Just before 8:00am on July 13, there was a cloudless blue sky over the preserve and both the temperature and the humidity were in the 70’s. The air had a touch of soft, muggy quality but with a little breeze it still felt great to be out there, getting to know more of our nature neighbors.
Our plan was to take a walk and find lots of things that sparked wonder and curiosity, especially the insects and spiders. Each of these events is like a mini-bioblitz as we document all kinds of plants and animals in order to better know the living things at the preserve. We record these observations using the iNaturalist app and website. On the iNaturalist site, the collection of observations for Sheri Capehart Nature Preserve (called a “project”) is getting close to twenty thousand observations by 245 observers.
By 8:00am, Rosealin and Annabelle had arrived and we soon started walking east through the woodland near the big pond. We stopped to admire a funnel of silk narrowing to a tube that dropped below the leaf litter, woven by a spider. And Rosealin then discovered a beautiful round web of concentric rings nearby, shining in the morning sunlight. We did not find the orb-weaving spider that constructed it.
Approaching the boulder trail, we saw several species of grasshoppers jumping away in the grass. Many were the two-striped mermiria grasshoppers whose long legs and stripes make them blend in well with grasses.
We heard a number of birds, including mourning doves. The notes of their soft calls drop in the way a human voice might drop off when sad, perhaps accounting for their name. Hearing their call, it is easy to become still and quiet for a moment without being sad. Some others that we heard were Bewick’s wren, a white-eyed vireo, and an eastern phoebe. And then we spotted a small bird at the very top branch of a bare tree, and it was a hummingbird! We watched it look this way and that, and then fly off.
Rosealin found a small damselfly in the thicket of brown stems and dried vegetation at the bottom of the boulder trail, and it’s either a tribute to younger eyes, spending lots of time in the field paying careful attention, or both. There were plenty of dragonflies, including the familiar widow skimmers and pondhawks, but with a couple of others like a roseate skimmer, a clubtail, and a setwing (based on iNaturalist’s preliminary identification – we needed someone like Brent Franklin to confirm). I still struggle with remembering the difference between male widow skimmers and whitetails, so clearly I have plenty of room for growth.
When we spotted a tiny spider on a leaf, I was able to text a photo to my friend Meghan Cassidy who told us it was a striped lynx spider. We also found a couple of crab spiders hanging out on flowers and waiting to ambush some unsuspecting insect. It’s a bug-eat-bug world out there. When we saw beetles with pretty patterns flying around the flowers, I manage to recall that they were in the family Buprestidae. And there was a beautiful, tiny nymph of a fork-tailed bush katydid. Further on there were a couple of leaf-footed bugs that appeared to be feeding on bird droppings (sorry – was that a “too much information” moment?).
We arrived in the yucca meadow and were able to see Comanche harvester ants out and about. This species loves the deep sand in this meadow (as do the Glen Rose yuccas). These species make the yucca meadow a special and memorable place. But all of this preserve is memorable, and I’ll remember this morning – the fascinating invertebrates, beautiful bird calls, and great companions – for a long time.
Thanks for leading another adventure in nature.
This is a nice deep dive into the complex ecosystem that is the lifeblood of the preserve. Thanks for reminding us this goes 24 hours, 365 days a year – we are just not around to witness the wonder!