{"id":1083,"date":"2015-05-07T22:34:50","date_gmt":"2015-05-08T03:34:50","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/ericsiegmund.com\/gazette\/2015\/05\/07\/150507-localnature\/"},"modified":"2022-05-28T17:08:57","modified_gmt":"2022-05-28T22:08:57","slug":"150507-localnature","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/ericsiegmund.com\/fireant\/2015\/05\/07\/150507-localnature\/","title":{"rendered":"Local Nature"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Just a few random observations from the Wide World of Nature &#8211; Midland, Texas Edition.<\/p>\n<p>First, the following video is noteworthy in spite of its poor quality (shot through an office window with a zoomed-in iPhone), because it shows a <a href=\"https:\/\/www.allaboutbirds.org\/guide\/Ladder-backed_Woodpecker\/id\">ladder-backed woodpecker<\/a> who landed on a red yucca and began working over the blooms. These woodpeckers are not exactly unknown in our parts, but I&#8217;ve only seen a few during the decades of living here, and I&#8217;ve never seen this kind of behavior. <i>(Click the full-screen arrows to get a slightly better view; the ticking noise in the background is not intended to evoke a woodpecker&#8217;s noise &#8211; I just forgot to remove the audio track.)<\/i><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><iframe loading=\"lazy\" src=\"https:\/\/player.vimeo.com\/video\/127226384\" width=\"500\" height=\"283\" frameborder=\"0\" allowfullscreen=\"allowfullscreen\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/www.ericsiegmund.com\/fireant\/images\/misc\/divider1.gif\"><\/p>\n<p>Can anybody identify this bug? We noticed several of them on one of our Texas Mountain Laurels. It&#8217;s hard to get a sense of scale from the photo, but they&#8217;re really tiny. They weren&#8217;t damaging the leaves, as far as I could tell (although <i>something<\/i> is eating on one of our trees).<\/p>\n<p><i>Update: After some intense scientific investigation (aka, several Google searches), I&#8217;ve narrowed it down to a member of the <\/i><a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Pyrrhocoridae\">Pyrrhocoridae<\/a><i> family. Possibly. That&#8217;s my story, anyway.<\/i><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><img decoding=\"async\" style=\"border: 1px solid #ccc; margin-bottom: 8px;\" src=\"https:\/\/www.ericsiegmund.com\/fireant\/images\/miscphotos\/redbug.jpg\" alt=\"Bug on Texas mountain laurel leaf\"><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><img decoding=\"async\" style=\"border: 1px solid #ccc;\" src=\"https:\/\/www.ericsiegmund.com\/fireant\/images\/miscphotos\/redbug2.jpg\" alt=\"Bug on Texas mountain laurel leaf\"><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/www.ericsiegmund.com\/fireant\/images\/misc\/divider1.gif\"><\/p>\n<p>A couple of weeks ago I posted some photos of <a href=\"https:\/\/ericsiegmund.com\/fireant\/2015\/04\/19\/150419-dovenest\/\">a dove that built a nest<\/a> &#8211; and I use the term very loosely &#8211; on top of our concrete block wall, under the eave of the house. I pretty much forgot about it until last week; when I checked it, here&#8217;s what I found.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><img decoding=\"async\" style=\"border: 1px solid #ccc;\" src=\"https:\/\/www.ericsiegmund.com\/fireant\/images\/miscphotos\/babydoves.jpg\" alt=\"Two baby doves in nest\"><\/p>\n<p>The eggs had hatched and two babies were growing rapidly.<\/p>\n<p>A few days after this photo was taken, we had a serious wind- and thunderstorm. I had assumed that while the nest was of the typical shoddy construction that&#8217;s the dove&#8217;s trademark, it was still well-sheltered. However, when I checked on things, I discovered that the storm had had a bigger impact than I expected.<\/p>\n<p>Both doves were on the ground, but one was deceased. The other seemed to be in good shape, and even better, the momma was keeping close watch over it. I got within a few feet and while she was clearly agitated by my presence, she didn&#8217;t fly away. Again, forgive the quality of the photos, which were taken at dusk with a phone.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><img decoding=\"async\" style=\"border: 1px solid #ccc; margin-bottom: 8px;\" src=\"https:\/\/www.ericsiegmund.com\/fireant\/images\/miscphotos\/survivingbabydove.jpg\" alt=\"Young dove on ground\"><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><img decoding=\"async\" style=\"border: 1px solid #ccc;\" src=\"http:\/\/www.ericsiegmund.com\/fireant\/images\/miscphotos\/mamadove.jpg\" alt=\"Mother dove keeping watch\"><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/www.ericsiegmund.com\/fireant\/images\/misc\/divider1.gif\"><\/p>\n<p>And, finally, anything Nature can do, Photoshop can&#8230;well&#8230;undo? Overdo? Outdo? You decide.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><img decoding=\"async\" style=\"border: 1px solid #ccc;\" src=\"https:\/\/www.ericsiegmund.com\/fireant\/images\/miscphotos\/beeandfirewheel.jpg\" alt=\"Cutter bee on firewheel\"><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Just a few random observations from the Wide World of Nature &#8211; Midland, Texas Edition. First, the following video is noteworthy in spite of its poor quality (shot through an office window with a zoomed-in iPhone), because it shows a ladder-backed woodpecker who landed on a red yucca and began working over the blooms. These&hellip; <a class=\"more-link\" href=\"https:\/\/ericsiegmund.com\/fireant\/2015\/05\/07\/150507-localnature\/\">Continue reading <span class=\"screen-reader-text\">Local Nature<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[7,22,25],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1083","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-midland-odessa","category-wildlife-birds","category-wildlife-inverts","entry"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/ericsiegmund.com\/fireant\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1083","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/ericsiegmund.com\/fireant\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/ericsiegmund.com\/fireant\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ericsiegmund.com\/fireant\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ericsiegmund.com\/fireant\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1083"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/ericsiegmund.com\/fireant\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1083\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":10480,"href":"https:\/\/ericsiegmund.com\/fireant\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1083\/revisions\/10480"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/ericsiegmund.com\/fireant\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1083"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ericsiegmund.com\/fireant\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1083"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ericsiegmund.com\/fireant\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1083"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}