More backyard wildlife

As I sat down on the back porch to write this, I heard rustling in the bushes. I looked up in time to see a shiny tail disappearing beneath a low-lying hawthorne bush near the fence on one side of the yard.

I ran over to see if, today, I could catch the big mystery snake in our back yard and identify it. It was gone. I looked up. I looked down. I looked everywhere. Nuthin'.

I am flummoxed. That's one very sneaky snake. So long as he leaves my root beer alone, though, I won't worry about it too much.

But I will just point out: any snake big enough to make noise is pretty big.

As I wrote yesterday, our back yard goes on for a ways. Actually, it doesn't, but the property backs to a greenbelt. That's a fancy word for a wet weather creek and flood zone that nobody can build on.

And that suits us just fine. It's a football field-and-a-half, maybe two football fields, to the luxury condominiums on the other side of the creek. We can't see them at all from the back porch, and only a hint of a roof from the back gate. The greenbelt runs for miles, and widens just to the east of us.

In addition to the creek, we have lots of oaks and some ashe juniper (which we all call "cedar" around here). The creek bed is limestone, of course, and there are reportedly a number of caves in the area.

One of them -- just about a mile from the house -- is Whirlpool Cave. I visited with Patrick and family and friends back in Christmas.

Cicadas are buzzing in the trees just now, and this morning we surprised a couple of white-winged dove on Patrick's playhouse; they were engaging in the birds part of "the birds and the bees."

Earlier today we took a little hike out behind the fire ring, which is just beyond our back gate. We found a surprising number of wildflowers, including morning glory, lantana (my mom's favorite), verbena and cat-claw sensitive briar.

This last plant is a ground-hugging member of the mimosa family with a blossom that looks like one of those fiber optic nightlights. It's also one of the first plants I remember my father showing me: stroke the leaves gently, and they'll fold right up.

We saw a young Gulf coast toad, some raccoon scat (er, poop) and some holes that looked to me like the work of an armadillo. I've left the back gate open to see what wanders in.

We also saw a yellow garden spider (also called the "letter-writing" spider, black-and-yellow orb weaver or black-and-yellow argiope). Orb weavers (Family Arneidae) comprise the third-largest family of spiders in the world. Charlotte, with the famous web, was a barn orb weaver.

Some orb weavers, including the black-and-yellow species common here, create zig-zag designs in their webs. There's a name for this interesting feature: stabilmentum. Scientists don't really know what purpose it serves, though it may help camouflage the spider in its web

The argiope on the other side of our fence is one of the largest and most conspicuous in this large family. We also have another conspicuous, though diminutive, orb weaver here.

I mentioned yesterday the spiny orb weaver I found in the back yard. These spiders were common around our home in Rockport when I was a child, and I loved to watch them. I recall seeing all the color phases -- red/orange, yellow, and black and white.

On a roadtrip back from Rockport early last month, Tam and I discovered a spiny orb weaver had hitched a ride on her hood. We pulled over and, after taking some pictures, set it free on the roadside. It was the first "crab spider" I'd seen in years.

So, I was excited to find one, then two, in our new back yard in South Austin. Today I noticed they're pretty much everywhere.

Spiny orb weavers (also called spiny-backed orb weavers and "crab spiders") are short-lived but prolific. The females die after laying an egg mass (from which more than 100 spiderlings will emerge) in the fall. Males, which are much smaller than their mates, die about six days after depositing sperm in the female.

They eat flying insects -- wasps, moths, flies ... and, I'm hoping, mosquitoes. They rarely come inside a house, and their bites are not known to be dangerous to humans.

In the photo above you can see the little tufts of silk that often are found in crab spider webs. Some people think they serve as a "flag" to birds, who otherwise might fly through the web and destroy it.

A woodpecker visited today, too. I wasn't able to get a clear shot, but I think it was a ladder-backed woodpecker, though it may have been a red-bellied. If anyone can tell from this photo, leave a comment.

One thing I haven't seen yet is any geckos or lizards, which is a bit of a puzzle. I would have expected to find them congregated around the porch light at night. I'll keep watching.

In the meantime, I'll be keeping a keen lookout for that snake and any other critters that decide to pay us a visit.