Amarillo
Spent the day at Amarillo, starting at Wildcat Bluff Nature Center on the west side of town where we saw and photographed several birds including hummingbirds, quail, plus a number of insects and plants (https://www.facebook.com/Wildcat.Bluff.Nature.Center), then the Amarillo Botanical Gardens that are imo the best I've seen (http://amarillobotanicalgardens.org/)
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Wildcat Bluff consists of two parts, the nature center where the visitor's center is, with plenty of paved paths that get those in wheelchairs or on walkers right out where they can see birds, insects and a number of plants, and the rest of the 640 acres that is rangeland grazed by cattle and accessed by unimproved trails. I didn't get to Amarillo until the day started getting hot, and who knows what birds would have been visible had I gotten to Wildcat at 8 a.m. instead of 10, but there were a decent number. Good selection of insects, incl bumble bees, dragonflies, and butterflies. Out in the pasture I saw few if any birds but a good number of insects and wild plants. (The cultivated plants around the visitors center were nice but those that were planted there I did not upload to iNat.) Saw no cattle but there were droppings everywhere which gave me hope of encountering dung beetles, but no go.
For anybody wanting to see uncaged plants and animals and get away from the industrialized bustle of Amarillo, Wildcat Bluff is a great place to visit for a modest fee, $3 for us seniors. A highway runs in front and the road noise is there unless you go way in back, but if you plug your ears and wander out in the mesquites you can imagine you are back 100 years ago.
Here's part of a note I sent to an accomplice in the Amarillo area.
"Edanko" just ID'd the black/dark blue "wasp" (I thought it was a wasp or a dirt dauber) as a Mydas fly. And claims to distinguish male from female. Which we can test on the mating pair. Check out the link to fly ID... https://sites.google.com/view/identifyflies
They seem intent on IDing the mottled grasshopper as a Red Winged Grasshopper. This troubles me because many so identified do not have white splotches on the back. See http://www.opsu.edu/Academics/SciMathNurs/NaturalScience/PlantsInsectsOfGoodwell/grasshoppers/files/arphia_pseudonietana.html ; This is from that site at Okla Panhandle State U that had the broken link.
The iNat wizard wanted to ID the hummingbird as an Anna's or Red Throat. I too have trouble seeing it as a Black-Chinned and have held off so identifying it.
Odd that we are getting so many first iNat observations for the Amarillo area. Aren't Panhandle TMNs active on iNat? Hasn't anybody else been out at Wildcat Bluffs with a camera? What about the Amarillo bioblitz back in April?
Maybe it's a Llano Estacado (Midland-Odessa) and South Plains (Lubbock) TMN thing to post on iNat. In Lubbock thanks almost entirely to Ellen5 & Amzapp. And their disciples like you and me. In your area Jotol posts quite a bit. Don't know if she is a TMN.
Running total of species for Wildcat Bluff. https://www.inaturalist.org/observations?nelat=35.23646608029151&nelng=-101.93787891970851&place_id=any&swlat=35.23376811970851&swlng=-101.94057688029147&view=species
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