Fluttering

I love Kaila's drawing and color choices - working with soft pastels.

Owl

Schoolwork - connect the dots and color.

I love how Kaila colored her owl. The marker strokes on the wings and body follow the feathers, as does in the eyebrows. The yellow feathers on the feet give her drawing dimension. I also really liked the orange outline around the eyes and feet.

"Who, who... am I?"

The Butterfly Project

One and a half million innocent children lost their lives in the Holocaust. In an effort to remember them, Holocaust Museum Houston is collecting 1.5 million handmade butterflies to be setup in an exhibition scheduled for Spring 2013.

If you'd like to participate, create as many butterflies as you wish and send them to The Butterfly Project.

Tiger Swallowtail

A beautiful yellow tiger swallowtail greeted me this morning as I did a short warm up run before a yoga class today. This is only the second time I see one of these butterflies in my runs. I spotted on for the first time about 2 weeks ago - I was delighted to see the large yellow and black butterfly fluttering around. It was definitely a male since it did not have the blue on top of the wings, just a small patch on the underside.

The black swallowtails are quite common by the reservoir and sometimes I'll run by one that will follow along with me for a while. It always makes my day a bit brighter!

The black swallowtails are apparently very common in Ohio also.

Back on track

The sun took a break at lunch time today. The cloud cover made for a pleasant day outside (Houston standards, mind you). I went for a run along the reservoir in the opposite direction I normally track. To my surprise, after I left the groomed part of the trail, the butterflies were there in numbers! My favorite, the swallowtail, followed me for a good quarter of a mile, then came the gulf fritillaries with their silvery adorned wings, the variegated fritillaries, the sulfurs, and a buckeye. They made my day so much happier...

HMNS Blog Butterflies

The Houston Museum of Natural Science blog Beyond Bones has a great post on common butterflies around town (March 09, 2009).

http://blog.hmns.org/?p=3302

Day 8

Not much obvious change this week. The temperature did drop down into the 40sF on Monday night, would that be a factor? We're back to warm again - high in the low 80s today!

A little bit of love

Buzzing around

Spring is in air...

Heads or Tails?

Buckeye

Hanging low on a windy day.

Variegated Fritillary Caterpillar

The caterpillar I found Friday seems to be a variegated fritiillary. The

whatsthatbug website has a couple of great posts with pictures of caterpillar and butterfly.

Here is the
"caterpillar" today.

http://www.whatsthatbug.com/2005/10/02/variegated-fritillary-caterpillar-and-next-day-chrysalis-not-buckeye/


http://www.whatsthatbug.com/2006/11/18/variegated-fritillary-2/

Rest day Friday

I took Friday off from running and just went on a walk with my camera. The butterflies were very patient with me.

Homesick

It had been almost two weeks since our resident spider disappeared from the corner of the garage. Today it was back! It looks a lot deflated compared to when I spotted it first in early January, but it continues to work hard building and rebuilding its web each day.

Butterflies are coming back

Butterflies are back by the reservoir. My run was quite joyful with the butterflies fluttering along the path - swallowtails, gulf fritillaris, a monarch, a few small earthy-beige ones, a pretty yellow with black wingtips one. It's beeen very dry lately and the reservoir is at the lowest level I've seen. Hopefully this will not affect the birds coming through in the next few months.

I'm rebuilding again!

My spider friend is determined that the corner of the garage and the front yard will hold her 'house'. She has build and rebuild her web countless times the past month. Here are a couple of shots of her on February 03 (getting started) and 04 (proud owner of the newest house in the block).

Re-building

The Gasteracantha was still there this morning, but its web was pretty damaged. Cold winds and a slight drizzle is making my friend work overtime to keep her house in somewhat of an order. I tried some new pictures with not much sucess - very gray skies and the constant wind this morning did not agree with my camera focus...

Not one, but two snakes in the path

The brush grass along the sides of the levee has been recently cut (1-3 days which displaced the snakes out of their hiding places. As I was running up on the levee I actually jumped over a quite big adult Yellowbelly Water Snake. It sure startled me - this is the first time I encountered any snakes all the way up there. I stopped and watched it for while. The snake was also unsure about me. Its tail was pulsing side to side quite rapidly. Had it been a rattle snake, it would've sounded like true maracas.

Then 300m later, another snake! This time it was a small one. I think it was a young botched water snake similar to the one saw a few weeks ago. It was brown with tiny spots on its back.

http://www.houstonherp.com/YellowbellyWS.html

A snake in my path

I was hoping snakes brought good luck. Yesterday as I was starting my run I hopped over one. It was camouflaged in the grass and I saw it as I went over it and it raised up and opened it's mouth wide warning me I was in its territory. Luckily, I was moving faster than it was.

This morning though luck didn't materialize. I got a ticket on the freeway in a under posted zone...I'll blame it on bad luck from the snake yesterday. I'm quite annoyed at having to spend 6 hours of my life now in defensive driving school in addition to paying $100+ in court fees. @$#$%@#$%@$%.

Just found it on the web http://www.houstonherp.com/BlotchedWS.html

The one I encountered though was about half this size.

Spa...

What a treat. I spent a couple of days visiting with girlfriends at a spa in Austin this week. It was nice to be pampered with massages and free time.

My trail run in the morning was just perfect with crisp, dry morning air. Before leaving I had a few minutes for photos - the campus had art work and sculptures all around and many butterflies and bees were also fluttering and buzzin' about.