80AcresOnline

Thanksgiving Day gave us perfect weather and wonderful guests who enjoyed the beauty of the land…but no pictures.   The creek was too high to wade in regular shoes–beautifully clear, though, and today, with rain forecast to start tomorrow again, I thought perhaps I could make it across.  What are wet feet, after all?

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We had gorgeous weather for Thanksgiving, and an out-of-state guest who enjoyed a moderately long stroll around the place.  We weren’t in rubber boots, so we couldn’t cross the creek or wander as freely, but still a fun hour or so out wandering.

Saturday, in not-as-perfect (but still pleasant) weather I made it across the creek in regular shoes–not exactly dry-shod, but not too wet-footed.   I did put three knapsacks of rocks from the rockpile near the creek onto the ford, which has migrated a bit with the flash floods this fall.  Water quality looked great, clear, spring-fed, and flowing strongly.   This view is upstream from the ford (shown in previous post); the braced fencepost to the right, on grass, shows the north fenceline where it crosses the creek…there’s a mess of flotsam caught on the water gap.

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There’s a new page at this blog that will explain the “activities” tag to readers not familiar with the Texas law on conversion of agricultural land to wildlife management.  I’ve outlined some of the things we do to satisfy the requirements of each of the seven listed activities.

Wildlife managers know that in natural systems (few of which still exist) there’s a reasonable balance between predators and prey, so that the prey don’t degrade the resource (plants and water) they need.  In nearly all managed lands in the US,  large predators have been eliminated or reduced to the point where predators cannot effectively control prey population.  Thus the grazers and browsers can grow in numbers to the point where they are on the edge of starvation.

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Driving home from church today,  I saw several more “winter hawks” in the sky or perched along the road, which brought up the topic of our disparate bird populations through the seasons.   We have year-rounders, winter residents, winter visitors, summer nesters, and migrants in fall and spring.

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Two years of drought followed by heavy rains in a warm fall has produced bursts of spring flowering and some spring butterflies even as it’s produced sudden fall color…a very odd combination.

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We have no permanent natural water on the place.   But when it does rain, we have a variety of temporary water sources, from the actual creek to the various overflow channels (some of concern because of erosion; others now pretty much “tamed.”)

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Forgot to mention yesterday that though I had heard a White-crowned Sparrow call in the yard a few days ago, I hadn’t spotted one until yesterday evening, up in the dry woods.  I came into the south end of the dry woods trail and startled some White-winged doves, who flapped off with their usual noisy behavior, but one smaller bird just hopped to the top of a cactus and sat there.

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Some grasses should be planted just for the way they look with sunlight slanting through them in the fall.

This is one.  It’s one of the Muhlys, but I don’t know which.

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Our on the land with visitors yesterday, I spotted a new fly (new to me):

That spotted abdomen was very obvious with the naked eye.   It’s a similar pattern to a spotted jumping spider we have (also white spots on black) and until I saw it fly I was thinking  “There’s another P. audax, never saw one on heath aster before.”   The “face” and antennae are the same golden color as the wings.

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