A Field Guide of Home

Coastal Plains Toad in the Houston Backyard

I grew up in the woods. Well, not literally. I mean we had a house with most if not all of the modern amenities[i], but we had several hundred acres backing to thousands of acres of wild lands. I spent a lot of time out on the land. A lot of my fondest memories are of innumerable expeditions down old railroad tracks, over hidden meadows, over ponds and streams, into deep forests.

Our NY Backyard

Given our bucolic locale, we had a wealth of wildlife continually parading through our property, yard, and occasionally house. Deer, bear, coyotes and coydogs, rabbits, mice voles, hawks, passerine birds of all sorts, woodchucks[ii], muskrats, chipmunks and other rodents, seemingly giant snapping turtles, a myriad of frogs, snakes, porcupines, raccoons,  barn cats, stray dogs, and on many occasions, our neighbors’ cows. They were part of us and we were part of them. I knew where to find the garter snakes (sunning themselves on the old levered flagstone of the path down to the road), the very best places for frogs[iii], and where the deer were bedding down.  Many of our favorite family stories involved wildlife of one type or another[iv].  (It’s not much of a surprise, therefore, that I pursued a career in the environment.)

Porcupine in the Garage…Again, Justin and Zak Hunting Frogs

I was lucky, through grad school, to primarily live in places with ample open space. I went to college at a campus overlooking the sweep of the Genesee River Valley, with arboretum and open land all around it. I lived in Rochester for a time on the edge of Irondequoit Bay, overlooking hilly forests and wetlands leading out to the Bay and Lake Ontario. Even my deathtrap[v] grad school apartment backed to farm fields and green space.

Genesee Valley Sunset 1994, Irondequoit Sunset 1999, Delaware Farmscape 2001

It wasn’t until I moved to Houston that I truly lived in a dense urban environment cut off from nature. I’m lucky to have some large open space areas fairly nearby, and some wonderful local parks, but our house is on a fraction of an acre, with sterile landscaping in a flat land. It’s a far, far cry from the rolling fields of home, bursting with life. It has not been an easy transition.

Houston Skyline: My entire home town could fit in one of these buildings, easily.

The Houston backyard…all 600 square feet of it.

But even in these adverse conditions, “life finds a way”. I’ve kept track of the various species I’ve seen in my yard or flying overhead. Part of it is obsessive listing and nature geekery, but I think a good deal of the motivation is part of that universal desire to connect to your past. For me, that’s a past pretty heavily interwoven in sense of place and the natural world. “Home” is inextricably bound with living things to me. So far I’ve noted close to 75 different species either in and around our home, or flying through our airspace, including birds, amphibians, reptiles, mammals, butterflies and moths, dragonflies, other insects, and spiders[vi].

A small sampling of the 75 “House Species”.

I regret I won’t be able to give my forthcoming daughter an endless backyard of forest and meadow, or the sense of place I grew up with. I doubt I’ll even be able to explain it to her. So much of it is the soup of unfettered sensory imagery of childhood in a green growing place.I wish I could sit with her at a big bay window and point out hawks soaring above our fields, or catch frogs with her in the garden like my parents did with me. But I guarantee she will know by name the things that do live in our little suburban postcard lot, and hopefully the wonder of small places will plant a seed for the future.

NOTES

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[i] In the dead of winter, whether the vague thermal emanations from our ancient baseboard heating system could be counted as “heat” was wholly a matter of subjective opinion. Also, I lived in the era in which your tv channel options were either four fuzzy channels (one of the CBC), or to buy a satellite dish roughly approximating the reflecting dish on the Death Star’s primary weapon. With this expensive monstrosity you could get MTV, and thus enter into the rarified strata of landed gentry. Our family went the four channel route. I do not regret this, however. I watched a lot of CBC and am better off for it. I do regret the heat thing, though.

[ii] My father had an ongoing war with the woodchucks that made their home in our northern lawn. He never resorted to firearms or traps; his offensives were primarily a matter of cursing and jury-rigged protections for the little trees they had planted, which never took off. There was one little tree in particular that was an ongoing conflict point. Dad blamed the woodchucks for attacking the bark, though it was likely deer in retrospect. He’d wrap the tree, and erect little fences around it, and the struggle would go back and forth over a period of years. One year he allowed a nearby business to store some of their vehicles in our old, unused barn. As a repayment, I assume, they spent part of a day mowing our fields, and generally cleaning up the property. I remember it vividly even though I couldn’t have been older than late elementary school. It was a golden afternoon in Indian summer, where the light was particularly effusive. When I got off the bus, it was immediately obvious that something had changed drastically…fields of grass were gone, the barn was spruced up, and men were roving around like shades of field hands out of the property’s past. I remember being terribly excited, out exploring all the “new” spaces around the property. That excitement immediately ended when I made my way over to the north lawn. I arrived just in time to see some of the workers chainsaw down that little tree.

[iii] Which I collected as a kid, herding vast flocks into our little wading pool, only to release them when I deemed I had finally found enough. The very best place for frogs was the edge of the garden plot. If one walked, scuffing one’s feet along that edge, you would inevitably spook dozens of little leopard frogs and once in a while a choice prize of bullfrog.

[iv] Like the time my sister, in elementary school, was given a small chick (or maybe duckling?) to take care of. It lived its brief time in a box in our garage, right below the wing of the house my room was in. It peeped incessantly, all night long, but my sister loved it dearly. One night, it was peeping away as it always did, until suddenly therte was an exceptionally loud and sustained peep, and then silence. We ran to the garage in time to see a raccoon climbing out under the eaves with a little yellow bundle in its mouth. While I’m sure we comforted my sister, I’m also sure all of us had a shameful joy at the cessation of the endless peeping.

[v] Literally. But that’s a story for another day.

[vi] In terms of species, it includes 40 birds (13 flyovers, 27 yard birds), 3 amphibians, 3 reptiles,  3 mammals, 6 butterflies and moths, 1 dragonfly, 10 other insects, and 10 arachnids. Here is the complete list.

Birds	Date Seen
Carolina Wren	Fall 2011
Northern Cardinal	Fall 2011
White-winged Dove	Fall 2011
Mourning Dove	Fall 2011
Northern Mockingbird	Fall 2011
Blue Jay	Fall 2011
Black-bellied Whistling Ducks (flyover)	Fall 2011
Ruby-throated Hummingbird	Fall 2011
Orange-crowned Warbler	Winter 2011/2012
Cedar Waxwings	Winter 2011/2012
Yellow-rumped Warbler	Winter 2011/2012
House Sparrow	Winter 2011/2012
American Goldfinch	Winter 2011/2012
Black Vulture (fly over)	Winter 2011/2012
Turkey Vulture (fly over)	Winter 2011/2012
Great-tailed Grackle (fly over)	Spring 2012
Carolina Chickadee	Spring 2012
White Ibis (fly over)	Spring 2012
Cattle Egrets (fly over)	Spring 2012
Great Egret (fly over)	Spring 2012
Great Blue Heron (fly over)	Spring 2012
Common Nighthawk (fly over)	Spring 2012
American Crow (fly over)	Spring 2012
Yellow-crowned Night Heron	Summer 2012
Red-shouldered Hawk	Summer 2012
Downy Woodpecker	Fall 2012
Blue-grey Gnatcatcher	Spring 2013
Cooper's Hawk (flyover)	Spring 2013
Purple Martins (flyover)	Spring 2013
Hooded Warbler (female)	Spring 2013
Yellow-breasted Chat	Spring 2013
Black-and-White Warbler	Spring 2013
Yellow Warbler	Spring 2013
Ovenbird	Spring 2013
Common Yellowthroat	Spring 2013
House Finch	Winter 2011/2012
oriole sp.	Spring 2013
Amphibians
American Toad	Fall 2011
Coastal Plains Toad	Spring 2012
Rio Grande Chirping Frog	Spring 2012
Reptiles
Carolina Anole	Fall 2011
Brown Anole	Fall 2011
Mediteranean House Gecko	Fall 2011
Mammals
Virgina Oppossum	Winter 2011/2012
Eastern Gray Squirrel	Winter 2011/2012
Roof Rat	Spring 2012
Butterflies and Moths
Gulf Fritillary	Fall 2011
Lunate Zale Moth	Fall 2011
Monarch	Winter 2011/2012
Question Mark	Spring 2012
Variegated Fritillary	Spring 2012
Longtail Skipper	Winter 2012/2013
Dragonflies
Blue Dasher	Summer 2012
Other Insects
Green/Common Lacewing (Chrysopidae family)	Winter 2011/2012
Crane Fly (Tipulidae Family)	Winter 2011/2012
Honey Bee (Apis mellifera)	Winter 2011/2012
Earwig sp.	Spring 2012
Pill Bug (Family Armadillidiidae)	Spring 2012
Lady Bug (family Coccinellidae)	Spring 2012
Bumblebee (Bombus sp.)	Summer 2012
Mosquito (Various Culcidae sp.)	Winter 2011/2012
Assassin Bug	Summer 2012
Carpenter Bee	Spring 2013
Arachnids
Jumping Spider (Salticidae Family)	Fall 2011
Hacklemesh Weaver (Amaurobiidae family)	Winter 2011/2012
Triangulate Cobweb spider	Spring 2012
Wolf Spider (Lycosidae Family)	Spring 2012
Green Magnolia Jumper (Salticidae species)	Summer 2012
Southern House Spider	Summer 2012
Trashline Orbweaver	Summer 2012
Spiny-backed Orbweaver	Summer 2012
Orchard Spider (Leucage venusta)	Spring 2013
Orbweaver sp.	Spring 2013