I have about three batches left, so if you have wildlife photos, please send them in.
Today’s photos is the second installment of photos from Texas contributed by Damon Williford (part 1 is here). Damon’s narrative and captions are indented, and you can enlarge his photos by clicking on them. Here’s his introduction to the set.
I took these photos at Brazos Bend State Park on June 23 of this year. Brazos Bend State Park is located about 45 miles south of central Houston and 45 miles north of Bay City where I live. The park contains a variety of habitats, including prairie, woodlands, marshes, swamps, and lakes. The Brazos River forms the eastern boundary of the park.
Eastern Cottontail (Sylvilagus floridanus):
A juvenile American Alligator (Alligator mississippiensis) hanging out near a footbridge:
Blanchard’s Cricket Frog (Acris blanchardi):
A male Eastern Pondhawk (Erythemis simplicicollis):
A Question Mark Butterfly (Polygonia interrogationis) feeding on a severed crayfish claw. I was aware that some species of butterflies will feed on carrion, but this was the first time I have personally observed it:
Black-eyed Susan (Rudbeckia hirta):
Violet Ruellia (Ruellia nudiflora):
American Lotus (Nelumbo lutea):
American Lotus:
Water Hyacinth (Pontederia crassipes):
Mushrooms in the genus Chlorophyllum (maybe). That is the best I could do with the identification:
I used iNaturalist to help me identify the organisms in photos 14-22 because my ID skills become progressively worse as the list moves from amphibian (average) to plants (poor) to fungi (non-existent).
Camera information: I used a Canon EOS R7 mirrorless camera body for all photographs. I used the Canon RF800mm f/11 IS USM lens for photos 1-8, and the Canon RF100-400mm f/5.6-8 IS USM lens for the remaining photos.
Simplicity — beauty
Beautiful!
The Alligator hanging out near a footbridge— water is dark enough that I could almost “see” one frog, looking at two frogs a short distance away. I wonder if other species perceive it that way.
There is a close relative of the question mark butterfly in the UK: the Eurasian comma butterfly (Polygonia c-album), that gets its name from a very similar mark on the underside of the wing. Odd that both butterflies are named for such a tiny feature.
Whenever an alligator is captured in the Houston metropolitan area, it is later released in the Brazos Bend park.
Mr. Williford, have you ever been in the hospital in Bay City? I help hang all of the pictures on the hospital walls a dozen or so years ago.
Very nice, thanks.
Lovely! The croc is surreal, with both the eyes and the whole head appearing to be floating detached in space.
Learning from your photos of our wildlife neighbors here in Texas — so it’s alligator mississippiensis I’m seeing in the boat basin! Thanks.
Today’s the first I’ve ever heard of “American Lotus”. Neat. Love the Pond hawk. My friends in Texas just got their electric back on after a lengthy outage… Hope you were spared that but you’re right in the thick of that mess. Seems if it’s not a freeze or a flood it’s some sort of outage. I don’t envy you dealing with that.
Chlorophyllium molybdites…with brown lower stem. Poisonous. Can be confused with parasol mushrooms( Lepiota and especially Macrolepiota)which are edible and good. As the name implies, it has green gills and spores. First thing you do with a new mushroom is take a spore print. This reduces the number of possible mushrooms and allows you to learn its family. Learn the deadly amanitas! always white gills and stem, never change color, ring on stem, root swollen. Amanita muscaria (Fly Mushroom) has red cap and veil remnants and is hallucinogenic, not fatal (apparently). Dont mess with it. Avoid mushrooms that are all white and never change color and you will probably survive.
Always get positive ID. I had an occasion to learn this when my family moved from Warsaw to Madrid in 1988. One day there was a downpour and the whole park north of Campamento exploded with mushrooms. All good and known, such as Armillaria Mellea that we pickled many jars of. However, there was another mushroom kind, looking vaguely like a big button mushroom, but with yellow spores, not brown. We all got sick from these, except for me because I did not trust them. Amazing how my Mom went against her own sage advice. Lucky they were not a liver- or kidney-liquifying kind.