We technically live about 30 miles south of Houston in a small town called Dickinson. The area that we live in is a bayou. I never thought much about that until we got a lot of rain the last two days. My back yard turned into a shallow lake. This had happened before, but I took more notice this time of what was happening to our little ecosystem.
We still had our regular blue jays, cardinals and sparrows, but a new bird was added to the mix - an egret. Having lived in Florida, we are used to seeing these guys roaming the neighborhood in groups, but this guy was solo. I had also never seen them in action. I watched for about 20 minutes yesterday as he waded through our yard and scooped up crayfish (can you tell I'm from the north?).
That's another thing. We have crayfish digging in our yard, even when it's not swampy. They dig straight down into the ground and create large mud tunnels above the surface. They muck up the lawnmower and are a tripping hazard.
We also have a very large spider, whom I've named Roberta, who builds mammoth webs every night. I believe she is a tropical orb weaver. I have been watching her every night and had the pleasure of building one. From tip to tip, it's about 20 feet from our house to a tree, and is suspended about 6-7 feet high in the air. The web itself is also very large and quite impressive. The really interesting part is that she takes it down every night, save three strands - one from the house, one to the ground and one to the tree.
We're not in Wisconsin anymore!
No comments:
Post a Comment