A few old friends and a new bird digs - Clapp Park, 16 March 2021

 I hopped on the Huffy for a short ride to the park this week. I'm thankful to see spring returning.

I rode around for a bit and stopped in the rose garden to do a little writing, but birds kept distracting me.

I've been seeing more cardinals over the last few years. This one was a nice surprise. He kept watching me closely. He had a mate, but she was much more camera shy.

I never tire of watching mockingbirds. This one was quite the character.

This one was a shock -  a bird I had to look up - spotted towhee. (Click the pic to see a short clip of it digging.)

Pic taken on Mar 12 - nothing but mud in the big pond.

It rained on the 13th.

May you find wonders no matter where you are.

Be well, friends, and leave each place better than you found it.

Lubbock Local Wildlife: Turtle Rescue 2016

So there I was Saturday morning working on the National Bike Challenge post. The phone rang. SnagIt! The Saturday morning curse kicked in. I packed everything up and hopped on the bike to (literally) check on a false alarm. I was riding on the 34th Street sidewalk (What an amazing place 34th would be for a bike lane!) Crossing the sidewalk in front of me and heading toward the busy-ness of 34th, was a yellow mud turtle. Unlike the red-eared slider and the soft-shelled turtle, the mud turtle is seldom seen around here. I don't think they are uncommon - just much stealthier than their sun-seeking cousins. She was the first I've seen in a few years, and she was just a few blocks from my house! By the way, mud turtles don't seem to care much for travel by bike.

 

Is that a great face or what? (And check out those fingernails!)

 

After dealing with the false alarm (at the neighbor's house), my wife and I took her over to the wilderness habitat area at Clapp Park. (You may remember all the Clapp Park posts from the tadpole era a few years ago.) She posed for a pic, then leapt (like a very clunky cheetah) toward the water and was gone!

Notice the speed blur - she was trucking it to the water!

Not quite a cannonball, but definitely speedy!

 

May she enjoy some local Lubbock mud and may you enjoy knowing she's around!

 

Thanks for reading!

 

PS. She smells better on the internet than in real life.

 

Bonus pic: Gecko on the house last night (2016 -Year of the Gecko!)



Lubbock Local Wildlife: No Dog Park, But a Great Frog Park!

We've been a little worried about Sasha lately. She's been a little listless and whiny since the fabulous young lady left for college. We're not sure if she has been depressed or if her stomach is hurting from eating a whole package (4 sticks!) of butter while we were unpacking groceries. (She's a rather artful dodger at grocery time.) So, yesterday she and I went for a walk around our favorite park, and she perked right up. I don't think it was the park per se. I think it was the special attention and a fraggle of frogs. Big frogs! Bullfrogs!

Things are drying up.

Big Bob (or Bertha)

More big uns!

Lots of smaller frogs facing the sun

Frog in duckweed

Lots of frogs in duckweed

a 2" catfish

For non-fish non-amphibian people

Feeling so much better!

In case you don't take Sasha's word for the importance of spending time in nature, here's another article from the Vibrant Wellness Journal:

10 Reasons that Nature Time Is Important (I like 6 and 9, Sasha goes for 4 and 8.)

Bonus: Frog Video!!!

 

May you get away from it all and be better for the experience!

Lubbock Local Wildlife: Tadpole Update and DUH!!!

This week, the tadpole went from two legs...

...to four legs.

 

The transformation been much slower with this little guy than with the previous tadpoles, but the front legs did appear in a single day.

This is Peggy, the three-footed leopard frog.

 

Peggy came from Mr. Aquarium where she started as a tadpole. She transformed into a frog there, jumped into a koi tank, and lost a foot. She's not a great jumper, but she gets around just fine and loves a good cricket or ten.

 

All along, I have thought that the tadpoles from Clapp Park were a local variation of a leopard frog, but (I know you are stunned to hear this) I was wrong.

This is Ribbert.

 

You may recognize him from earlier posts. (Or not.) He loves a good cricket or twenty - quite the appetite. He is also very skittish. I have been using his image to try to identify which type of leopard frog he is, but I could not find him anywhere until I broadened my search. It turns out that he is a local variation of bullfrog. This explains why the tadpoles have taken so long to transform - bullfrog tadpoles generally take two years to metamorph into their adult state.

This is Kylie.

 

You may recognize her from an earlier post as well. (Or not.) She could care less about frogs, tadpoles, and lots of other things. She loves a good teaspoon of peanut butter or twenty and she loves relaxing on the couch.

 

May you find the answer to your mysteries and get over it when you are wrong. Better yet, may you be like Kylie and not be bothered by such trivia.

Lubbock Local Wildlife: An Eternal Tadpole Update

A little over two years ago I caught some tadpoles in Clapp Park. I thought it would be cool to keep them for a few weeks and watch them transform. Well, they had other plans. So here it is two years later and there are still five tadpoles who refuse to be frogs. They were apparently wise to choose to leap into my net way back then. Within a few months pond dried completely as part of our epic drought. (This year we have received epic rainfall and the pond is once again full.)

 

Yesterday I was cleaning the tank and noticed something shocking. Another of the tadpoles has decided to make the leap (You know darn well the pun is intended!) to frogdom! I apologize for the terrible photos, but I knew you'd still want to see them..

 

Look closely - the back legs just appeared.

 

And just in case you wanted to see one of the others - look Ma, no legs!

 

I am a little heartbroken, though. I am leaving town for a few days and will not be around for most of the transformation. I will come home to find that a big tadpole has become a small frog with a very tiny tail. They  grow up so fast!

 

In case you want to get caught up on the Clapp Park Tadpole saga, here are the links to the older posts.

 

5/14/2014 Tadpoles (and I stand in the middle of a playa lake)

 

8/5/2014 Playa and Tadpole Update - now with legs!

 

8/21/2014 The Jumbo Tadpoles Update

 

4/10/15

Lubbock Local Wildlife: Earth Day, Drought, Clapp Park

May nature enthrall you and may we all work together to protect this planet with which we have been blessed.

Thank you for taking the time to follow this blog!

Lubbock Local Wildlife: Earth Day, Drought, Clapp Park

Earth Day is fast approaching. April 22. This will be Earth Day's 45th anniversary, so Earth Day and I are close to the same age. This year I have wanted to do something more significant to honor the day. The old brain casted about for the right thing, and then I ran across this article:

Earth Day Pond Cleanup

And Clapp Park came to mind. I love Clapp Park. I love that such a wild and often beautiful place is a two-minute bike ride from my house. (I love Mae Simmons and Aztlán Parks in the same way, but they require a lot more pedaling.) I decided to spend a few hours picking up trash at Clapp to mark and celebrate Earth Day. I am going for the old Think Globally, Act Locally idea this year.

Wednesday was a rough day - lots of rough news about people around us. Sasha and I found ourselves with a shared restlessness, so we decided to walk around Clapp on an Earth-Day scouting run. (Note to self: never go to Clapp without a real camera, the vaguely intelligent phone just does not do it justice.)

We saw lots of cool things and apparently smelled even more. We saw some nice raised-bed gardens inside the arboretum fence. We saw evidence that someone has been using tree branches to lay out protected areas for butterfly gardens and other small nature refuges. We also saw that someone had been working at clearing trash.

On a less positive front, we saw that the two ponds had dried up to almost nothing. We saw lots of trash. Lots of trash. The two remaining spots of water were teeming with overcrowded life - turtles, frogs, fish, and opportunistic birds.

With man-made trash and drought, the place has become a bittersweet place for me, but one worth working for. So, what are your plans for Earth Day?

May every day be Earth Day, and may you be one of those who keep it going.

Lubbock Local Wildlife: the Jumbo Tadpoles update

Things be happening!

8-21-14 This is Bob.

8-21-14 This is Ribbert.

8-9-14 This is Tanya's hand and a random tadpole. Bob and Ribbert looked like this on 8-9.

May August be a transformational month for you too!