Two "never befores"

Having been observing nature for some 65 years, this week turned up two new observations--at least new to us.
First, one of those rather large spiders had caught a small songbird in its web and was busy devouring it. The spider was one of those we commonly call a banana spider, but an investigation shows that it is not correct to call it a banana spider. (even common names can be wrong!) These spiders are common in the Texas gulf coast, less common in central Texas. Their web is a giveaway to their identity----it always has a zigzag stitch in the center. The spiders name is an argiope---one of three varieties, this one probably Bruennich's Argiope. Well that's one for the book.
Second, a road runner was on the back porch ravenously devouring a small songbird. At first, I surmised it was the one from the spiders web, but no it was another bird. I have always known that road runners were carnivorous, but not to the extent of hunting small birds. Well, that's two for the book.
I wish I had taken pictures.

Comments

Aermotor Windmill Lives

The Aermotor windmill is probably the oldest iconic windmill In the United States today. We bought one that was very old at a seller's booth at the Round Top antique market. This was back in the late 1900s. So that makes it 20 years ago or so. We first erected this windmill In Fulshear in the backyard. We had to get Architectural Control Committee approval to do this. Because some of our neighbors may have some bad experiences with a neighboring windmill, we had to assure them that we would not let the brake slide and provide that nasty shrieking noise. Other than that, there was no objection to looking at a windmill. W e erected the windmill in Fulshear. It was quite a chore for us as we had no idea where all the parts fit together and how they were arranged. For example, we learned that the sail wheel with its struts is built with the same concept as a bicycle wheel with its spokes. After much head scratching and consulting the internet we had it to ...

Back to Cuero, Texas

You may recall the museum display of some 2000 reamers, or "juicers" as we always called them---the kitchen device that you use to squeeze the juice from a half of an orange.. That display is enough to draw one to this museum, but we read more recently that the museum is the new owner of a vast collection of hand painted Japanese porcelain cups, saucers and tea pots. So, a trip to Cuero on the 25th of March, but first lunch now that we have arrived in Cuero about noon. We went to a place familiar to us, the Main Street Kaffee haus and bakery. The special for the day was either barbequed beef on a waffle or barbequed beef spaghetti. I advised the congenial order person behind the order counter that both sounded horrible. Dee made amends for me by saying that I was a traditionalist when it came to barbeque. I picked up on that and ordered a bbq beef sandwich. It was good. Here is the inside of the self order café. The café is owned by ...

Cause and Effect

We have this great world atlas book published by the National Geographical Society, which by the way, we bought at the local library used book sale for $2. Probably this low price of the book pains the Society but it sure makes my reference to maps an easy task without having to wake up my computer. The book occupies a permanent spot on a book stand in our breakfast room, standing ready to supply map information on request. The book happened to be open to the page showing the whole of Antarctica featuring all the outposts and even some commentary of scientific significance. One such comment was on ice coring data of historic temperatures and carbon dioxide content. I can understand how the CO2 content of the ice can be preserved over many centuries at varying depths, but I am unsure how the prevailing temperature of some thousand years ago can be preserved in the ice cores--but that's another issue that we will not get into here. So here is the comment on the data of the ice...

NQ99HQ

Search This Blog