Ash Spring

I declare this to be the Spring of the Ash.

This lovely, small tree is popping up all over.
Here's a field of trees at the top of trail 4.

I believe they are all wafer ashes, and here's their "bloom" which the adults have right now. They're a flat, round paper-like disc the size of a quarter, and they bear more than a passing resemblance to communion wafers.

I don't know how they taste, but I hear it's also known as the hop tree, and that Germans who came to Texas, and found they couldn't grow the hops they were used to, found these to be a substitute.  I wonder if any of our local brewers have tried it, or have plans to. I'd try it!

Some of them, however, may not be communion wafers, but a variant with long, thin wafers. This one is right at the creek crossing.

I also declare this particular hike as the Day I Discovered the Hand Lens.
This little beauty had been gathering dust in my backpack for a year.
But I took it out to see if I could take a picture of star moss through it for the newsletter article -and I could!

So I took it out again to see if the knobs on the mimosa tree were buds, or spent blooms. I could tell they were buds - and discovered two tiny irridescent green flies were on the leaves as well.
This caterpillar on the mimosa I could see with my naked eye:

But when I put the hand lens to it, I noticed some leaves folded over -not up, like a venus flytrap, but over and down. And there were more yellow that the normal looking leaves. Looking even closer, I think I saw tiny creatures had folded the leaves around themselves (gads, my thumb looks huge under the lens!).

Q & A

I'm kind of insatiable with questions.  I find them far more interesting than answers.  Trouble is, you need to already know some answers in order to ask good questions.  Luckily, they feed off each other in a rolling snowball effect.  I've been stopped in my tracks by a cool answer- like a photon particle can have a wavelength several miles long.  But cool questions make me stop in my tracks and repeat the question and think about the answer and wonder why no one ever though of that question before.

I think it has to do with points of view.  Answers tell you something about a point of view that already exists.  But questions define that point of view, and can create totally new points of view.  Questions frame answers.  You can have a whole bunch of data points, but until you ask "What am I looking at?", you don't have any answers.  (Just ask Seurat.)

In my first year at BL, I've busied myself absorbing answers.  I've listened to what the Nancys, Patricia and Bill tell the hiking groups.

What's that called?


I've googled more answers on my own.
Why is it called that?
Why is the blackfoot daisy called that?  Does it have black feet (roots)?  Was there a Mr. Blackfoot?  A Chief Blackfoot?

And now, buttressed and bouyed by those answers, I'm starting to be able to ask more interesting questions.
What's the difference?
That's a yucca. That's a grass.  That's a sedge.  What makes the difference?

How does it work?
I hear at least two kinds of frogs chirping & bellowing this spring.  I imagine the chirps are from small frogs, and the bellowing from large ones.  Is that right?  And do they correspond to the big and little tadpoles I saw last spring (and expect to see soon this spring)?  (And that would explain that the big tadpoles I saw weren't small ones that had been born earlier and grown, but actually a different species, born at the same time.)

The algae growing in Dry Creek gets washed away by the rains.  This is good for Dry Creek- it brings back clear water for awhile, until the algae takes over again.  But there is no such place as "away".  It gets washed into Lake Austin.  This makes me ask - Are the small stream tributaries of a lake the major source of algae?  So the algae washed into lakes after rain thrive and are responsible for lake blooms?  Or is the algae growing in very small, shallow streams of running water a different species from that growing in lakes, which are deeper and don't flow, and so they don't thrive when they're washed into lakes?

Barking

The deer visited this morning - I heard them crashing through the underbrush.  Then two short barking sounds.  I've heard deer make one short alarm call that sounded similar, but never two in a row like this.  Then suddenly the sound was across the valley.  Ah, then: a barking bird.

But what bird barks like this?  It sounded like a dog barking far away, and muzzled.  Then I watched my owl (a great horned owl I've named Henrietta Hooter, in honor of my cat she ate) fly into her tree in my yard.  And then she barked.  And she's there barking still, as I write this.

I recognizer her voice, now.  But not this song.  Why two short barks, and not the sonorous five legato notes she usually sings?

Crowing

The crows are back.  They caused quite a rucous this morning.  The dog was barking at them.  The neighbor down the hill came out to remark on them.

My first encounter with crows was in grade school.  I was walking down the hill to the beach, and came across 5 or 6 of them feeding on road kill.  My memory is of huge, intelligent birds that didn't scare easily.  We stood and watched each other for a few moments, before they flew away.

(I had a similar encounter with vultures in high school.  I was driving my little sister and me down a hot, dusty country back road.  All the windows were down, and we were moving slowly over the uneven gravel.  We approached something on the road ahead - I couldn't tell what it was till we were upon them - 5 to 6 vultures feeding off road kill.  I had approached so slowly, they didn't move.  I came to a stop about 10 feet from them.  They just turned and looked at us.  It was stalemate for a few minutes.  It felt to me like they wouldn't fly off if I drove forward, but would rather attack us.  I told my sister to roll all the windows up fast!  But eventually, of course, I drove and they flew.  I'll never forget how intelligent they looked.)

The first thing that comes up when I google Crows in Texas is Texas Crow Patrol.  They shoot crows for free.  Apparently, crows eat crops.  So they'll come and shoot them for you.  It's legal. And oddly geometrical.

Apparently, this is the western edge of their range in Texas. Google says they are permanent residents, but in this last year, I'm pretty sure I've only heard them during their breeding season Feb - June.  Perhaps they remain here, but are silent (though the thought of silent crows makes me giggle).