Readers’ wildlife photos

Quite a few readers answered my pathetic plea for photos, so we have a comfortable backlog for at least a week.  Thanks to all.

These include Rik Gern of Austin, Texas, who sent in some plant photos. Rik’s captions and IDs are indented, and you can enlarge his photos by clicking on them.

Here’s a split batch of pictures reflecting Central Texas in the Winter and Spring. The first half were taken on a walk thru Austin on a grey January day. There wasn’t much color except for a few berries that had managed to hang on through the Winter:

The trees seem much more dramatic without their leaves. I also like how they can look like river tributaries, or veins, or nerve cells. I apologize for not identifying the trees by genus and species, but I didn’t think about it when I took them, and now I’m smack dab in the middle of the busiest part of my year, working ‘round the clock, and out of time and energy to look them up. (I also feel like a bit of an idiot since I should probably know them by sight!)

The remaining pictures are all signs of Spring from around my yard. This slow growing Texas Live Oak (Quercus fusiformis) shoots forth a new branch. Give it a few years and it’ll be covered in ball moss instead of spider webs!

Seek by iNaturalist identifies this vine as a Carolina Snailseed (Cocculus carolinus), but I wonder about that because online image searches for Cocculus carolinus show a plant with red berries, and I’ve seen these around for years but haven’t seen any berries. At any rate, here it is sporting a brand new spiral tip.

Common Sunflowers (Helianthus annus) have been visiting the back yard for years, and this year I’ve got two healthy patches of them. The flower is nice, but the buds are also beautiful in their own right.

This wouldn’t be Texas if I didn’t include a cactus, so here’s a Spineless Prickly Pear (Opuntia ellisiana). The plant had a lot of new growth this year, but only produced  this solitary flower. It’s a good one though!