My Species History

Common Whitlowgrass was one of the first "micro" plants that I observed in the Spring of 2020, in my naturalist infancy. It was maybe the first sort of "reward" for starting to look more closely around me and noticing things that were less showy and eye-catching. It was growing in the cracks between the stepstones of the walkway to our front door at our first house in Joseph.

Since coming back to Oregon, I've looked forward to spotting it in the Spring, as a reminder of those early days and the importance at looking closely and letting yourself be surprised.

My Species History

After De and I moved to Oregon in December 2017, we didn't have much to do for the first few months but look out of our windows at the snowy trees and mountains, and we eventually started to notice the birds. We'd put up a bird feeder that the chickadees found, and then after it had been up for a few weeks, we noticed that there were some round little birds picking on the ground around the stone path to the door and the driveway, and we were pretty instantly in love.

These little cuties are a winter favorite of many folks around North America, and now we had joined them. We started putting some seed out directly on the ground, and soon enough we had a couple dozen Juncos regularly visiting us every day. By our third winter at Engleside, we would regularly have a flock of 40-50 of these plump friends zipping around, chipping and enjoying the snowy weather.

They were much rarer while we were in Louisiana, though if it gold cold for long enough we saw a few here and there. So we were very glad to come back to Oregon and see them so much more commonly in the cold months. In the summer of 2025 I got up in the mountains in the early Summer and finally heard their little song for the first time.

Juncos are definitely one of my favorite birds, and even with them being common we always get excited when we see them bopping around the yard. Here at the Ponderosa Cabin, they love to come in and pick through seeds that have fallen onto the bare ground underneath the back deck.

My Species History

These were my first Odonata species encountered at our place on the east side of Joseph. I spotted a sandy colored female hanging around the driveway, and then the bright lavender male shortly thereafter, and was a bit surprised that they were the same species.

There is a creek that runs probably 50-60 yards from our house, so I wonder if that's where they are actually breeding, and just come to the grassy areas to hunt during the day. But we'll have to see as I eventually encounter them elsewhere.

I first observed them in early July, and now approaching the end of August they are much less abundant than they were at the beginning of the month.

Last updated August 21, 2025.

My Species Description

One of the most common and familiar birds in North America, a medium-sized passerine bird found in wetlands and agricultural fields across the continent and known for its unmistakable "conk-a-ree" calls careening out of what seems like every wet spot around during some parts of the year.

Males are deep black all over with bright red shoulder epaulets typically lined in bright yellow, though the yellow can sometimes be hard to see or appear closer to white. Females are often one of the trickiest bird IDs around: streaky brown-and-white birds otherwise the same shape as the males, but to the uninitiated (and sometimes the experienced), can look like a fancy New-world Sparrow you've never seen before at first. That they're usually hanging out pretty close to the males is a good giveaway.

In winter, they will congregate by the tens and hundreds of thousands to forage seed in agricultural fields as they migrate South.

My Species Story

Great Blue Herons are a very special bird to De and I. There seems to always be one nearby when we need it -- a bit of reassurance when we are feeling uneasy. Especially when we are heading out and traveling in or to a new place. When we took the van out for the first time in the Fall of 2021, we spotted a Great Blue near every campsite we set up in.

Their ancient beauty and elegance feels regal, and it is a thrill to encounter them every time. For some reason, more than any other bird, I think of them watching this land change over the eons from atop their food chain, surviving despite the disappearing acres of wetland by just being strong enough to eat anything and everything.

My Species Story

As with most dragonflies I really started noticing these little guys regularly after falling in love with insects during my Master Naturalist training.

In 2023 I noticed they were very common around the edge of the pond at the Landry Property, and would regularly see them perched and zooming around on my daily walks.

In 2024, they were everywhere. There were tons of them around the pond, even more than I remember the year before, and I also encountered lots of them in the Spring everywhere I went in south Louisiana. They were by far the insect I saw the most during the 2024 City Nature Challenge

My Species History

One day in early 2018, De and I were driving north out of Joseph on our way to Spokane when suddenly a bird flew up from the side of the road into the nearby trees — a big flash of deep black and metallic blue that sent both of our eyes wide in wonder with a "What was THAT" look on our faces.

We soon discovered it was a Steller's Jay, a bird neither of us knew existed up until that point. We had both just started to pay more attention to the birds around the yard, having been somewhat confined to our little house for most of the winter, but we hadn't really started "birding" in earnest at this point. So it was just a lovely surprise at the time. As we started birding, though... it became one of our biggest targets.

It was shockingly so long until we saw another one. We'd since learned that in some parts of the West they're so common that people don't even think twice about them, or even consider them nuisance birds that steal food from campsites! We just wanted to get a good look at one.

Eventually, in 2019 we would get some Steller's Jays coming into our yard, of all places, which was such a thrill. They are so big and so beautiful and it's wild to think anyone would take them for granted. They also made me appreciate how beautiful and amazing the Blue Jays back East are, and to not take them for granted either, as raucous and too-smart-for-their-own-good as they can be.

After moving back to Joseph in 2024, we've been lucky to be staying in a place where we see (and hear) them every day, and are once again lucky enough to have them coming right into our yard for some seed. We were afraid they might bully everyone else away, but the chickadees and nuthatches have started to investigate recently, so I think we'll have a happy little crew soon.

Love those eyebrows.

Last updated December 1, 2024.

My Species Story

If I saw a fox before I encountered them at Iwetemlaykin, I don't really remember. Maybe a glance here or there with a "was that a fox?" around Baton Rouge, but nothing like what I would get in Oregon.

The earliest encounter was a memorable one. I'd seen a fox in the distance at Iwe, and snapped a few pictures of it after noticing that it seemed to be staying in one place. When I reviewed the photos, I was shocked to see there were some kits nearby! I kept watching through my zoom lens, as I wasn't enough of a naturalist to have a pair of binoculars with me yet, and got to see these four or five kits playing for quite some time, snapping a few pictures here and there.

I would see this same fox a few more times in the park, and got a great look at one on a very cold morning in 2019, running through the frosty hills.

I love that all of my good photos of them, they're looking at the camera. They are almost always aware that I'm around, and hear the click of the camera's shutter.

At the Landry Property, I observed them quite a bit but almost exclusively via trail cam. I think I only saw one with my own eyes once, scampering across the edge of the property near dusk.

Now at our little place near Wallowa Lake, there is at least one fox that has gotten very used to people, and very used to being given an egg and maybe a hot dog or two every once in a while. He's beautiful, but is a little too comfortable for his own good with Loki around.

My Species Story

This little evergreen shrub was a fast favorite after I got to know it well at the Landry Property. With its deep brown stems against its small, light-blue-green leaves all along them, it offers a lovely change of color and texture along the forest edge just about everywhere you look.

My Species Story

This is one of my favorite Louisiana natives.

I first encountered this handsome little understory shrub or small tree along the western edge of the Landry Property, with its unique, deeply-veined evergreen leaves, still dark green even in late January. It wasn't everywhere like the Beautyberry, but it had its place at the base of some trees and tucked into the edge, obviously planted by birds over the years.

I would dare call it an elegant plant, with its long, leaning stems and airy appearance giving it almost an understated beauty among the more tangled and busy shrubs that often encounter these sorts of boundaries. It's one that I would love to encourage just about everywhere in the more upland spaces on the property.

My Species Story

In early 2022, down in the "bottomlands" of the Landry Property, beneath the Mother Cow Oak, there were suddenly a ton of small trees with little bright green leaves on them in the middle of a sleepy, bare forest.

These little trees with their smooth, sinewy gray bark were lighting up the understory throughout this area of the property, stretching back toward the southern edge along the creek. iNaturalist told me they were American Hornbeam, aka ironwood, and I've loved them ever since. They were maybe the first new species of tree I learned about at the Landry Property.

They don't all flower and go to seed every year, but we get quite a bit of them, and I've found some pretty large specimens around the Dead Pine Woods part of the property.

My Species Story

Beautyberry, aka French Mulberry, is a beautiful plant native to the southeastern United States with soft, light green, opposite leaves and growing clusters shiny, deep purple berries that persist through the Fall. It blooms in small clusters of pink flowers in late Spring.

I first fell in love with Beautyberry after seeing the beautiful purple berries in my mom's garden. It certainly lived up to its name! If I'd seen it before we moved to Oregon I don't remember or wasn't aware enough to realize it, but now I was eager to see it again.

When we moved out to the Landry Property, suddenly I was surrounded by it. It absolutely thrives in understory here in just about every part of the property, especially along the edges. There are specimens of all shapes and sizes, and if I had my way there would be some at the base of almost every tree as the foundation for the native landscaping.

In April 2024, I potted and transplanted a few small plants and that has been a big success so far. I hope to pot some more and possibly gift them to any local takers, and expand their presence at the Landry Property as much as I can.

History

Purchased from Clegg's in Denham Springs in April 2022 and planted a few weeks later after much hemming and hawing on my part about where it and its partner Mulberry 2 should go in the yard.

This one is planted near the Pond, out in the main yard area. Sadly it's in a patch of mostly clay soil, backfill from the spoils of the pond used to elevate the height of the entire yard. I planted it a bit higher than it should have been, possibly, because I got some mixed advice on how to plant a tree.

Despite all that it's done really well so far, at least as far as I can tell. The Spring of 2024 produced its best crop so far, and it's really feeling like a proper tree these days. It does struggle with brown and spotty leaves after it finishes fruiting and I'm just wondering if it needs some kind of compost/fertilizer treatment to make up for that weak soil.

Along with its partner Mulberry 2, these both came from the wholesaler Bracy's and so their actual provenance as Red Mulberries is questionable. They are likely either fully White Mulberry or a hybrid. For historic purposes, I'll keep referring to them as Red Mulberries, and because I think Mulberry 3 might actually be one.

My Species Story

My first iNaturalist observation of a Luna Moth is from 2014, long before I started using iNaturalist and long before I started really caring about the more-than-human world in general.

They're one of those beings that catch your eye even when your eyes are usually closed to the bug world. Big, beautiful, bright green and that elegant shape, with a long curling tail.

Most recently I saw 10 of these beauties in one night at the famous Allen Acres while there for an Edible Plants workshop. The header image above is one of those. Most of the Lunas I've seen have been from Allen Acres, though my first was at my old house in Baton Rouge and I've seen one living one at the Landry Property.

Last updated April 3, 2024

My Species Story

It would have been impossible not to notice Yaupon Holly once we came back to Louisiana.

This hardy evergreen shrub with its small, scalloped leaves can be found just about everywhere across the state, especially in the understory of piney and mixed woods throughout the region. I have to imagine a stand of Loblolly Pines with an understory of heavy Yaupon is one of the more common ecologies across the state.

Being evergreen, it was one of the first plants I got to know well when we moved out to the Landry Property in the winter, and it can be found just about everywhere around here -- in some places, literally at the base of every large tree, there is at least one Yaupon established or trying to start. We have a few very large specimens, and a couple of cases where a huge female is right across from a huge male, so that we get lots of berries every year and a constant supply of seedlings on the forest floor.

The berries are an important winter forage for birds and animals of all kinds, and the scraggly, tangled shrubs make great nesting habitat. We've had Northern Cardinals using it here for sure, and I'm sure there are many others, like the Wood Thrushes I hear calling from the deeper parts of the woods.

It makes an excellent hedge and I love when I see it dominating the understory around the state instead of the invasive Chinese Privet.

For me, this is one of the iconic and inescapable plants of the pine-dominated uplands of Gulf South.

Last updated August 11, 2024.

My Species Story

I wasn't familiar with this one until we moved to the Landry Property, and it quickly became one of my favorite native understory treasures.

There's quite a bit on the Landry Property, including one large one along the driveway as you enter the property, and a very large one along the South Woods Trail that probably gets to 20-25 feet tall.

It has beautiful, shiny dark evergreen leaves and is one of the earliest shrubs to flower in south Louisiana, with clusters of white flowers on nearly every branch that gets good sunlights. It's purplish fruit hangs on through the winter and is great food for the local animals. A perfect native to use as an ornamental instead of privet.

My Species Story

A buttery gold beauty of the transition from Winter to Spring.

One of the first big blooms of the year, this evergreen vine climbs to find the sun and pops with yellow, usually peaking in February. The highly-toxic blooms smell wonderful, like a bright clean buttery soap.

I first saw this one at the Landry Property and as I write this, there is maybe more of this fragrant delight topping small shrubs and trees around the property than I've ever seen. It's been a treat to be alerted to a new clump of it by smell before spotting it with my eyes.

Last updated February 29, 2024

My Species Story

I first encountered this lovely little plant in a pretty bad state -- well past its prime of the year and possibly run over by a lawnmower, it was on the edge of the East Magnolia Woods at the Landry Property.

Even in that state I knew it was unlike anything I'd seen before, and when I added it to iNaturalist and discovered its local provenance (endemic to Louisiana and Mississippi, in the Loess Plains) and its captivating name – Wakerobin – I was looking forward to seeing it again in a fresher form.

The first winter after we moved to the Landry Property, I discovered I was in luck. It grows all over the place here! There are fairly extensive patches in all of the wooded areas of the property, and every year I find more patches and seemingly larger and more mature plants, especially back toward Hub Creek on the South end of the property.

I was even lucky enough to find a rare yellow-flowered individual in the area near the creek in the Spring of 2023.

Now I look forward to these marbled green friends emerging in the beginning of the year, a sure sign of the seasons changing and early Spring coming soon.

My Species Story

When we moved back to Louisiana in 2020, I struggled to adapt to our new semi-suburban, quarter-mile street that was more or less cut off from the rest of the surrounding area by deep ditches and a lack of sidewalks along the main road nearby. For the last two and a half years, we'd lived just a mile or so walk from Iwetemlaykin, a beautiful local natural area where I learned to reconnect with nature and the home of my budding naturalism.

After a few weeks of feeling this disconnect and struggling with majorly stressful life events and projects at my job, it all became too much and I was pulled outside to walk this little quarter mile stretch every morning as long as it took for me to sort of regulate for the day. It was also covered in litter, the most of which seemed to have come from our neighbors just dumping their trash in the ditch across from their house.

So I started walking, and picking up trash, and noticing all of these plants that were thriving along the ditch and especially at the end of the street around the cul-de-sac, where the ditch met up with a bit larger creek running through the area. Along that creek bed were several thriving Black Elderberry bushes.

The huge clumps of white flowers that gave way to gorgeous deep-purple berries caught my eye and my heart, and I would look forward to seeing how they progressed every day, and what different birds I would find on them. It was in these bushes that I saw my first Wilson's Warbler and American Redstart, among many other species (over 100) that I would eventually tally on our little street.

After moving out to the Landry Property in late 2021, I spent the first year there identifying over 200 native plant species around the property, but shockingly didn't find any Black Elderberry. Considering it thrives just about everywhere in South Louisiana, its absence was notable and surprising. In the Spring of 2023, however, I started to find little baby elderberries here and there, and particularly toward the creek on the South End of the property. After commenting on this to a few naturalist friends, I learned that the deer absolutely adore Black Elderberrry and will chew up the small plants like candy. Aha! Now I knew that our resident deer were almost certainly the cause of its conspicuous absence.

I tried to protect some, and I brought in a couple of cultivars to plant in the South Meadow area, but pretty much all of them got hit hard by the deer, especially once the 2023 Drought set in. I did, however, eventually find one mature Elderberry along the eastern drainage ditch, blocked off enough by surrounding shrubs and brambles that it was able to get established — and was probably the source, via birds, of all of those baby plants I'd found in the Spring.

My love of the plant and my love of iNaturalist came together in one of my first big identifying efforts on the site, where I filled out the Flowering Phenology for every Black Elderberry in the state of Louisiana to try to get a clearer picture of how it progresses throughout the year: https://daniel.observer/journal/inaturalist-black-elderberry-phenology

I still hope to get a few more Elderberry established here, but they may need to be a little closer to the human structures to protect them, or might need to be fenced off for a few years until they get big enough to withstand browsing.

My Species Story

I first heard about the Scarlet-bodied Wasp Moth when we moved back to Louisiana in 2020. A shaggy vine had starting growing on the fence in our little back yard, and my mom noticed one day when she was over and noted that it was Climbing Hempvine (Mikania scandens), and that I should keep an eye out for a bright-red day-flying moth that was known for using that species.

I never saw it there, and for the next two years I'd looked and wondered when and where I might finally see one. Finally, in the late summer of 2022, as I was leaving the Amite River Wildlife Sanctuary, I spotted one nectaring on some Late Boneset (Eupatorium serotinum) and pretty much immediately fell in love. The bright red on black with metallic blue accents was just so unlike anything else I'd ever seen!

Not too long after that, I was looking through the Pokeberry Patch, I noticed a few red spots on a dying boneset plant. Upon closer inspection, it turned out to be at least five male moths collecting toxic compounds from the weakened and brown stem! A couple of days later, there were more than 20 male moths collecting on another dead boneset a little further back in the patch. I couldn't believe my eyes.

For the rest of the fall, I saw these beauties almost every day in the Pokeberry Patch, and eventually even found a few caterpillars on the Florida Keys Hempvine (Mikania cordifolia) growing in the same area. The Pokeberry Patch ended up being more of a Eupatorium/Mikania patch, the perfect breeding ground for the SBWMs.

The Drought of 2023 hit the Mikania hard on the Landry Property, and the population was not nearly as abundant, but I've seen a couple here and there. Here's hoping they'll rebound along with everything else this year.

They come up in my first podcast appearance on TIGER TIME, where I talk about my love of Bugs, since they are a big part of me discovering that love.

Last updated on November 25, 2023