Day Three: Not a Complete Washout
The thunder is rumbling outside as I write this journal entry. What was supposed to be a complete washout turned out not to be so bad. I spoke by text early on with Mark McDermott at the Big Sit, who described it as "slow." The rain chances kept going down and pushing back, so I headed out to see what I could do. I went back to Madison County, where I found my Little Blue Herons in the very same tree I left them on Friday and got photos for the Challenge! I picked up a few other things on yesterday's target list and on my own Challenge species list. I guess I got out just in time. I heard tornado warnings for Robertson and other counties north on my way home and just saw https://www.kcentv.com/article/weather/weather-aware-tornado-warnings-issued-parts-central-texas/500-01947ba6-2744-40f6-90ae-6d3e644fb6a7 as I started this post.
As I write this, we're sitting at 4,041 observations of 1,164 species by 174 observers, all new records for the Challenge! I suspect the 1,200-species mark will be broken by the time I wake up in the morning, with all the data uploads this evening. We already had observations from all six counties when I checked this morning. I'm still leading with 378 observations and 223 species. Salt Marsh Caterpillars are still the leading species, now with 39 observations.
I'm not going to go through all the various taxa in detail, but we have 496 species (42.69%) of plants, 398 species (34.25%) of insects, 113 (9.72%) of birds, and 49 species (4.22%) of fungi and lichens, with lesser numbers of other taxa. We still have the same 8 taxa of "other." Our research grade observations are just under 25% already, which is great.
Of yesterday's "target" species, we picked up: Tropical Checkered-Skipper (misidentified as Common/White Checkered-Skipper), Goatweed Leafwing, Common Nighthawk, Spotted Sandpiper (not by me; I saw one, but couldn't photograph it), Black and Forster's Terns, Little Blue Heron (2), Bald Eagle, Red-tailed Hawk (2), Eastern Screech-Owl, Pileated Woodpecker, Purple Martin (2), White-throated Sparrow, Cerulean Warbler, Common Whitetail, and Little Brown Skink. We're still missing White-tailed Deer! I flushed one at Lake Madison today, but my camera wasn't ready, and we scared each other so badly that I missed the shot.
Somebody got an American Alligator at ENRTA today. Without digging too deeply, that may be my observation of the day. :-)
One more day of observations. If you don't have time to get them all uploaded by tomorrow night, you can still upload observations through NEXT Sunday night, as long as they were taken within the four-day observation period. And don't forget to help with the identifications through Sunday night of next week as well. TMNers, you can get volunteer credit for sitting at the computer in your jammies doing IDs!
Thank you ALL! Whether you've made one observation or three hundred, they all contribute to the cause and to the database. We literally could not do it without you. Thank you.
Bruce
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