80AcresOnline
type: channel
description: Wildlife Management & Prairie Restoration, Small Scale
date: 2017-06-03T05:33:37Z
update period: hourly
update frequency: 1
update base: 2000-01-01T12:00+00:00
generator agent: https://wordpress.org/
items: Back to Reality
items: A Bit of Fun
items: New (so far) Species
items: Mystery Plant: New One for the 80Acres Plantlist
items: June 16, 2015 Is the Rain Over?
items: May 5, 2016, Between Rain Events
items: Earth Day 2016
items: Queen of the Prairie: Big Bluestem
items: October Butterflies & a Moth
items: April on the Land

Back to Reality
type: item
creator: elizabeth
date: 2017-06-03T05:21:31Z
subject: Activities
subject: photography
subject: Wildlife
subject: census
subject: documentation
subject: wildlife management
description: Yesterday morning as I went outside, I saw a very small cicada on the kitchen storm door. I thought immediately of one seen some years back (turned out to be four years) in the same place, photographed then and identified by Bill Reynolds, an expert on cicadas at BugGuide.net. First I went back inside and […]
encoded: Yesterday morning as I went outside, I saw a very small cicada on the kitchen storm door. I thought immediately of one seen some years back (turned out to be four years) in the same place, photographed then and identified by Bill Reynolds, an expert on cicadas at BugGuide.net. First I went back inside and got the camera, then photographed it, then went to BugGuide to compare…and sure enough, it’s the same critter. Length about 1/2 inch (not counting wings.) <img fetchpriority="high" decoding="async" class="aligncenter size-medium wp-image-1327" src="http://www.80acresonline.org/blog/wp-content/uploads/2017/06/Small-cicada-bright-06-01-2017-300x176.jpg" alt="" width="300" height="176" srcset="http://www.80acresonline.org/blog/wp-content/uploads/2017/06/Small-cicada-bright-06-01-2017-300x176.jpg 300w, http://www.80acresonline.org/blog/wp-content/uploads/2017/06/Small-cicada-bright-06-01-2017.jpg 400w" sizes="(max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px" />Pacarina puella Little Mesquite cicada This is a much better picture than the one from June 8, 2013, when it was nearly dark and lightening the image was by histogram adjustment, not “one stop photo fix” as above: <img decoding="async" class="aligncenter size-medium wp-image-1328" src="http://www.80acresonline.org/blog/wp-content/uploads/2017/06/small-cicada126-300x216.jpg" alt="" width="300" height="216" srcset="http://www.80acresonline.org/blog/wp-content/uploads/2017/06/small-cicada126-300x216.jpg 300w, http://www.80acresonline.org/blog/wp-content/uploads/2017/06/small-cicada126.jpg 400w" sizes="(max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px" /> <img decoding="async" class="aligncenter size-medium wp-image-1329" src="http://www.80acresonline.org/blog/wp-content/uploads/2017/06/hist-adj-wings-small-cicada123-300x193.jpg" alt="" width="300" height="193" srcset="http://www.80acresonline.org/blog/wp-content/uploads/2017/06/hist-adj-wings-small-cicada123-300x193.jpg 300w, http://www.80acresonline.org/blog/wp-content/uploads/2017/06/hist-adj-wings…

A Bit of Fun
type: item
creator: elizabeth
date: 2017-06-02T18:05:04Z
subject: Uncategorized
subject: identification
subject: new species
description: There’s a site that will generate imaginary moths if you retweet its Twitter account (@mothgenerator) and tweet you an image of the same. I thought it would be fun to see if I could get it to do an 80-acres moth. And it did. Turns out whatever message you send that account turns into a […]
encoded: There’s a site that will generate imaginary moths if you retweet its Twitter account (@mothgenerator) and tweet you an image of the same. I thought it would be fun to see if I could get it to do an 80-acres moth. And it did. Turns out whatever message you send that account turns into a moth named whatever you sent, with “the” in front and “moth” after. Here’s the 80 acres moth <img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="aligncenter size-medium wp-image-1323" src="http://www.80acresonline.org/blog/wp-content/uploads/2017/06/80-acres-moth-300x169.jpg" alt="" width="300" height="169" srcset="http://www.80acresonline.org/blog/wp-content/uploads/2017/06/80-acres-moth-300x169.jpg 300w, http://www.80acresonline.org/blog/wp-content/uploads/2017/06/80-acres-moth-768x432.jpg 768w, http://www.80acresonline.org/blog/wp-content/uploads/2017/06/80-acres-moth-1024x576.jpg 1024w, http://www.80acresonline.org/blog/wp-content/uploads/2017/06/80-acres-moth.jpg 1200w" sizes="(max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px" /> And when I forgot that it’s a bot, and sent a thank you note to the account, I got another moth, this one named for the entire thank you tweet, but I’ve shortened it to the WOW moth, the first word of the thank-you. It fits. <img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="aligncenter size-medium wp-image-1324" src="http://www.80acresonline.org/blog/wp-content/uploads/2017/06/WOW-moth-300x169.jpg" alt="" width="300" height="169" srcset="http://www.80acresonline.org/blog/wp-content/uploads/2017/06/WOW-moth-300x169.jpg 300w, http://www.80acresonline.org/blog/wp-content/uploads/2017/06/WOW-moth-768x432.jpg 768w, http://www.80acresonline.org/blog/wp-content/uploads/2017/06/WOW-moth-1024x576.jpg 1024w, http://www.80acresonline.org/blog/wp-content/uploads/2017/06/WOW-moth.jpg 1200w" sizes="(max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px" /> Since these are imaginary moths, I can give them imaginary scientific names, right? Right. Both moths are in the same genus, since they are related through the Bot-fath…

New (so far) Species
type: item
creator: elizabeth
date: 2017-05-31T22:02:28Z
subject: Officialdom
subject: Water
subject: Wildlife
subject: Animal behavior
subject: insect
subject: new species
subject: reptile behavior
description: When talking about a new species, I need to make clear that it can have different meanings here: 1) a species we have not previously identified on the 80 acres (could be IDed or not, photographed or not…just something new seen), 2) a species not previously identified here which is documented, IDed, and added to […]
encoded: When talking about a new species, I need to make clear that it can have different meanings here: 1) a species we have not previously identified on the 80 acres (could be IDed or not, photographed or not…just something new seen), 2) a species not previously identified here which is documented, IDed, and added to the list, 3) a species none of the experts consulted can identify and consider a new (to science) species. So what have we had this spring in any of the categories? First, a planthopper that hasn’t been IDed yet…it’s been photographed, but not as well as I’d like. It was on the kitchen windowscreen one late afternoon, and the next day (when the light might’ve been better) it wasn’t. <img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="aligncenter size-full wp-image-1312" src="http://www.80acresonline.org/blog/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/Planthopper-UID-04-30-2017.jpg" alt="" width="274" height="400" srcset="http://www.80acresonline.org/blog/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/Planthopper-UID-04-30-2017.jpg 274w, http://www.80acresonline.org/blog/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/Planthopper-UID-04-30-2017-206x300.jpg 206w" sizes="(max-width: 274px) 100vw, 274px" /> May 22, I had an hour outside after a stormy night and found two new-to-us species, both now IDed thanks to BugGuide.net. <img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="aligncenter size-full wp-image-1313" src="http://www.80acresonline.org/blog/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/UID-fly-fixed-05-22-2017.jpg" alt="" width="400" height="392" srcset="http://www.80acresonline.org/blog/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/UID-fly-fixed-05-22-2017.jpg 400w, http://www.80acresonline.org/blog/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/UID-fly-fixed-05-22-2017-300x294.jpg 300w" sizes="(max-width: 400px) 100vw, 400px" />Fly in genus Archytas <img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="aligncenter size-full wp-image-1314" src="http://www.80acresonline.org/blog/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/UID-insect-orchard-05-22-2017.jpg" alt="" width="400" height="286" srcset="http://www…

Mystery Plant: New One for the 80Acres Plantlist
type: item
creator: elizabeth
date: 2016-06-19T17:56:56Z
subject: Plantlife
subject: identification
subject: native plants
description: R- found a tall blooming plant Saturday, June 18, that he didn’t recognize: a colony growing in the creek woods, in the ‘swamp’ area, now very wet again. There’s a kind of “sandbar” (except it’s not sand, but alluvial mix from flash floods including black clay) that gets midday sun. He found a colony of […]
encoded: R- found a tall blooming plant Saturday, June 18, that he didn’t recognize: a colony growing in the creek woods, in the ‘swamp’ area, now very wet again. There’s a kind of “sandbar” (except it’s not sand, but alluvial mix from flash floods including black clay) that gets midday sun. He found a colony of these, 4 feet and more tall, and since he didn’t have a camera with him, he pulled the shortest one to bring back and show me. It was about four feet. By the time it got back to the house, it was fairly limp, the main stalk actually broken. I snipped it short enough to fit in a pitcher, hoping it would perk up. Some of the pictures were taken shortly after that; over time it did regain turgor so this morning I set it outside for a bit and took more pictures. Clearly Mint Family–square stem, opposite leaves, flower shape. The color appears pink in some lights, lavender in others; this image was taken in late afternoon. Here’s some flower detail taken in the same session. I started looking for ID with my old Peterson Field Guide to Wildflowers of North-eastern and North-central North America, Ajilvsgi’s Wildflowers of Texas (and could not find my Peterson for Texas & the Southwest, which I didn’t put back on the shelf the last time I used it (DUh!) I’ve found the Peterson useful even when it’s not this region, as this is a transitional region. Looking there, I was leaning toward Stachys tenuifolia. It was getting late, but even so I pulled out the monster, Correll and Johnston’s Manual of the Vascular Plants of Texas and looked at the various Stachys entries…S. tenuifolia was listed for east fourth of Texas, which we aren’t, but I’ve found eastern plants in various nooks and crannies here, esp. in the creek woods. (American elm, for one.) This morning the cut end in the pitcher had soaked up even more water, and twisted its spike round to point at the window of the back door. Many of the flowers had dropped, but it looks like more may open further up the spike. I set i…

June 16, 2015 Is the Rain Over?
type: item
creator: elizabeth
date: 2016-06-19T17:52:19Z
subject: Activities
subject: Land
subject: photography
subject: Plantlife
subject: Wildlife
subject: beauty
subject: bird behavior
subject: native plants
subject: natural water
description: The rain stopped a week ago; the winter grasses are brown or browning, the early wildflowers have gone to seed. But soil moisture is still good. The tallgrasses (switchgrass, Eastern gama, Indiangrass, big bluestem) are doing very well (switchgrass in the secondary drainage is taller than we are.) There’s an area in the east grass […]
encoded: The rain stopped a week ago; the winter grasses are brown or browning, the early wildflowers have gone to seed. But soil moisture is still good. The tallgrasses (switchgrass, Eastern gama, Indiangrass, big bluestem) are doing very well (switchgrass in the secondary drainage is taller than we are.) There’s an area in the east grass we call “The Bowl” because it’s a roundish area that seeps in wet weather as it slopes down to the old drainage line. It stays green longer. When we got the place, it was covered with broomweed (non-native), bare under the broomweed with a few scattered grass plants, not doing well because of the chemical defense of the broomweek. Today it looks like this: You can see the upslope edge (pale beige of dry grass) Every different shade of green, every native plant, reveals something about the soil where it is. I took that picture sitting on one of the little lawn tractors at the bottom end of the bowl, the much wetter end (just dry enough to drive on now.) In the foreground are large flowering sedges mixed with meadow dropseed. Under them are small flowers, such as meadow pink (Sabatia campestris) and coreopsis and prairie bluets (ranging from white to light lavender.) You can’t really see the scattered taller Texas bluebell (actually a gentian, Eustoma exaltatum (prev. grandiflorum) in this image (there were two, but too far away to show.) It was very bright, hot, and breezy, which made photographing individual flowers…tricky. The lower end of the Bowl is now rimmed with switchgrass (mostly) and Eastern gama that we planted for erosion control (along with the checkdams. A mowed maintenance trail across low end of The Bowl; R-pic shows the SW corner of the bowl–see brown grass beyond; secondary drainage turns left at clump of trees. We spooked a bird from the switchgrass that then perched in the tree to the L. More on that later. We have four gentian-family wildflowers in wet years like this, but I don’t usually find three of the four in the s…

May 5, 2016, Between Rain Events
type: item
creator: elizabeth
date: 2016-06-19T17:44:33Z
subject: Activities
subject: photography
subject: Plantlife
subject: Water
subject: Weather
description: Most but not all the surface water has dried up, soils that were seeping and running with water last week are dry enough to walk on in regular shoes. Main grass: Queen Anne’s Lace, gaillardia, scattered bluebonnets stiff-stem prairie flax, coreopsis, goldthread, Venus’s looking glass, skullcap, green antelope horns, others With enough water running on […]
encoded: Most but not all the surface water has dried up, soils that were seeping and running with water last week are dry enough to walk on in regular shoes. Main grass: Queen Anne’s Lace, gaillardia, scattered bluebonnets stiff-stem prairie flax, coreopsis, goldthread, Venus’s looking glass, skullcap, green antelope horns, others With enough water running on the surface for long enough, we can have an abundance of wet-weather plants, including some in the mint family. One of the showiest is obedient-plant, which we transplanted planted a shovel-full of from a wet area about to undergo “development” somewhere else. It grows several feet tall, if it’s really happy–always at least 18 inches–with these big, glowing, lavender flowers that catch the light. Bees love it. The honeybees wrestle their way inside from the front; bumblebees more often bite a hole near the nectar. It has slowly spread over the years since we introduced it–faster in wet years, of course. Right here it’s growing with wild onion (at the end of its flowering) and is overlapping other flower types the bees enjoy. Bees were too busy toward late afternoon to let me catch them on anything but the obedient plant. Although I didn’t photograph bees on anything but this, I did see quite a few butterflies and caught this one on Queen Anne’s Lace. It’s a Common Buckeye, with the sun coming through one wing. Also with a preference for damp soil–but not growing in water–is Venus’s looking glass, a delicate little plant with purple star-shaped flowers along a single stem. We don’t see these in dry years. On slightly damp ground, a smaller mint-family plant with lavender and white flowers: Toward the bottom-center of image is another, even smaller mint-family plant just past flowering The two together in a glass of water. The Brazoria, the larger, is almost scentless; the tiny one, which has rosy-pink flowers that are darker red inside, grows thickly on damp areas of the east grass, is intensely aromatic. Some year I me…

Earth Day 2016
type: item
creator: elizabeth
date: 2016-06-19T17:40:06Z
subject: Activities
subject: Land
subject: photography
subject: Water
subject: Weather
subject: Wildlife
description: Earth Day 2016 It had rained in the day before, and dawned cool, with a northeast breeze–a perfect day to go checking the water quality on the east half of the place. Not as much rain as the previous weekend, so with some difficulty I was able to make it from place to place in […]
encoded: Earth Day 2016 It had rained in the day before, and dawned cool, with a northeast breeze–a perfect day to go checking the water quality on the east half of the place. Not as much rain as the previous weekend, so with some difficulty I was able to make it from place to place in ordinary walking shoes. In the distance, the line of woods along the seasonal creek; to the left the “dry woods” growing on a hump of rock. Out of sight to the left, the line of trees along an old ditch dug by a former farmer, intended to carry runoff from the highway to the south property line . A beautiful day, with signs of recovery from the drought…and signs of much management still needed. I have no equivalent pictures of what the place looked like 30-odd years ago when we moved to this town. We didn’t have a digital camera, and we didn’t own the 80 acres. It was then under the management of a decent-enough farmer who leased it and ran some cattle on it–but with care. I had permission to ride my horse out on it, and did so. It was slightly overgrazed, and the farmer disked and planted “improved” pasture grasses in one area, sometimes mixed with red-top. Up at the highway end, the owner sold a corner to someone who wanted to build an auto-repair place. Later, a construction firm moved in, and wanted more land; the owner sold it, making significant notch on that end. The farmer who’d been leasing it grew older, died, and both his place (adjoining this, west of our 3 acres) and this were leased to a man who ran as many cattle on it as he could. Grass diminished. Ashe juniper invaded; he didn’t clear it off; there were hundreds, both east and west of the dry woods. The two gates by which cattle left this field had deep gouges in hardpacked dirt (or deep mud, when it rained) and erosion occurred even in a two inch rain.In 2000, when we had the chance to buy it, grass had been eaten down to the dirt; some areas had less than 5% vegetative coverage; very little had thick native grass, the junipe…

Queen of the Prairie: Big Bluestem
type: item
creator: elizabeth
date: 2015-07-21T18:31:28Z
subject: Activities
subject: photography
subject: Plantlife
subject: grass
subject: prairie restoration
description: Why it’s called BIG bluestem: the pole is six feet tall Four grasses form the foundation of the tallgrass prairie biome in the US: Big Bluestem, Switchgrass, Indiangrass, and Eastern Gama. Before this land was broken to the plow, fingers of tallgrass prairie existed here in the wetter lower spots, with midgrass (Little Bluestem, Sideoats […]
encoded: <img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="aligncenter size-full wp-image-1294" src="http://www.80acresonline.org/blog/wp-content/uploads/2015/07/big-bluestem-CloudPav-7-21-15.jpg" alt="big-bluestem-CloudPav-7-21-15" width="300" height="350" srcset="http://www.80acresonline.org/blog/wp-content/uploads/2015/07/big-bluestem-CloudPav-7-21-15.jpg 300w, http://www.80acresonline.org/blog/wp-content/uploads/2015/07/big-bluestem-CloudPav-7-21-15-257x300.jpg 257w" sizes="(max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px" /> Why it’s called BIG bluestem: the pole is six feet tall Four grasses form the foundation of the tallgrass prairie biome in the US: Big Bluestem, Switchgrass, Indiangrass, and Eastern Gama. Before this land was broken to the plow, fingers of tallgrass prairie existed here in the wetter lower spots, with midgrass (Little Bluestem, Sideoats Grama, Vine Mesquite, etc) prairie on dryer slopes and shortgrass on the rockiest areas. This is not quite the southernmost bit of tallgrass country, but it’s getting there. When we bought the place, it had been farmed for cotton, corn, sorghum, and then “improved” pasture with non-native grass, and then overgrazed almost to the bare ground–was bare ground in places. One of our goals was to restore native grasses, including the big four. There were patches of Little Bluestem here and there. Larger patches of Indiangrass across the creek. One or two Switchgrass clumps. But no Eastern Gama and no Big Bluestem. We would see patches of it along some county roads, occasionally one in a field, usually a field left fallow for years awaiting development. Twelve years earlier, when we first bought the house and its few acres, we’d established a “grass garden” for native grasses that we began to salvage from construction sites and where narrow country roads were about to be scraped and widened, destroying the plants alongside anyway. Big Blue is one of those grasses. Each of the stands growing on our place now began as one spade’s worth of root div…

October Butterflies & a Moth
type: item
creator: elizabeth
date: 2013-10-18T01:49:12Z
subject: photography
subject: Wildlife
subject: beauty
subject: butterflies
subject: native plants
description: A cool sunny day after some rain: grass is green, fall flowers are in bloom–including some non-fall flowers, like a pear tree. Monarchs are migrating through, and this afternoon were busy among the Maximilian sunflowers. Most of those are short this year (dry previous winter and spring) but loaded with flowers. In this patch alone […]
encoded: <img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="aligncenter size-full wp-image-1289" alt="October-west-grass042" src="http://www.80acresonline.org/blog/wp-content/uploads/2013/10/October-west-grass042.jpg" width="350" height="234" srcset="http://www.80acresonline.org/blog/wp-content/uploads/2013/10/October-west-grass042.jpg 350w, http://www.80acresonline.org/blog/wp-content/uploads/2013/10/October-west-grass042-300x200.jpg 300w" sizes="(max-width: 350px) 100vw, 350px" /> A cool sunny day after some rain: grass is green, fall flowers are in bloom–including some non-fall flowers, like a pear tree. Monarchs are migrating through, and this afternoon were busy among the Maximilian sunflowers. Most of those are short this year (dry previous winter and spring) but loaded with flowers. In this patch alone (a few yards across) I saw five or six monarchs at a time. <img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="aligncenter size-full wp-image-1282" alt="monarch-Max-sunflower015" src="http://www.80acresonline.org/blog/wp-content/uploads/2013/10/monarch-Max-sunflower015.jpg" width="252" height="350" srcset="http://www.80acresonline.org/blog/wp-content/uploads/2013/10/monarch-Max-sunflower015.jpg 252w, http://www.80acresonline.org/blog/wp-content/uploads/2013/10/monarch-Max-sunflower015-216x300.jpg 216w" sizes="(max-width: 252px) 100vw, 252px" /> Some butterflies were so active I couldn’t get a picture of them, but one of my favorites showed up halfway around the long walk, in the “gully system.” <img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="aligncenter size-full wp-image-1283" alt="Gulf-frit-Max-sunflower072" src="http://www.80acresonline.org/blog/wp-content/uploads/2013/10/Gulf-frit-Max-sunflower072.jpg" width="350" height="362" srcset="http://www.80acresonline.org/blog/wp-content/uploads/2013/10/Gulf-frit-Max-sunflower072.jpg 350w, http://www.80acresonline.org/blog/wp-content/uploads/2013/10/Gulf-frit-Max-sunflower072-290x300.jpg 290w" sizes="(max-width: 350px) 100vw, 350px" /> This Gu…

April on the Land
type: item
creator: elizabeth
date: 2013-04-14T04:19:18Z
subject: Activities
subject: photography
subject: Plantlife
subject: Water
subject: Weather
subject: Wildlife
subject: beauty
subject: drought
subject: native plants
description: It was a dry fall, after a dry summer, and a dry winter followed the dry fall. Other places got rain–sometimes nearby–but we had none for months. March brought a little–April has brought a little–and now we have some flowers. The bluebonnets may be only 4-5 inches tall, instead of knee-high, but they’re there–in a […]
encoded: It was a dry fall, after a dry summer, and a dry winter followed the dry fall. Other places got rain–sometimes nearby–but we had none for months. March brought a little–April has brought a little–and now we have some flowers. <img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="aligncenter size-full wp-image-1272" alt="hist-adj_bluebonnets" src="http://www.80acresonline.org/blog/wp-content/uploads/2013/04/hist-adj_bluebonnets.jpg" width="350" height="234" srcset="http://www.80acresonline.org/blog/wp-content/uploads/2013/04/hist-adj_bluebonnets.jpg 350w, http://www.80acresonline.org/blog/wp-content/uploads/2013/04/hist-adj_bluebonnets-300x200.jpg 300w" sizes="(max-width: 350px) 100vw, 350px" /> The bluebonnets may be only 4-5 inches tall, instead of knee-high, but they’re there–in a few places–and should be able to make seed for another year. We had more through most of the dry winter, but many finally just died–or were eaten, since they were the only green thing out there. Fence-building is a constant chore–we bought the place with a lot of very old, raggedy 4-wire barb-wire fence with a few other bits patched in, and have been repairing and then replacing, bit by bit. This year we’re hoping to finish the west end fence (the south end of it was done a couple of years ago, but paused when illness took down the fence-builder for awhile. Then he set to on taking the south fence all the way to, and across, the creekbed while it was dry, last year.) This was in an earlier phase of working on the west fence, south of the tributary creek crossing. Here’s what the tributary crossing framing looks like today, plus Chief Fencebuilder hammering in a staple with the pickaxe: <img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="aligncenter size-full wp-image-1273" alt="new-Westbrook-fence244" src="http://www.80acresonline.org/blog/wp-content/uploads/2013/04/new-Westbrook-fence244.jpg" width="350" height="234" srcset="http://www.80acresonline.org/blog/wp-content/uploads/2013/04/new-Westbrook-fence…