Photo Essay
Nature Trail Tour – February, 2007
Take a virtual tour of the Sibley Nature Tour!
[Additional Tours: February, 2006 | April, 2006 | May, 2006 | July, 2006 | August, 2006 | October, 2006 | January, 2007]
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When venturing out on a foggy day the immediate foreground reveals the frequent activities of the critters of the pasture. Between the mesquite bushes and green yuccas, the soil is disturbed by the feet of rabbits, foxes, and more.
A closer view of the same seen reveals some of the faint colors of the mesquite, and brings out the green of the yucca.
A telephoto makes the fog seem denser - visibility was actually about 50 yards.
On the ground, the rosettes of filaree (introduced in the hair of Spanish churro sheep) are sprinkled among the cracks of a drying soil. A mesquite bean, and the yellowed remains of an espantes vaquero add more detail to the image.
Caliche rocks under a mesquite are sprinkled with last year's mesquite leaves and a jackrabbit dropping.
On the swooping mesquite branches, the fog condenses into droplets, and with a breath of wind they fall and it "rains."
Yucca pods adorn old seedstalks among the mesquites.
Yucca in the foreground screens some of the golden and tissue paper white leaves of the desert holly. A dark mesquite trunk provides a backdrop.
More desert holly is scattered among the dead grasses and weeds under the mesquites.
White thorns adorn last year's new growth on the mesquites.
In the winter packrats and cottonrats have to rely on the bark of mesquite for sustenance. If that is all they eat, the bark impacts their colon, and they die.
Tasajillo (Christmas Cholla) has red berries in the winter, but this one has a tip of branch yellowed by drought, injury, disease, or insects. Notice the three colors of its thorns - gold, white, and red. A mesquite is in the background.
Color combinations on the Llano can be surprising. The green tasajillo with its red berries screens the blue-gray thorns of the lote bush, with the dark branches of the wet mesquite beyond.
On the overwintering ovaries of the lote bush, tiny water droplets have collected, and one droplet has a peculiar shape because of an old spiderweb still present.
In the bottom of the playa at Sibley, a martin house was erected by an Eagle Scout aspirant as a project. Beyond are the trees in the thicket at the east end of the playa - a tall cottonwood, willows, russian olives, and mesquite. Tumbleweeds, like the one in the foreground are usually pale yellow, but this one is almost orange.
Beyond the dock in the foreground, the normally yellow cattails become golden in the supersaturated air. A black willow hides behind the cattails..
Cattails partially screen a photographer's blind, and beyond is the grove at the west end of the pond of cottonwood, elm, and burr oak.
In the distance is the Midland Women's club. From this wide angle, a person can see the "zonation of plants" – the wetsoil ring of cattails and willows, then the weedy playa bottom, and the surrounding "uplands" of mesquite.
Although the tumbleweed in the foreground and the Siberian elm in the mid-distance, this is a "native pasture" scene - those two species have colonized many locations in west Texas. Mesquite can be seen beyond.
At the west end of the pond, a patch of spiny aster blackened by frost is in stark contrast to the orange stems of spikerush, the green blades of rescue grass (a naturalized South African native), and the cattails and willows beyond.
A tumbleweed branch resting on the top of the cattails reveals that the wind can really pick up loose dead plant parts. The open water of the pond often has a "dabbling" duck bobbing around.
The tall spires of sawtooth daisy are in the foreground, with mesquite pastureland in the middistance, while the distant Siberian elms of Ranchland Hills Country Club are a quarter-mile away.
Under the elms at the west end of the playa, someone often puts dead branches on the benches. Why? The question has puzzled the Sibley staff for 20 years! A patch of winter dormant bermuda grass creates a splotch of white just beyond.