Trash to treasure

Years ago I sold a piece of land to my brother. He, with the help of my late husband, built a concrete foundation for a cabin there. Then my brother moved away and it sat there until I finally bought the land back from him. I owned the pad whether I wanted it or not. NOT!

I never went up there for various reasons but today I decided to look for wildflowers up high and it was an easier walk up that washed out driveway than bushwhacking. When I got to the pad I thought it would be nice to take a photo of it for posterity. (The emotional memories from there have mellowed through the years.) While looking for the best angle I noticed lots of trash and rotting wood around it. So I walked down the driveway and somehow got my pickup up the steep, gullied drive. As I was loading it full of the trash I turned over an old piece of wood, unearthing this Texas Banded Gecko. I don't recall ever seeing one of those before. It was just as cute as it could be.

Another reason I went up there was to look for a potential Peregrine nest. My sisters and I have been hearing them screaming along the bluff (right side of photo) but so far I've been unable to locate a nest.

When I got back to the house I went online trying to ID the gecko. The only photo that looked like it was from a 1997 article, "Trash Heap Treasures," referenced on someone's blog. It said they frequent trash dumps.But it just called them Banded Geckos and nothing specific. Kelly promptly ID'd it for me. Here's a photo of the mountain I'm monitoring. My sisters call it Turtle Mountain.

I was going to crop off the bottom of the photo but decided to leave it on so you can see my scope set up in the bed of the pickup. I did see a couple of Aoudad on top, and I saw Peregrines aplenty, just not at a nest. They may be courting, or nesting on the other side, or not nesting yet. On April 4th a biology class is going to look for Lucifer Hummingbird nests up that mountain, so hopefully they can find the Peregrine nest.

There are flowers everywhere, of course, what with a record wet year so far, and I can't even begin to ID them.  This one got ID'd by helpful people on a Facebook group. It's Phacelia coerulia. One of the common names I've found for it is Skyblue Scorpionweed or Blue Phacelia.

Oh, almost forgot. My friend, Bonnie Wunderlich took this photo of  Bluebonnets at Big Bend Ranch State Park yesterday. Thank you, Bonnie, for allowing me to share your photo.