It’s slower population growth than in the past, but earlier, too.
In earlier years we’ve had cicada killer wasps — cicada hawks, in some parlance — as early as July 7. Rains fell all spring in 2010, which discouraged the emergence of cicadas and their predators. First certified sighting in our backyard did not occur until July 18.
Cicada Killer, with cicada - photo by Ronald F. Billings, Texas Forest Service, Bugwood.org, via University of Delaware Cooperative Extension
We had modified a planter, and that may have killed some of the larvae. Generally 2010 was a slow year for the large wasps. My guess is that they were less active locally because the ground remained wet through July and into August. I still get e-mails asking about how to get rid of them, and I still recommend watering the spots you want them to leave. The females sting and paralyze a cicada, then plant that cicada in a tunnel underground with one wasp egg. The young wasp hatches and feeds on the cicada, emerging usually the next summer to carry on the cycle (in a long summer, there may be a couple of hatchings, I imagine). Females do not like to tunnel in wet ground, partly because it collapses on them, and I suspect wet ground is conducive to fungi and other pests that kill the eggs or hatchlings. Our wet weather kept them away last year.
I waited to say anything this year because I wanted more, but we saw the first cicada killer wasps this year on June 27, 2011, the earliest date we recorded here. I had hoped to get a good photo, but that hasn’t happened yet.
Down at Colorado Bend State Park, the cicada killers greeted our arrival, much to the panic of the little kids in the campsite next door. They were happy to learn the wasps don’t aim to sting them, and the kids actually watched them at work. One of the wasps reminded me of just how much they like dry ground — she kept tunneling into the fire pit, unused now because of the fire bans that cover 252 of Texas’s 254 counties. Covering the holes, putting objects over the holes, nothing could dissuade her from using that site. I hope for the sake of the larvae that they hatch soon, and get out, before someone builds a fire in the pit. Some of the cicadas in that area hit 110 decibels at least, and they badly need the discipline of a force of cicada killers, if you ask me.
Prowling the yard this morning I found two more emergence holes. The wasps leave a smaller hole than the cicadas, so I’m pretty sure they are back in force.
It took me a couple of tries to figure it out — last week when I told people Kathryn and I were off to Colorado Bend State Park to spend time on the river, several people commented about how much cooler it would be there.
What? West of Killeen about an hour, ten miles of dusty road outside of Bend, Texas (population 1,637), Colorado Bend is not cooler than Dallas. It was over 100° F every day we were there, stayed well above 90° most of the nights.
Kathryn studied wildflowers at a spring at the side of the Colorado River during a break from kayaking; this spring's flow was reduced, but still moist enough to create a near-oasis.
Our well-wishers were geographically confused. They thought we were headed to the Colorado River in Colorado, not the Colorado River in Texas, which is not the same river at all. I didn’t bother to check the temperatures in Colorado, but one might be assured that it was cooler along the Colorado River in Colorado than it was along the Colorado River in Texas.
It was a return trip. We stumbled into the park 16 years ago with the kids, for just an afternoon visit. The dipping pools in the canyon fed by Spicewood Springs captivated us. It took a while to get back, and then the kids were off doing their own thing.
So, just a quick weekend of hiking/camping/kayaking/soaking/stargazing/bird watching/botanical and geological study. Park officials closed the bat caves to human traffic in hope of keeping White Nose Syndrome from the bats; we didn’t bother to sign up for the crawling cave tour through another.
The author, still working to master that Go-Pro camera on the hat -- some spectacular shots, but I don't have the movie software to use it all; you know it's hot when SPF 75 sunscreen is not enough.
What did we see? Drought has a firm grip on Texas, especially in the Hill Country, especially outside of Dallas. The Colorado River is mostly spring fed; many of the springs are dry. No water significant water flowed through the park while we were there — kayak put-ins have been reduced to the downriver-most ramp, and the bottom of the boat launch ramp is three feet above water. Gorman Falls attracts visitors and scientists, but the springs feeding it are about spent this year — just a few trickles came over the cliff usually completely inundated with mineral-laden waters.
Drought produces odd things. The forest canopy around the park — and through most of the Hill Country we saw — is splattered with the gray wood of dead trees, many of which at least leafed out earlier this spring. The loss to forests is astonishing. Deer don’t breed well in droughts; deer around the campsites boldly challenge campers for access to grasses they’d ignore in other seasons. One ranger said he hadn’t seen more than about three fawns from this past spring, a 75% to 90% reduction in deer young (Eastern White Tail, the little guys). Raccoons are aggressively seeking food from humans, tearing into tents and challenging campers for food they can smell (lock your food in the car!). Colorado Bend is famous for songbirds, including the endangered Golden Cheeked Warbler, and the elusive, spectacular painted bunting. But the most commonly-sighted birds this year are turkey vultures, dining on the young that didn’t make it healthy into the summer and won’t survive until fall.
Warming denialists’ claims of “not so bad a drought” ring out as dangerous, wild delusion. (By actual measurement, Texas average rainfall the past nine months was 8.5 inches, the driest ever recorded in Texas, shattering the old record drought of 1917).
Great trip. Kathryn’s menu planning was spectacular. The old Coleman stove — a quarter century old, now, with fuel almost that old — performed like a champ even without the maintenance it needs (later this week). Other than the hot nights, it was stellar.
Stellar. Yeah. Stars were grand. It was New Moon, a happy accident. A topic for another post, later. Think, “Iridium.”
So posting was slow over the weekend. How far out in the Hill Country were we? Neither one of us could get a bar on our phones. We were so far out the Verizon Wireless guy was using smoke signals.
Thoreau was right, you know.
Spread the word; friends don't allow friends to repeat history.
Lions Park in Duncanville, Texas, to be more precise. The dragon fly appears to me to be Neurothemis tullia, a Pied Paddy Skimmer, though I believe that is considered an Asian species. [But see note at the end of the post.]
Closely related? An exotic introduced to Texas? Here we had cotton fields, not rice paddies. The wings look like those of a Pied Paddy Skimmer, but most of the photos I’ve found show a black body, and this one is definitely gray. Hmmmm.
Dragon fly, Pied Paddy Skimmer, Neurothemis tullia - photo by Ed Darrell; copyright 2011, use permitted with attribution
Dragon flies look mean. As a very young child I was terrified of them, growing up on the banks of the Snake River in Idaho. My mother, a farm-raised girl, took me out for a walk among the diving, softly-humming aerobats, and explained they had no stingers, they ate other insects, and they seemed to like humans, if we’d watch them. As we watched, she held out her hand and a dragon fly landed, as if to say, “Hello! Listen to your mother. She knows us.”
Dragon fly takes a higher vantage point. Is this species exotic in Texas?
Up Payson Canyon, in Utah, at Scout Lake I passed many early morning hours, and many noon siestas, in the reeds watching the dragon flies. When we were in our canoes or rowboats they’d fly at us like rockets, appearing to think they were torpedo planes, then fly up, or right or left, at the last possible second, to avoid colliding with our craft. Through July they’d fly tandem, mating. This intrigued Scouts, and delighted them beyond measure when the nature merit badge counselor explained they were having sex. Red ones, blue ones, yellow, brown and black ones. Big ones, little ones.
Shortly after we moved to Texas, we discovered that a swarm of dragon flies probably meant a local colony of fire ants was casting off females, to mate and start a new mound of exotic, stinging terror. The dragon flies would catch and eat the queens-to-be. I had to use a broom to shoo off a neighbor with a can of insecticide, trying to kill the dragon flies in their work to keep us safe and happy. “But they look so mean,” she explained.
Judge no book by its cover (except Jaws); judge no insect by its eye apparel, or human eye appeal.
Northern Light Productions made the film for the “Canyon Visitor Education Center in Yellowstone National Park. The film offers a compelling overview of the ‘big picture’ geology that has shaped and continues to influence Yellowstone and its ecosystem.”
Big picture geology? How about making this film available to schools to talk about geology, geography, and history?
Yellowstone National Park annually gets about three million visitors. Yellowstone is one of those places that ever American should see — but at that rate, it would be more than 100 years before everybody gets there.
We need good, beautifully shot, well-produced, interesting films on American landmarks in the classroom.
How do we get this one freed for America’s kids, Yellowstone Park?
Spread the word; friends don't allow friends to repeat history.
New program from Yosemite National Park’s “Nature Notes.”
This one has something to appeal to the heart of almost everybody: Photos from Ansel Adams, photos from Galen Rowell, interviews with sons of each, discussion of the (properly) much-maligned old “firefall” of hot fire coals for tourists — and the story of the natural firefall one might see, if the conditions are right, and if one is in Yosemite in the right place, on the right days of February.
This video was produced by Steven M. Bumgardner, with extra camera help from Josh Helling. Those guys do great work. It features photographer Michael Frye, Michael Adams, Ansel Adams’ son, and Tony Rowell, the son of Galen Rowell.
Spread the word; friends don't allow friends to repeat history.
It’s on private land, on Fly Ranch (from which the geyser and a nearby reservoir get their names), but visible from a public road. You can find it about 20 miles north of Gerlach, on former State Route 34 (now County CR34) – in Washoe County in the northwest of the state. From Interstate 80, one would need to drive west from Winnemucca on Nevada State Road 49(?), or north from Wadsworth on state highway 447, to Gerlach.
Locals drilled a well at the site in 1916. For more than 40 years the well produced water with no problem. But in 1960, the well blew out. Hypothesis is that the well passed through heated rocks that contained water, and this heated, pressurized water blew out the well casing. The geyser has been erupting since 1960, building the impressive mineral mountain seen in the photo.
Great mysteries of science, history and spirit call to us: How do the monarch butterflies do it?
Monarch butterflies (Danaus plexippus) fly north from their enclave in Mexico every spring, stopping to lay eggs on milkweed plants. After a migration of several hundred miles, that first group that left Mexico dies off. Their offspring hatch in a few days, devour the milkweed, make a chrysalis, metamorphose into butterflies, then fly farther north, where they repeat their parents’ behavior: Lay some eggs, and die. Within three generations, they’ve spread north into Canada.
Inviting the monarchs in: You can see how Kathryn worked to attract butterflies. In this photo, you can see the butterfly weed (a milkweed), red Turk's cap, and blue ageratum especially for the monarchs.
Then the fourth generation does something so strange and wonderful people can’t stop talking about it: They fly back to Mexico, to the same trees their great-great-great grandparents left. There they sip some nectar, get some water, and spend a lot of time hanging in great globs, huddling over the winter, to start life for generations of monarch butterflies the next spring.
Sometimes in Texas in October, we can see clouds of monarch butterflies winging south. If we’re lucky, they stop to visit our backyards and gardens, and we might provide some water and nectar to urge them homeward. Kathryn, of course, plants the stuff the monarchs like, to help them, and to give us a chance to see them.
Monarch habitat in Mexico is under severe stress and threat. Late storms and early freezes decimated monarch populations over the last decade [yes, that’s the proper use of “decimated;” look it up]. Human plantings are more critical to the monarch butterflies than ever before.
Two years ago Kathryn and I spent a September morning outside the library at Lawrence University, in Appleton, Wisconsin, watching monarchs sip nectar from local flowers for their journey. Those same butterflies — we hope — passed through Texas a couple of weeks later.
Two weeks ago . . . well, see for yourself:
A monarch butterfly feeds on blue porterweed in Kathryn's garden, October 2010 - photo by Ed Darrell
. . . we're here with the camera, little guy, just open up those wings, please . . .
That's it! Beautiful! Have a safe trip, and come back next spring, will you?
Turk’s Cap passes under a lot of aliases: Drummond Wax-mallow, Texas Mallow, Mexican Apple, Red Mallow, May Apple, Wild Turk’s Cap, Bleeding Heart; Malvaviscus drummondii (M. arboreus var. drummondii)
Butterfly weed — there are several plants that take this name in various parts of the country, this one is Asclepias tuberosa, but Kathryn’s bloom redder and more intense yellow than any of the photos I’ve seen on line.
Gulf fritillary butterfly on blue porterweed, Dallas, Texas — photo by Ed Darrell — use free with attribution
A gulf fritillary (Agraulis vanillae (Linnaeus, 1758)) on blue porterweed, Stachytarpheta urticifolia, also known as blue rats tail, or nettleleaf velvetberry. Dallas, Texas, August 9, 2010.
This fritillary hung around for a few minutes.
Kathryn plants butterfly-attracting plants — a concept that was new to me when she introduced it at our home in Cheverly, Maryland, with several plants that acted like butterfly magnets, to my astonished delight. We first ran into the brilliant orange gulf fritillaries in 1988 or 1989 here in Dallas. For the past few summers, fritillaries have not been frequent visitors in our yard.
Kathryn stepped up the butterfly plantings this spring, including passion vine (Passiflora incarnata). The passion vine twines toward one of the bird feeders, but in the past week or so has been losing leaves — to caterpillars of the gulf fritillary, it turns out. Blue porterweed attracts all sorts of butterflies, but the fritillaries have been rather common, no doubt hoping to give their progeny a little boost with the passion vine, their favored food.
Butterfly afficianadoes in Dallas are urged to plant milkweed and butterfly bush to help the monarchs, whose populations are stressed by the recent cold winter, dramatic reductions in habitat, and destruction of their sanctuary trees in Mexico where they migrate each winter. But all butterflies could use some habitat help, I think. The rewards are great.
Gulf fritillary on blue porterweed, catching the morning sun
Butterfly plantings will attract butterflies, guaranteed. Gulf fritillary enjoys some blue porterweed nectar.
Spread the word; friends don't allow friends to repeat history.
Cicada killer wasps appeared as early as July 7, in our yard. This year we had a cold winter, with snows that appear to have stymied even the nasty, invasive Argentine fire ant. But June was dry and hot. July came with rains, and cicada killers don’t like wet soil to dig in.
For that matter, we don’t have many cicadas, either.
Plus, we had to tear down a planter box attached to the dining room window, since it hid termites too well. No doubt that planter had young from the cicada killers in it.
It became really apparent during the rains last week.
Snails crawl up the walls and plants around our patio, and appear to wait to die there. We’ve moved them back down to the soil, and they climb up again.
Kathryn remarked at the army of snails on the garage wall, beneath a bird feeder . . . that was the clue.
I don’t think ours do that eye-stalk thing. Worse for the parasites, most of the birds ignore the snails.
MacDowell’s book kept me out of church for at least a decade.
In the later pages he talks about how many copies of the Bible there are, and he says that’s an indication of how accurate it is, and that it’s the truth. That’s like saying any document I create becomes more truthful the higher the number of Xerox copies I make.
I figured that was one of the stupidest claims ever made. Maybe it was the crowd I was in with, but the more devout Christians (except for the Mormons, but that’s a different tale) swooned over the claim. I thought that any belief system that was so devoid of logic, and which required adherents to abandon all reason, was foolish.
About five years ago I picked it up again when one of our youth ministers asked me about it, and I skimmed through it again looking for any cogent, careful and compelling argument. Of course, this was long after law school and due diligence work in the law . . . I thought it more foolish than I had found it years before.
I summed it up this way for the youth minister: If there were evidence, we wouldn’t need faith. We call it a faith proudly, and we discuss the mysteries. It’s a tragedy that MacDowell has been divorced from that sweet part of Christian discovery and leap of faith. Were there evidence enough for a verdict, we’d not need faith, and it would be impossible to be anything other than an agnostic who has found the evidence.
Your mileage may differ, but if so, you need a tune-up.
Ed Darrell
Dallas
Spread the word; friends don't allow friends to repeat history.
Kathryn’s cousin Amanda Holland writes from her great adventure helping to rescue the California Condor, with this photo of the Moon, behind clouds and haze, over the mountains, from Hopper Ranch.
Here’s where I feel the pangs of leaving biology behind for rhetoric, then politics and law. Probably the best part of research in biology was the places one had to go. The best adventures involve getting to and back from the places researchers must go to get data or samples.
And now, with electronic cameras and cards that will easily accommodate 1,000 photos, images are easy to capture.
Some of the images I wish I could get back: Moonrise over Shiprock*; the rattlesnake who liked to hide in the equipment box at the New Mexico Agriculture Experiment Station; the field of asparagus at the Experiment Station, poking up through the desert for the first time (I wonder if they decided to grow asparagus); thunderstorms at Shiprock and over Kimberly, New Mexico; sunrise in Huntington Canyon, Utah; looking nearly into Nevada through crystal air after a summer thunderstorm near Seeley Mountain. There are a lot more, really.
Adventures past: We remember them warmly. Getting out in the wild, doing the hard, grunt work necessary to learn about endangered species, or save them, or just improve conservation practices, is close to godliness, and among the greatest pleasures life can offer.
More:
See this photo of Shiprock and Moon, probably by a photography named William Stone; this photo of Shiprock and storm, by Radeka, is good, too; at one time my job was to drive from Farmington, New Mexico, past the Shiprock everyday, to get air pollution samples. The Shiprock rivals Mt. Timpanogos in my personal pantheon of great mountains I grew up with.
Spread the word; friends don't allow friends to repeat history.
Hummingbird moth (Hyla lineata?) breakfasts at the lavender in the front yard - photo by Ed Darrell
Kathryn planted lavendar on the front walk. It crowds the walk, so you have to brush by it coming in or going out of the house, and sometimes you get a great whiff of lavender.
On the way back from getting the newspaper this morning I was greeted by this hummingbird moth sipping its breakfast from the lavender blossoms. It was too dark for natural lighting. The flash froze the wings, and exposed colors that you can’t see as the little creature hovers.
Or, until that account is unsuspended by the forces supporting Donald Trump: Follow @FillmoreWhite, the account of the Millard Fillmore White House Library
We've been soaking in the Bathtub for several months, long enough that some of the links we've used have gone to the Great Internet in the Sky.
If you find a dead link, please leave a comment to that post, and tell us what link has expired.
Thanks!
Retired teacher of law, economics, history, AP government, psychology and science. Former speechwriter, press guy and legislative aide in U.S. Senate. Former Department of Education. Former airline real estate, telecom towers, Big 6 (that old!) consultant. Lab and field research in air pollution control.
My blog, Millard Fillmore's Bathtub, is a continuing experiment to test how to use blogs to improve and speed up learning processes for students, perhaps by making some of the courses actually interesting. It is a blog for teachers, to see if we can use blogs. It is for people interested in social studies and social studies education, to see if we can learn to get it right. It's a blog for science fans, to promote good science and good science policy. It's a blog for people interested in good government and how to achieve it.
BS in Mass Communication, University of Utah
Graduate study in Rhetoric and Speech Communication, University of Arizona
JD from the National Law Center, George Washington University
Posted by Ed Darrell 
Millard Fillmore's Bathtub 
