Friday, October 24, 2014

Cibolo Nature Center

We've been back in Central Texas for a couple of weeks now, and have stayed busy visiting family, catching up with things like doctor's appointments and flu shots, and re-visiting some favorite spots in the Texas Hill Country.

This morning we headed over to Boerne (pronounced Bur-nee) and visited the Cibolo Nature Center. This very active nature center offers a lot of classes and seminars, programs for school kids, and several miles of trails for hiking.


We hiked over to the Marsh Loop trail and boardwalk, only to discover that the marsh was pretty much dried up. We didn't find the birds or dragonflies that we expected, so turned our attention to blooming wildflowers. We find when looking at flowers that there are often insects in the blooms, and today was no exception.


Honey Bees were busy gathering pollen, and we saw a small, metallic weevil digging into the same type of flower. Can you see it in there? It was tiny.


More menacing looking was this large wasp, but it paid us no mind. 


We noticed several bluebird boxes in the open areas, and after our summer of monitoring Mountain and Western Bluebirds in Idaho we wondered if these boxes were being used. Just as we mentioned it a male Eastern Bluebird flew into the closest box, followed by a female. We don't know if they are nesting this late in the year or not, but it looks like the boxes are being utilized for sure!
Mark

2 comments:

  1. I can't remember what your assignment will be for the winter. Guess I'll just have to wait and see. :)

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    1. We're going to be warm and toasty - well, warm and muggy probably. A new state for us - Florida!
      Key Deer NWR. We start in January. We’ll start heading that way in about 4 weeks. We’ll be doing a lot of sightseeing (and blogging) along the way.

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