Journal archives for December 2018

December 6, 2018

A New Cactus Subspecies for Lubbock and the region?

Lace Hedgehog cacti are not rare in Lubbock parks, at least those areas that were left alone and undeveloped, but yesterday I happened to come across one a little different from the usual Echinocereus reichenbachii ssp perbellus. It was identified by cactus-d as ssp baileyi, which if the ID holds up looks like a first iNat observation for Lubbock County and the Llano Estacado.

Ellen5 found one up in Oklahoma close to the Wichita Mountains Wildlife Reserve (where I have been hankering to go to for 15 years btw). Here is Ellen's: https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/2324945

See what can be found in the wild places inside the city of Lubbock? As long as our wild places are left alone by people with plans for them.

Cactus-d warns that thid ID may change to var, perbellus. Fact remains that this specimen is different, mote spiny with more spines directed outward than the usual Lace Hedgehog in this area,

Posted on December 6, 2018 02:41 PM by thebark thebark | 1 observation | 1 comment | Leave a comment

December 8, 2018

Life List

Finally did it this freezing evening, out of boredom, I guess. I set up an iNat life list for birds. Don't know what I expected; probably about what I got.

  1. That's it. Add in all the birds seen in the wild positively identified NOT on iNat and my life list might run to ... 120?

Pretty paltry for a senior citizen, no?

Waay short of anybody's Big Year total. More like a Big Day's worth. Sheesh.

Posted on December 8, 2018 01:34 AM by thebark thebark | 12 comments | Leave a comment

December 21, 2018

New Year's Resolutions

Laying aside the fact that New Year's resolutions litter the highways of hope like burned-out Iraqi vehicles on the road from Kuwait to Baghdad back in 1991, here are my goals relevant to iNat:

  1. I want to go back over my old observations, refreshing the memory as to positive IDs and taking another crack on unconfirmed IDs.
  2. My goal is to get much better at plant ID and maybe to develop a little expertise in taxa of interest. Insect ID I am content to mostly vacate the field of to others, and learning birds is taking care of itself.
  3. I want to take sharper better photos and to include a measure of scale. I got an old Tamron/Quantaray 70-300 lens for $20+ with a macro switch that takes excellent close-up photos, though it is not as good a telephoto as the 75-300 one-touch Nikkors I have. No excuse not to get in close.
  4. I want to relate observations to locations and the history of the locations. For example, are some plant species in zones around railroad tracks where seeds were scattered from cattle cars? For example, Rob Lee says areas in city parks that I call "wild" are formed from topsoil bulldozed up when parklands were leveled, or material dredged up from streambeds or lakebeds. Is this true and if so how was the debris colonized by plants and by which plants? (I guess I am as ever process-focused.)
Posted on December 21, 2018 07:22 PM by thebark thebark | 1 comment | Leave a comment

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