance to watch them do their thing.

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