Steve and I found this large Bullsnake sunning itself on the road during our tour through Quivira.
Thanks for stopping by!
-OZB
BULL!!!
Tag: ozark bill
Birds of Quivira – White-faced Ibis
The White-faced Ibis are pretty abundant at Quivira and Cheyenne Bottoms and across the Great Plains in general. It is believed that this was primarily a western species that has been slowly moving eastward during the past century. Nesting grounds are still rather patchy and infrequent, but they have been documented to nest at both Cheyenne Bottoms and Quivira.
-OZB
Helmeted Squash Bug
We came upon this little spiky one at Shaw Nature Reserve. I believe this to be a nymph of the Helmeted Squash Bug (Euthochtha galeator) Family – Coreidae.
-OZB
Wild Acres Park
Just a few of some of the interesting folks I have run into at Wild Acres Park in recent weeks…
American Goldfinch
The Goldfinch have really taken a liking to the Silphium in my garden this year. Every time I’m out there I observe at least a couple picking the seeds. The two images of this post show them with their more famous plant source, the thistle, taken this summer at RMBS.
-OZB
Monarch Eclosion
I finally found a monarch caterpillar on one of my plants after a 3-4 year absence. Knowing the poor success rate when I had them in the yard in previous years, I decided to try my hand at rearing this one inside. I read a little on proper practices online and had received some advice from someone I work with (thanks Tim!) and watched as the little one put on the weight at the expense of my common milkweed I harvested from the garden. Unfortunately the idea for a time lapse project came too late and . I wasn’t prepared and wasn’t knowledgeable enough about the metamorphosis process. I tried my best. I made several mistakes and will hopefully remember these next time. I also had a couple of equipment failures that caused me to miss a couple of gaps many hours in length. Tim and his family have successfully reared and released a good number of monarchs this year and tag them for hopeful data points on the migratory routes (just like in birds). He had an extra tag and I tagged the little female prior to her release. Hopefully she will make it the ~1800 miles from central Missouri to central Mexico where she will overwinter before heading back north again next spring.
Even with the problems, I kind of like the outcome. I can’t wait to try again… 😉
You Can Take the Pec Out of the Tundra…
But you can’t take the tundra out of the Pec.
On the first day of August I found myself sitting next to one of the larger field puddles in the RMBS area watching the groups of migrating Pectoral Sandpipers. These guys were probably less than a week or two outside of their nesting grounds on the arctic tundra and their hormones were still raging. I was pretty surprised by their level of territoriality on their migratory route. Maybe this is how they behave year-round, but I have not been able to confirm this in any source I can find.
From the Garden – Spotted Cucumber Beetle
When is a Caterpillar not a Caterpillar? (400th Post)
When it’s a Sawfly.
Did you know that there is a primitive group of the hymenoptera with free-living larvae that look very much like the caterpillars of the lepidoptera? Known as the Sawfly, there are morphological distinctions between them and the caterpillars and they can also be distinguished by this defensive posture adapted by the Sawfly larvae (Arge sp.) pictured here.
Birds of Quivira – Long-billed Curlew
A bird of the west, the Long-billed Curlew was quite a treat for Steve and I and a rare bird to be found at Quivira NWR. Imagine our surprise and pleasure at finding two!
As usual, habitat destruction via modern agriculture and livestock has severely diminished the numbers of this species. Will we ever again see the numbers that Audubon once observed? In describing the flocks of thousands he was able to observe, Audubon in The Birds of America wrote the following:
“They flew directly towards their place of rest, called the Bird Banks, and were seen to alight without performing any of the evolutions which they exhibit when at their feeding places, for they had not been disturbed that season. But when we followed them to the Bird Banks, which were sandy islands of small extent, the moment they saw us the congregating flocks, probably amounting to several thousand individuals all standing close together, rose at once, performed a few evolutions in perfect silence, and realighted as if one accord on the extreme margins of the sandbank close to tremendous breakers. It was now dark, and we left the place, although some flocks were still arriving.”
-OZB
A Thousand Acres of Silphiums 