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:

Meanwhile, I went off to check the water at Owl Pavilion (the rain barn we built on the SW corner of the place, that collects rainwater for the wildlife waterer there.    Pedaling along on my new vehicle is faster than walking, and the back basket lets me carry quite a few things–though today it was the camera, binoculars, and a denim overshirt…started out cool.

We planted several native flowering plants in the area–firecracker bush, mealy blue sage,  and–spectacular in this drought spring–a Texas columbine in the pool below the artificial spring that runs when the solar panel has enough light.

While I was waiting for the  system to refill from the big tanks, I spotted a male black-chinned hummingbird on one of the old juniper branches sticking out the top of a brushpile.

He kept coming back to that perch repeatedly while I was there.    Then it was back to the house, a little less than  a mile ride away.

You can see how dry and not green the grass is here; there’s some low green grass under it, but nothing like April should be.    Still, we had some rain last week, so I expect more flowers will try to come out and set seed before it gets hotter.

Let me go back 13 years, to our original plans for the 80 acres.  Wildlife management, and prairie restoration on the overgrazed, juniper-invaded former grassland portion.   Retention and enrichment, by interplanting natives, of the two natural woodlands–the riparian near the creek (which then flowed, and had flowed, every year) and the rock-ridge “dry woods” of native brush and some trees, up on the rocky knoll.   The plan worked well for the first five or six years, including dry years.    Reintroduction of native grasses, forbs,  shrubs and trees seemed to be working; ground cover increased, as did the number of species of wildlife.    We did include plantings leaning toward the land south and west of us by several hundred miles,  knowing that it twas lkely to become dryer and hotter over time.

But between years six and eight, we realized that climate change was overtaking us faster than anticipated–and by year ten, we were dealing with a regression in progress.  Natives to this region, some of which had survived the years of bad management without any help…were dying.   The creek no longer flowed most of the year (it now does not flow at all…has not had normal flow (and only a couple of flash-flood pulses) for over two years.)    Both native plants and native wildlife diminished–our joy in seeing increasing diversity in the first years of good management was gone, and the goals were no longer included  “prairie restoration” since it became clear that the old natives could not survive.  Our garden could not survive, as night-time temperatures climbed higher every summer (tomatoes, for example,  will not set and mature when nighttime temps are too high.)   The small town we live in has wells, but the wells aren’t producing as they should; we’ve been on water restriction now for several years.  Reservoirs in the area are dropping, many below 50% of capacity.   The population (and demand for water) continues to grow.

“Climate zones/planting zones” are based purely on the length of the frost-free growing season.  That works for most (not all) garden plants, but it’s not the only determinant for native plant life.   Every plant has a preferred habitat:  maximum and minimum temperatures,  amount and distribution of precipitation,  humidity (impacts plant’s water management), maximum tolerable wind,  soil type (including both the structure, from tight clay to gravel,  and the pH–whether acidic or basic),  soil depth,  soil temperature (some seeds germinate only in hot soil; others only in cool soil),  the presence or absence of specific soil nutrients and microbiota,  a specific day-length cycle (great difference in daylength through the season, or less to no daylength change.)

Plants differ in how much leeway they can handle in each of these parameters.   I remember my Native Plants prof fulminating against those who planted azaleas (acid-loving) as landscape plants in Central Texas…which has a basic soil over limestone.   The university put them in raised beds and treated heavily with iron and soil acidifiers…but eventually the azaleas’ roots reached the limestone below….and they died, and had to be replaced.    Some plants can handle moderately acidic soils to moderately alkaline, basic soils…they’re generalists.  But not all.

In a small garden or yard, creating a fairly neutral environment suited to all the generalists and some of the pickier plants may be possible.  If the gardener has access to supplements, to ample water, to climate altering enclosures (a greenhouse for some,  shade cover for others.)   We gardened very successfully in San Antonio (about 130 miles south of us)  by digging out heavy black Houston Clay and making our own soil by mixing it with sharp sand,  composted horse and chicken manure,  bedding from horse stalls, leaves, etc.   It was intensive gardening, and we grew several dozen varieties of vegetables.

But when dealing with open land,  that’s not possible, especially in drought conditions.    What, then, can we do, when the predictions for change outpace the possible interventions?    When the change seems to be outpacing the predictions?  Just picking plants from straight south of us won’t work, because of the soil differences.  I grew up 400 miles south of where I live now; I know the original botany of that area well.   The soil was a light sandy loam, very deep, alluvial in origin, from repeated floods of the  Rio Grande.     Native vegetation had two basic forms: along the resacas and the river itself,  taller riparian woods; away from the permanent water,  “brush” and grassy openings.  The brush consisted of low woody trees, woody understory, cactus,  and almost everything had thorns.    As you moved away from water and onto higher ground, the brush lowered–sometimes less than waist high.  It’s notable that it’s closer to the Gulf, and thus more likely to pick up both humid air and hurricane rains when hurricanes occur than here–several hundred miles inland.   In northern Mexico, the same kind of semi-desert brush country (modified by ag, but that’s its nature) exists, with more forest (where it hasn’t been logged)  at higher elevations in the mountains that start about there.

Here, the soil is thinner, with a higher pH (more alkaline) and was formed under prairie and over limestone: it’s a dense dark clay, where there is soil left.  It’s a completely different soil from that 400-500 miles south.  Its soil microbiota are different.   Generalist brush plants (mesquite for instance, and huisache) will grow here, but neither is a shade tree in the usual sense, and both support a different kind of wildlife from the local live oak, cedar elm, ash, pecan trees, with the understory of viburnum, roughleaf dogwood, and other plants, all with a lot of berries both migratory and resident birds enjoy.    Our upland brush is different too: Ashe juniper, cedar elm, occasional live oak, with  elbowbush, Mexican buckeye, for understory woody plants.    Wildlife here depends on these familiar plants for food and habitat.

Loss of frequent standing and running water on the land has already meant the loss of species that were previously increasing under our management of water conservation and relief from livestock grazing.    This included fish, most amphibians (some still live in the large backyard water garden),  and invertebrates such as crayfish.    We had been increasing the number of species of odonates…now they’ve reduced, as the breeding habitat has disappeared.    Despite having four wildlife watering stations, we have fewer birds (both in numbers and species)  as habitat degrades with the death of favorite nest trees, and the gradual loss of species of food plants in every category, from lichens to trees.

We did attempt to bring in natives from a similar soil type but 100+ miles to the SW (southern part of the Edwards Plateau) but  those trees, despite supplementing water as long as we could, finally died.   Young trees are not as drought tolerant as older ones, up to a point.    South of there…are no trees that will live here without adequate water we don’t have, or altitude and rainfall we don’t have.

We have quit planting trees.   We are still seeding grass, but not planting root divisions of the taller grasses (in part because the “grass garden” in which we nurtured and propagated tall grasses native to this area and scavenged from construction sites is no longer producing enough; in part because the ones that had taken hold and seemed thriving are now dying back.   Instead, we’re seeding only short-grass varieties and will be adding more.   We’re looking at adding forbs from more western, dryer areas as well.     We’ve increased the storage capacity at the rain barns for wildlife water–but there’s no way to collect enough rainwater to water everything.   We hope to save a few of the household trees, simply for the cooling effect of the shade–but water restrictions are making that a very slim possibility.

It’s  a brown spring around here.   Looking out at the land, it might be winter,  all grays and browns, but for a few trees leafing out, some grass in ditches where the soil stayed damp longer.    And we’re fighting to keep anything alive, and water available for the spring migrant birds….and expecting the worst again this summer.

This is not how the land should look in early June: we should still have at least half the grass green, and the June flowers in full bloom.    This is a typical August picture: brown land, hard blue cloudless sky full of heat.   Before climate change really began to show here,  mid-June to mid-July looked more like the picture at the top of the blog.   But this is the third dry year, though we had enough rain in April and early May to produce thi river of gold (claspleaf coneflower) in mid-May, in the lowest part, where water had run for a few days.

Up on the knoll, Cactus Flat lost cactus in the last two years of drought–cutting into the food supply for wildlife that lives on cactus fruit and seeds.

Along with cactus die-back (all three major types we have: prickly pear, horse-crippler, and plains nipple cactus)  we’ve lost trees of all species in this area: live oak, Ashe juniper, hackberry, cedar elm.

However, because we did have some rain (unlike last year) and water in the creek and gully system for over a month, some soils and areas on the place look better–and it’s a good year for the misnamed Texas Bluebells, actually in the gentian family, and–on our place–ranging in color from lavender to deep royal purple.  Formerly classified as Eustoma grandiflorum, they’ve been a victim of retroactive taxonomy changes and at this point I’m not sure whom to believe, although I like the name E. exultatum (and that inspired the title of this post.)

Here they are scattered along the west gully system, which gets overflow in flash floods, and also runoff from the field to the north–it’s filling in slowly and is no longer a raw scar.  Unfortunately, it’s not possible for a picture like this to show the way these clumps of cool purple glow in the sun.  Much of the green here is other forbs–Maximilian sunflower, that will bloom later in the year.  Some years this sunflower is already 3-4 feet high by mid-June, but this year it’s only about knee high and that lets the purple bells show.  On our place, they come in a range of shades; here are several.

When a plant is in full bloom like this,  top-heavy with flowers,  it sways in the slightest breeze.  When we moved here, there were several low meadows along the creek, downstream, that were reliably a mass of purple in June, but changes in management destroyed those colonies.   The old women in town, back then, told me that when they were girls these flowers were so abundant along every creek, in every water meadow, that they used to make wreaths of them, and cut them for flowers for weddings and for table decorations.

Our first look at the 80 acres, before we signed the contract on it,  was a bit daunting–it was overgrazed, eroded, almost bare, in a drought August (but not a drought like the one we’ve been in.)   But in the gully, two of these plants held one flower each–a promise that the land wasn’t dead, and needed only better management.

Now they’ve moved from their original site up and down the gully system and out onto the flat (but sometimes moist) area around it.  Even a considerable distance from the gully, in among Ashe junipers, as here:

They’re not the only flower blooming: these Brown-eyed Susans are mature, but still brighten the day:

Winter is a fine time to work on fence, and he’s been busy on the west end fence since some windstorms dropped trees on it.

Yes, there’s a fence under that limb nearest the camera.

A week or so ago he finished the T-intersection where our south fence runs into the west fence, with additional bracing to handle both south of our line and running north.

The west fence runs approximately a quarter mile to the next corner.  Some parts we’ve worked on before, but it’s time to make it all right and tight.   Yesterday, after putting one of the big posts in down the line, he decided it was six inches off the boundary.  That meant pulling the post out (by hand), redigging the hole, and putting it back in.

It’s a BIG pole.  It’s a LONG pole.  It won’t have to be done again.

The “thonk” noise when it hit bottom was impressive

We don’t want the big post to lean in any direction.

Those piles of dirt need to go in the hole.

After the post and dirt were in, he took the chainsaw down to clear the fence of the newest blow-downs.  I took the camera and found this:

Both the yaupon and possumhaw suffered in the drought and summer’s extreme heat this year; we were afraid we wouldn’t see any of the bright, cheerful winter berries…but they are, on at least this (one of the thickest-berried, usually.)

None of my bird pictures came out today (a hammock is not a steady base for photography!) but we had four or five species of wintering sparrows at Owl Water, more Fox Sparrows than I’ve ever seen at one time before.   Also five (or maybe six) Harris’s Sparrows, as well as White-crowned,  Chipping, and (heard only) White-throated.

Another survivor of the drought and heat was this Mealy Blue Sage–it died to the ground in summer (the dead stalks as visible) but returned with the first rain this fall and is actually blooming, rather cautiously.

]]> http://www.80acresonline.org/blog/?feed=rss2&p=1243 3 http://www.80acresonline.org/blog/?p=1232 http://www.80acresonline.org/blog/?p=1232#comments Sun, 16 Oct 2011 02:30:34 +0000 elizabeth http://www.80acresonline.org/blog/?p=1232

Monarchs nectaring on Gayfeather (Liatris sp.)

This year has become our new record for both heat and drought.  According to TX-Butterfly (a listserv I’m on) monarchs took a more westerly course this year across drought-stricken Texas, but yesterday another list member and I both reported a lot of monarchs flying by or nectaring east of the Balcones Fault line–between there and I-35.    Yesterday I had guests from Seattle; we went out on the land and found monarchs nectaring on Liatris, gayfeather, one of the very few things blooming this year.   Usually we have lots of Maximilian sunflower, frostweed, and the gayfeather, and then some late other flowers.

This year we have dead grass,  deer-browsed sunflower stalks (and not many that are flowering at all) and no frostweed.   Those magenta stalks are the largest patch of Gayfeather;  some of it was stunted (grew to be less than half that height and then dropped its needle-like leaves) and some of it didn’t really flower until after last weekend’s rains.   But the monarchs seem to like it a lot.    So do some large bees (I don’t know the species yet.)

I didn’t see any other species of bee on the Gayfeather, but there were a lot of these, and they were competing with the monarchs for perching space.  I did see other butterflies–Orange Sulphur, a little skipper that flitted off before I could get a good picture, and something even smaller.

I was out later than our guests yesterday (had spent the morning and midday in the city at a choir rehearsal)  and it was breezy enough to make the Gayfeather stalks sway, so a lot of the pictures show windblown blurs of purple and orange.    But here are a few more of the monarchs.

All the larger patches–and some individual stalks–had monarchs nectaring on them; the multi-stalked plants usually had 3-6.

For comparison: here are pictures of monarchs during migration in 2006:

Monarch on Maximilian sunflower

Monarchs on Frostweed in creek woods (note green leaves of understory; this year that area is dead-brown.)

Like many others interested in monarch migration and survival (which is in doubt due to multiple factors, mostly human-related, from climate change to development to the use of measures to control insect pests that also impact non-pests like monarchs) I worried before the migration season how these insects could make it across the hundreds of miles of dry, flowerless Texas.

One thing I learned from specialists on the listserv is that monarchs can “nectar” on the sugary fluid produced by aphids on tree leaves–but many of the trees have died.   Not all, however, and the hardy Gayfeather is producing flowers and nectar now, as these monarchs and the bees prove.

East margin of creek woods–August 2011-leaves turning & dropping

Cactus Flat: even the prickly pear is drying out

We have been in the brown–the worst color-code for drought–for months.   We have not had regular (non flood-pulse) flow in the creek for over a year and it has been totally dry for months on our land, and dry at the sound end of town (perhaps a mile away)  for at least six weeks.    Thirty two years ago, when we first moved here, the creek never went dry at the south end, and most years puddles survived in the dryest months at our end, right up into this century.  Since 2003,  we have had completely dry creekbed–no puddles–for a period of every year, and an increasing length of time as well.   Since 2004, the creek has dried up completely at the south end.

So it’s not one summer of drought, but year after year of dry.

There is no natural water on the 80 acres.   Water for wildlife comes from the rainwater storage systems–the rainbarns and tanks–and it has not rained since we finished the third pavilion this year in June.  (It hadn’t rained before that, but the critical thing is–no rain has fallen for the tanks to collect.)  Thus wildlife find water only at Fox (north side), Owl (SW corner) or in our yard.   Stock tanks in everyone’s fields have gone dry.  The creek is dry above and below us.

Every morning we find the night’s tracks anywhere the dust is soft enough.

After seeing them every morning and comparing them to the tracks in a book, I can ID most of them: the raccoons, armadillos, opossums, foxes, coyotes, squirrels, rabbits, mice (not to species!), large insects, snakes, lizards, birds… many thirsty critters use our walking and tractor tracks as their highways and they use all the water sources heavily.

Every week, more leaves turn yellow, then brown, then fall.   Every week more trees and shrubs and grasses and forbs simply die.  There’s less food for wildlife.  There’s less cover.  And the relentless heat–day after day well over 100F–and lack of water take their toll.  Birds hunch in what shade they can find, beaks open, panting like dogs…right next to water.

It’s depressing to keep taking pictures of it–though it’s necessary because there are people who just don’t get it–so I’ll throw in some less dire images:

Two juvenile Painted Buntings (species of concern) perching above Owl Water.  In good years, a nest will produce four.

The large backyard water feature, designed for wildlife, allows dragonflies like this Common Green Darner, ovipositing on vegetation, to reproduce.  Many birds and mammals also use this larger resource, as well reptiles and amphibians (breeding population of leopard frogs and toads.)

With less rainfall, and longer gaps between rains, it’s become harder to calculate how to build rain barns and size storage to ensure that there will be water available even in prolonged dry spells.    The recommendation on one site was to have enough storage to handle 90 days without rain.   Initially, Fox Pavilion’s 600 gallons of storage, with a summer use of 5 gallons a day, was ample.  That’s 120 days without a refill, and the tanks fill with less than 3 inches of rain.  It was ample until this summer.   But the extreme heat this year has mean more than 5 gallons a day usage, and we have not had a substantial rain since May 12-13.   One of the 305 gallon tanks is empty; the other is very low.

Owl Pavilion is in better shape: it has 5000 gallons of storage–but it’s a bigger system and uses more water (it’s where I keep finding 5 or 6 deer.)

In hot weather we always check all the water every day.   Although Owl will hold some water for two days,  raccoons sometimes pull the pump out of the lower tank, or disturb the sides of the artificial stream so that it leaks and the pump runs dry.    Leaving that unwatched for a day is…not good.   Usually one of us walks the circuit just about sunrise, when it’s cooler; if we’re delayed, we’ll ride the lawn tractor out.

In the creek woods, elms, bois d’arc, and hackberries are dying, as well as understory shrubs like roughleaf dogwood.  We had a small remnant population of American elms, some slippery elms, and a lot of cedar elms.

Nearly all the trees we’ve planted in the last ten years have now died, including those planted the first year or so that seemed well-established.  Trees here when we bought the place have died.    Some of the introduced  native grasses have died.

And both near and long-term forecasts are still…dry.

EDIT NOTE:  I forgot to include the picture of the lovely western coachwhip, taken early one morning:

I’m quite happy to have Western Coachwhips on the place, although it’s hard to get a picture of a whole one, as they’re very long and nearly always stretched out.  If one end’s in focus, the middle and other end aren’t.

This particular snake was out in the west grass, and I walked up on it.  Later in the morning, it was engaged in hunting a rabbit when I startled it again and it fled for the fencerow.  Sorry…we have plenty of rabbits and the snake’s welcome to one.  Or more.

]]> http://www.80acresonline.org/blog/?feed=rss2&p=1219 9 http://www.80acresonline.org/blog/?p=1206 http://www.80acresonline.org/blog/?p=1206#comments Fri, 08 Jul 2011 19:24:09 +0000 elizabeth http://www.80acresonline.org/blog/?p=1206 An unfamiliar plant shows up every now and then (more often after rains, and really often after flood events that move seeds from upstream above our property down into the damp areas.)    Over the weekend, my husband reported a plant new to him over on Westbrook near the south fenceline: a Composite, very small flowers and bicolored, like a miniature gaillardia, he said.  Plant up to three feet tall, straggly, with narrow (lanceolate to linear) leaves.  A couple of days later he brought back a drying specimen of the flowers; I tried to revive it in water so I could look it up, but no luck.

I finally made it over there early this morning, and as usual saw more than I came for.    First, while walking through the south end of the creek woods, I heard a bird I didn’t recognize (along with white-eyed vireos, cardinals, Carolina wrens, mockingbirds…)  and then I saw a flash of yellow and black…not a bird, but a large butterfly.   We’ve had more and more tiger swallowtails in the past few years, both in the house yards and down in the creek woods, but I’ve had little luck photographing them.  They’re strong flyers, skittish, and prefer to perch (when they perch) with plenty of greenery between me and them.   Today I got lucky.

This individual landed on the trail, in a spot of early sun.   As I tried to creep closer, it flew again but this time landed on a nearby bush, wings spread, with only one leaf partly obscuring a wing.

As this bush was in the shade, I used a flash.   My first assumption was that this was an Eastern Tiger Swallowtail, Papilio glaucus, because the range maps show it here, with a gap to the west before the Western (P. rutulus) species starts up.  But in the spirit of completeness, I carefully read the descriptions of both species.   According to Glassberg’s Butterflies Through Binoculars: The West, one key ID point is the color of the topmost hindwing spot: orange in Eastern Tiger Swallowtails; yellow in Western.  I checked with the older Peterson Field Guide book on butterflies: same point.

Only one top hindwing spot is visible in either photograph, and that one only partial…but it’s yellow.

You can see it just peeking out from under the trailing edge of the forewing.   That’s why I have a question in to the TX-Butterflies listserv:  could I have an out-of-normal-range Western Tiger Swallowtail (perhaps some individuals moved east to escape mountain fires in Arizona or New Mexico or West Texas?) or do some Eastern Tiger Swallowtails have yellow HW spots?  (When I get a definitive answer, I’ll update the blog…and, if it’s a new species for us, the species list.)

All this mystery before I even got to the new plant!!   After that I walked on through the woods (two smaller, duller butterflies fluttered away into a tall stand of giant ragweed: I didn’t follow.)    When I got to Westbrook, most of the plants (there were several) of the mystery flower were dying, the flowers dried to seedheads, but one had a few blooms still on it:

Sparse, small ray flowers, a domed head of disk flowers neither yellow-green nor dark brown/purple.  Each ray flower’s petal has three tiny lobes and was touched with a bit of red at the center.    Here’s what a spray of them looked like:

Given the drought and heat, with other Composites on the place showing smaller flowers (and particularly shortened ray flower petals) than usual, I don’t know if this is the normal size/shape of the this flower, or a response to drought.    At the moment it’s not easy to figure out from the easier books I have, and I’m short of time for digging into the big fat Manual of the Vascular Plants of Texas.   I’m thinking some species of Helenium, but I could sure be wrong.   So an image will go off to someone more expert than I, and if it’s a species we don’t already have, it’ll go on the list of plant species.

After that, I walked on over to Owl Pavilion to check the water level, and spooked a deer on the way through Dragon Alley (a narrowish passage between the south fencerow and the creek woods where dragonflies are numerous–and they were, but they were all flying rapidly above head level, so no photographs.   And the deer made it across the gap in two bounds before I could get the camera up.

On the way back from Owl, I was just at the entrance to Dragon Alley when I spotted glowing ears.    The thin ears of rabbits and hares (jackrabbits) glow like lanterns in the low slanting light early in the morning or late in the evening, making them easy to spot when the animal itself is well camouflaged.

I ran out of the telephoto lens, and started taking shots while moving very slowly forward.    Shooting up-sun with this camera is never as successful as I could wish but I like the glowing ears.   The cottontail was grazing, mowing the Dragon Alley grass.    Finally it hopped on across the grass and into the creek woods, and I went on by.

Although it’s extremely dry and hot, there’s still some green grass for grazers like the bunnies–and thus food for their predators, the coyote and fox and hawk.   Most of the grasses in Dragon Alley are natives, tough and drought-resistant.

ADDENDUM:  Two experts concur:  the butterfly is the Eastern Tiger Swallowtail on multiple ID points.   Just happens to have yellow HW spots.  I do love how quickly you can get expert consultation on such things online!

Fox Pavilion: 610 gallons storage max

Fox Pavilion was our first, designed to supply water to a ~35  gallon capacity water source circulated by a small solar panel.   You can see one of the 305 gallon storage tanks; the image below shows the waterer, hoses, and in the distance the solar panel on an overturned tub.    Except for the occasional chewed-through wire, this setup has functioned well for about 8 years now, with daily checks in hot weather to top up the water from the tanks.

Though Fox Pavilion–built on the rocky “knoll” with brush growing around it–did serve wildlife, it was only a small source, and easily overwhelmed during drought periods.   It was fine for small birds who preferred to drink alone or in small groups, but watching a flock of 30-odd cedar waxwings there suggested that we needed another design to serve birds that like to flock to water (and who, bathing, splash a lot of it out.

So our next rain barn, Owl Pavilion,  was planned for more water storage (2500 gallon tanks instead of 305 gallon)  and (to compensate for the space lost to the tanks) an observation deck that also provided shade in very hot weather.

Observation deck on east (left) end, 5000 gallons storage

Owl’s water feature, with roughly 500 gallons of capacity, includes a “rock spring” and two preformed tubs deep enough and large enough to allow planting aquatics to help filter the large nitrogen load more birds were expected to dump–and offered reproductive space to odonates and amphibians.  It was quickly colonized, after planting, with cricket and leopard frogs and several species of odonates, as well as other invertebrates.

Owlstream being laid out; pump is in round tub and also powered by solar panel

Birds quickly discovered “spring” from between rocks.

We soon discovered that–as we’d suspected–different species chose different watering holes.   The two rain barns were built in and near different habitats.

The newest rain barn, Cloud, suffered construction delays due to health setbacks, but is now almost finished.     It benefited from our previous experience, even so.  Like the other two, it has the same size roof area (and thus collection area) of just about 400 square feet.  Like Owl, it has two 2500 gallon tanks for storage.   In addition, it has an observation platform at each end, allowing additional viewing areas (and a different view from each end.)   This also made it possible to raise the roof more safely, and  with fewer helpers.

View from west several weeks ago.  Roof trusses up, purlins on.

Cloud from east today, with tanks in place, roof on.

Cloud Pavilion from north; 5000 gallons storage

When it’s completely finished (all gutters and downspouts installed) and the ladders are painted a less intrusive color, then it will be time to install the waterer itself, and the solar powered pump…and wait for rain to fill the tanks.    In the meantime, wild things are already interested in the rain barn, just as another habitat for exploration.  Birds, lizards, insects–and judging by scat, another gray fox and perhaps a coyote–have checked it out.

Rain barns were named by what we’d seen in their location: gray foxes near Fox while we were building it, a Great Horned Owl near  Owl before we built it,  and lots and lots of clouds from Cloud, any time there are clouds in the sky.  I’d like to put another two  on the place sometime–one in the east end near the secondary drainage, to make a permanent waterhole out of one of the natural pools, and one in the northwest meadow (to balance Owl in the southwest.)    In a drying and warmer climate, the more water we can store on the place, the better for wildlife and native plants both.    We’re still over 12 inches “behind” normal rainfall since last October, and the only reason it’s not worse was the 12 inch deluge in September (rain falling so hard and fast that it didn’t really restore our groundwater–it just ran off.)

Rain harvesting is the logical way to provide reliable water for wildlife (and people, if you have the roof area and know how to purify it!) and there’s no reason not to build rain barns that function for more than one purpose.

With the addition of a couple of chairs and maybe a hammock (I vote for both!)  you have a shaded area to rest in and observe from when you’ve hiked out to check the pump in hot weather.   You also have a roof closer than the house to run to when caught out by a storm.    You can stow supplemental feed (if you do that), tools, other equipment, and supplies under cover; you can have the same convenience for visitors (and, if there’s a group coming, you can pre-position an ice chest for them.)  If you use a four-wheeler or other small vehicle to move around the place, you can park it where the seat doesn’t turn into a griddle.

Water yield:   an inch of rain falling on 1000 square feet of roof will yield 600 gallons of water, on average.  (720 gallons falls on 1000 square feet, but you won’t catch it all.  Metal roofs are more efficient than asphalt-shingle roofs.)    So for a 400 square foot collection area, you’ll get 0.4 x 600 gallons, or 240 gallons.    Each side of the pitched roof will–in theory, with rain falling straight down–get 120 gallons (each side has a collection area of 200 square feet.)  Thus  three inches of rain will fill–overfill–a 300 gallon tank draining one side of that roof.

If you live where rain falls seldom, but heavily when it does–or falls for only one short part of the year–then you want to have the storage capacity to collect and store that maximum rain.    For us, that means having the storage capacity to hold at least 7 inches of rain (1/4 normal annual rainfall)  because 24 hour rains  in the 5-8 inch range occur almost every year, as do months without rain at all.    (We had a 7 inch rain shortly after finishing the horse barn and hooking up the new tanks–it filled them, just as calculations suggested it would.)  It would be better to have over 12 inches of storage, but that’s going to take buying and linking more storage tanks.     Owl and Cloud, with smaller collection area for the 2500 gallon tanks, can hold between 9 and 10 inches of rainfall.    We really need more storage at Fox:  in the current drought, we’ve come close to bottoming out the tanks there, since they can’t hold even a full three inches of rain.    600 gallons of storage was fine from 2003 through 2007, but it’s just barely adequate now.   We’re considering ways to add storage without destroying more of the limited “dry brush” habitat (which is very attractive to some wildlife.)   Easiest will be hauling two more 305 gallon tanks up there and connecting them in series.

How much storage is needed depends heavily on climate and rain patterns–the longer between rains, the more capacity you need; the hotter the climate, the more capacity you need; the fewer other water sources for wildlife, the more capacity you need; the more water in the actual water feature, the more capacity you need.    Consider surface area and placement as well as total volume of water:  shallow open ponds (very attractive to some wildlife, not to others) lose water to evaporation in hot weather faster than deep, narrow ones.

Consider aesthetics, too.  There’s no reason to ignore what your rain barn looks like….its overall proportions can be attractive without adding to the cost or the difficulty of building it.    (Having a soft green roof color instead of blinding “silver” did cost a bit more–but it looks that much better to us.)   There’s no reason to avoid making the waterer itself attractive…when you come into the shade after a morning’s work on fencing or mowing or some other chore, why not have a pretty wildlife waterer with the sound of water dripping?    Birds like it, and you can, too.

Smooth sumac, green and burgundy

We have three sumacs on the place: smooth, flameleaf, and aromatic.  Aromatic sumac (people who don’t like the aroma call it “skunkbush”)  changes in patchwork, not in stripes:

The bush as a whole looks as if someone had spattered it with paint–bright yellow and bright red.

One of our bur oaks was heavily covered with acorns this year,  and is now dropping both ripe and unripe ones.    Not only do bur oaks have great big leaves, but they have great big acorns, too.

The acorn facing up shows its unripeness with the green color.  But even unripe bur oak acorns are prized by acorn-eaters.    Here’s why:

When fully ripe, some bur oak acorns can be eaten out of hand without being soaked or boiled to remove the bitterness and astringency of the tannin.  (Trees differ.)    This one, being not fully ripe, wasn’t tasty–but getting there.  A big bur oak tree produced a lot of acorns (though not every year) and each acorn has substantial nutrition in it.    We found bur oaks and scavenged acorns, so now we’ve got bur oaks of different ages coming up here and there.  Those in the yard got some help with water the first year or so; those out on the land had to fend for themselves.    But eventually–more food for wildlife.

The backyard water garden is a good place to see interesting leaves in the fall–they stack up (and block!) the little mini-waterfall.   Virginia creepers are up in the pecan and ash trees, and drop multi-colored fringed leaflets; pecan, ash, roughleaf dogwood, hackberry, soapberry…each a different color and shape.

Maximilian sunflower is an native prairie plant;  we had remnants of it here and there, and it’s spread under our management.   Butterflies nectar on the flowers, birds and other wildlife eat the seeds.

The Maximilian sunflowers are blooming well this year, though they’re all short, less than half the height they are when never short of water.  But the Monarch butterflies don’t care, as long as the flowers are there.

Monarchs in fall nectar on a variety of plants: frostweed, gayfeather, Maximilian sunflower, and–the first time I’ve seen this–purple gerardia.   As it was a windy day, and this monarch was struggling to stay on the flower,  I had time for only one shot–and it turned impressionist:

I saw several other Monarchs–including another one on Maximilian sunflower–but they were too far away, or flying too fast, or otherwise unsuitable subjects.  However, though most of my Monarch pictures this year have been of males, the one that gave me the best images was a female (and spent a lot of time at each flower, allowing time for enough images to get that 5-10% of good ones.)

You can tell she’s a female because the veins on the wings are thicker and there’s not the scent-patch on the hind wing (shows as a wide spot on a thinner vein.)    Here’s a male (photographed two years ago on Liatris (gayfeather, blazing star):

You can see that the hind-wing veins are thinner, and one has a little ‘blip” on it.

Although it’s generally thought Monarchs don’t reproduce in September in our area, I’ve twice photographed Monarch larvae in late September.  This year one appeared on a board 8 feet up in the air during construction of an arbor.  Not the best place to pupate.

We were careful not to bump the board, but it disappeared overnight after a couple of days.

Monarchs aren’t the only butterflies out there: we’re still seeing both Tiger Swallowtails and Giant Swallowtails (neither will slow down for a picture right now),  as well as many smaller butterflies: Gulf Fritillary, Variegated Fritillary, Hackberry Emperor, Empress Leila,  Orange Sulphur,  Common Buckeye, Queen, and more.  Here’s an Orange Sulphur on one of the wiry little fall asters.

But we have many of those other butterflies through the summer…when we don’t have monarchs.   Monarchs in fall deserve a celebration.