As we all well know, if we want to preserve a wild hog's head,
there's labor to be had unless we are wanting just the skull.
And as you already may be doing, tying scrap bailing wire around the pig's head
and hanging it in a cedar elm for a couple years will prove effective.
(A hillside woods-full of such hanging heads
would make for fun surprises when neighbor boys go a-rambling.)
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| Katydid eating what we think was a sweet Indian mallow flower at the top of the Hill (July 10) |
The eternally enjoyable website bugguide.net tells us that katydids are "Probably mostly herbivorous. Some species reported to eat flowers" (https://bugguide.net/node/view/36998). Yes.
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| The brown seeds of the milkweed plant. And the shiny silk-like "floss" attached to the seeds. Growing at the top of the Hill (July 10). |
Appears that there are over a hundred species of milkweed in America. Sometimes it's called "silkweed" for that beautiful "floss" that helps the seeds catch wind for more efficient dispersal. (Because it's waterproof and buoyant, the silk was used in WWII for stuffing inside lifejackets.
Before that in the 1800's, it was used for soft stuffing inside mattresses.)
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Milkweed bugs (Oncopeltus fasciatus). They love to eat the milkweed seeds but won't kill the plant. (July 10) |
Zexmenia. The book World Dictionary of Plant Names says this name is an anagram of the last name of Francisco Ximenez. Who, presumably, had little to do with sex mania. Here's some of why Senior Ximenez might be remembered in Central America, where, as it turns out, our Zexmenia plant is native:
"Francisco Ximénez (b. 28 November 1666; d. between 11 May 1729 and mid-1730), a Dominican priest who translated the Popol Vuh, the Maya-K'iche' story of creation.
Born in Écija, Andalusia, Ximénez joined the Dominican order in 1688 and was sent to Guatemala to continue his religious studies. He was ordained in 1690. His facility for learning the Indian languages soon became evident, and he was assigned as parish priest in San Juan Sacatepéquez to learn the Kaqchikel language. Under the guidance of another friar who knew Kakchikel, he prepared a grammar in that language and went on to master the K'iche' and Tz'utujil languages.While serving in Chichicastenango from 1701 to 1703, Ximénez found a manuscript of the ancient book of the K'iche' people, the Popol Vuh. He translated into Spanish its story of creation and the history of the K'iche' nation. The Popol Vuh is now considered the national book of Guatemala."(https://www.encyclopedia.com/humanities/encyclopedias-almanacs-transcripts-and-maps/ximenez-francisco-1666-1730)
"The Popol Vuh, meaning “Book of the Community,” narrates the Maya creation account, the tales of the Hero Twins, and the K’iche’ genealogies and land rights. In this story, the Creators, Heart of Sky and six other deities including the Feathered Serpent, wanted to create human beings with hearts and minds who could “keep the days.” But their first attempts failed. When these deities finally created humans out of yellow and white corn who could talk, they were satisfied. In another epic cycle of the story, the Death Lords of the Underworld summon the Hero Twins to play a momentous ball game where the Twins defeat their opponents. The Twins rose into the heavens, and became the Sun and the Moon. Through their actions, the Hero Twins prepared the way for the planting of corn, for human beings to live on Earth, and for the Fourth Creation of the Maya." (https://maya.nmai.si.edu/the-maya/creation-story-maya)
Let's just stick with the yellow flowers.
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| Wedelia acapulcensis or Wedelia texana (Aster Family). Zexmenia, Texas creeping-oxeye, etc. (July 16) |
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| Mosses and lichen in full-hydration during an unusually wet season (among the limestone boulders along the cliffside) |
And so the word here is poikilohydry. As in the inability to maintain water content when the environment fails to provide it. So we'll see all manor of ferns, lichen, and especially mosses shrivel up into a desiccated piece of crispy brown during a drought--only to green up in minutes once rains pour over them. (Microscopic animals are also adept at poikilohydry, going dormant, and even catching winds and being transported miles high and miles wide across the earth.)
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| Unseen animals. |
This sky, and the one below, don't help us to appreciate the recent haze caused by Saharan dust blowing in from the east. But it's not just sand that blows in. The "skeletal" remains of gabillions of diatoms are all mixed up in that dust, too. Maybe a third of the dust is comprised of the desiccated algal-like plankton that once swam within the now dried-up lake Megachad (bigger than all of our Great Lakes combined). 7000 years ago, with a different climate, north Africa was loaded with lakes. That was then. Now the skeletal remains, meters thick with these microscopic lives, get all caught up in the winds and float in great clouds to land in the Amazon, the Carribean, and the asthmatic lungs of some who live on the banks of this Creek.
So diatoms fly away:
“The low density, high surface-area-to-volume ratio, and large aspect ratios of freshwater diatom particles suggest a mechanism by which they can be carried great distances aloft.” https://miami.pure.elsevier.com/en/publications/atmospheric-transport-of-north-african-dust-bearing-supermicron-f
Diatom-art of German artist and biologist Ernst Haeckel.
This is from his Kunstformen der Natur (Art Forms in Nature).
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| 1904 |
And not just microalgae do fly.
“Many small animals, mainly arthropods (such as insects and spiders), are also carried upwards into the atmosphere by air currents and may be found floating several thousand feet up. Aphids, for example, are frequently found at high altitudes."Ballooning, sometimes called kiting, is a process by which spiders, and some other small invertebrates, move through the air by releasing one or more gossamer threads to catch the wind, causing them to become airborne at the mercy of air currents. A spider (usually limited to individuals of a small species), or spiderling after hatching, will climb as high as it can, stand on raised legs with its abdomen pointed upwards ("tiptoeing"), and then release several silk threads from its spinnerets into the air. These automatically form a triangular shaped parachute which carries the spider away on updrafts of winds where even the slightest of breezes will disperse the arachnid. The flexibility of their silk draglines can aid the aerodynamics of their flight, causing the spiders to drift an unpredictable and sometimes long distance. Even atmospheric samples collected from balloons at five kilometres altitude and ships mid-ocean have reported spider landings. Mortality is high". https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aeroplankton
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| More unseen animals in the sky. |
Non sequitur...
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| For the first half of the month, we were still gathering fenceline-blackberries for breakfast |
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| Creek 2021 (satellite) vs 1953 (animals in an airplane took this photo) Note the absence of pond, except for a small pool where the Spring lies in 1953. |
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| Desaguaderos |
Old maps tell us things.
This turn of the eighteenth century one
tells us nothing about where we are in central Texas, though.
(Unless "desaguaderos" is meant to suggest something about those of us
who live in the drain of Texas.)
