A Zizotes Find

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Late last summer as I walked my dog, I would regularly pass by a house that is owned by a local family. With no one in residence for at least a decade, owners who don’t maintain the property nor answer queries about the property, the front lawn has become a repository for plants–many native. In my shambling ambles with my old dog, I kept an eye on a plant that had situated itself at the edge of the unkempt lawn and that seem to sport milkweed-like foliage. My curiosity piqued, one evening I whipped out my phone, tapped my handy Seek app, and learned that this milkweed-like foliage belongs to Zizotes Milkweed, Asclepias oenotheroides, one of the native milkweeds of Central Texas.

I hated the thought that this precious pollinator plant would be subjected to the occasional mowing and resulting temporary destruction. So one morning, shovel in hand and bucket at the ready, I dug up the plant and skittered home with my plant booty.

True confessions: I am a plant thief.

The purloined Zizotes transplanted beautifully. I dug it up, reaching well into the soil with the shovel, as I didn’t have a clue about the root system. It turns out the plant enjoys a large bulb, with some spindly roots that radiate from the bulb. After I removed the plant from its original home, I potted it and set it in a dappled light area of my back garden, near a water source so that I would remember to water the newly set milkweed. I watched it for the remainder of summer, watering as necessary, admiring the plant’s resilience. My plan was to donate the plant to our neighborhood elementary school, which has a set of gardens, including a pollinator garden. The caretakers of the school garden were happy with the offer, but I insisted that we wait until October to plant, an ideal time to plant perennials here in Austin.

In October, before I left for a trip to Europe, the thriving milkweed was ready to join other plants in the pollinator garden and I contacted one of the volunteer caretakers of the gardens. She was appreciative, but worried that she might “kill” the plant. I assured her that the Zizotes proved a remarkably hardy critter, but she suggested that I keep the plant.

Well, I wasn’t inclined to argue with that! The Zizotes Milkweed now grows in my front garden, kept company by two volunteer Lyreleaf Sage, Salvia lyrata, and a host of other native plants nearby.

I’ve never seen Zizotes Milkweed plants for purchase in a nursery, though it’s possible that they’re included in some native plant seed packets. Zizotes is not the most attractive (to humans!) of milkweed plants; I’d guess that most nurseries wouldn’t carry it as most nursery customers are looking for “pretty” plants. The flowers are small, greenish-white and cluster along the main stem. I like these plants and find the diminutive blooms charming.

Since last summer’s milkweed discovery, I’ve found about eight other Zizotes Milkweed plants on the route I walk: five individual plants in a neighbor’s “hell strip” and one large one at the neighborhood school, alongside a walkway. The neighbors are refraining from mowing the milkweed, though it’d be nice if they weeded around the plants, but one can’t have everything, right? I asked for and received permission to dig up the school milkweed so that it wouldn’t continually be mowed throughout summer. The plant came out of the ground, bulb and roots intact, and as three individual plants! Woohoo! Within a couple of days, new leaf grow appeared. I love a tough plant!

I wish I’d taken a photo of the plants I removed from the school yard, as there was nothing left after the mowing but a few inches of shredded, raggedy stems. I rescued the milkweeds the day after the Austin Independent School District’s mowing crew did their worst. Now look at these three!

The name zizotes comes from Spanish, meaning “skin sores” because, like all milkweeds, the milky sap is toxic to humans and can cause skin irritation. According to the LBJWC (link in the first paragraph), Native Americans used the sap for as a poultice for skin rashes.

Very few Monarch butterflies came through my garden this past spring, adults wafting through the garden, nectaring on blooms. I noticed at one point that the zizotes disappeared. Did a monarch caterpillar eat it to the ground? I didn’t see that happen, but I certainly could have missed the action. The plant bounced back, up from roots and has grown and bloomed since. I’m hoping that my one plant will produce more Zizotes Milkweed plants, for my garden and to share with others.

Spring Migratory Birds

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Spring migration is over, most of the neo-tropical birds now settled in their breeding areas for summer’s chick raising. I didn’t have quite the numbers of migrants through my gardens this year. I don’t know if it’s that I simply didn’t see as many or if there weren’t as many; I hope it’s the first and not the second. That being said, it’s a challenge to watch the many flitty birds that visit my front garden, as I don’t have a unobtrusive spot in which to hide and observe. Lincoln and Chipping Sparrows showed up, as they scattered when I came into the garden. I saw busy, chatty Eastern Phoebes, and Great Crested and Crested Flycatchers; I usually heard them before seeing them and identified those (and others) using my Merlin app to identify calls and songs.

My back garden is still the best place to bird watch and it didn’t appoint. In an earlier post, I profiled a male Summer Tanager, Piranga rubra,

…and an Indigo Bunting, Passerina cyanea, who visited on the same day. I wonder if they coordinated, as red and blue go nicely together?

The tanagers usually show up in May and hang out near my beehive as they’re bee and wasp hunters. I’ve only seen an Indigo a couple of other times, so I was pleased with this pretty fella; he was obliging for the photo shoot. Both of these birds breed in the southern half of the US, the bunting with a wider range than the tanager. As a general rule, I only see these birds during spring or fall migration, though female Summer Tanagers have visited my gardens in summer months.

Painted Buntings also make an appearance in early May, usually for a couple of days. The only male Painted Bunting, Passerina ciris, that I saw this year was perched in my SIL’s Retama Tree, which sits outside one of our bedroom windows, offering close-ups of its lovely flowers and foliage at the window. I saw movement out the window, observed the handsome guy, ran for the camera, realized the battery was dead, said some bad words, replaced the battery, and by the time I returned for the shot, Mr. Gorgeous was semi-hiding in the pretty foliage and flowers of the Retama.

Harrumph!

On the brighter feathered side, two female Painted Buntings spent an afternoon noshing on seed fallen from the the safflower and sunflower feeders. They never were close enough to one another to acheive both in a photo, but this pretty one was still long enough for me to capture her nibbling on a seed. Her sister bird is just as attractive.

Two pairs of Common Yellowthroats, Geothlypis trichas, spent some time in my gardens over several weeks. This male, with his lemon yellow chest and jaunty black mask was all about bathing in the pond and fluttering dry in nearby shrubs. I never think these cuties the least bit common, despite their names.

The females Common Yellowthroats were hard to see, only allowing the briefest of glimpses as they bopped for seeds and insects in, out, and through undergrowth. One of the females finally emerged from the greens of the garden long enough for me to capture her in a few photos. She’s less colorful than her mate, but darling nonetheless and her yellow is just as lemony as her male partner. These tiny birds fly far for their breeding, as they are mostly out of Texas to raise their families.

I like this bird-on-bird photo!

We were gone for the first week of May and that’s a prime time for migrants through my gardens, including Baltimore, Bullock’s, and Orchard Orioles. This female Bullock’s Oriole, Icterus bullockii, was a late arrival and perched amiably on a metal bird just so I could catch a shot of her. She was only around one evening and I saw no other orioles this spring unless they all came through when I was traveling. I’m a bit sad about that, either the lack or orioles or my having missed them. Orioles are easy to spot in a garden owing to their bright colors! I hope this one is north of Texas now, somewhere in the central or western part of the country, preparing for or tending to some healthy chicks.

Hummingbirds are here, too, though no photos yet. They’ll hang out through summer nectaring on a variety of my plants, most of the tiny terrors leaving by late October. Resident birds are tending to growing chicks, or have already competed the intense part of parenting, and breeding season will wrap up soon for most species around here. It’ll be mostly the usual suspects until sometime in August, when new calls are heard, and young birds hatched far north of here, together with their parents, make their way southward again for winter, continuing the timeless migratory patterns their genetics demand.

Double Trouble

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This is the second spring that a pair of Red-shouldered Hawks, Buteo lineatus, have chosen to nest in my neighborhood. Their nest sits snug in a large Red Oak tree around the corner from my street; it’s the same nest that they built last year and you can read about it here.

In recent weeks, one or both adults have spent time perched at the top of my SIL’s life-supporting snag, the remains of the once living Arizona Ash tree. Usually, there is one adult atop the snag, but often the mated pair sit companionably together, preening and observing the goings-on in the neighborhood.

It’s nice to observe the still, calm birds and to clearly see the front and back feather patterns of the hawks. The front red shoulder with barred chest combines with the warm, burnished brown and banded tail feathers in back to create a lovely bird. The bird on the left (I think it’s the female) demonstrates the name of this hawk quite well with the ‘red’ draped across the shoulder. Red-shouldered hawks’ intelligent dark eyes watch for prey, their formidable talons catch that prey, typically in flight.

These are magnificent birds, beautiful, graceful–and huge!

If you’re squeamish about a hawk’s meal, close your eyes as you scroll passed this next photo. I’d been called outside by a neighbor about a non-hawk event and when I headed back inside, saw this adult, smack dab in the middle of the sitting area of my front garden, enjoying its meal of rat. The hawk was wet, as a downpour had occurred earlier, but that didn’t negatively impact its meal. The hawk wasn’t happy with me when I grabbed my camera for a photo. It called at me a couple of times, then picked up its meal and hopped to part of the garden where I couldn’t easily follow, and so, could eat in peace without the bother of an obnoxious human.

Fair enough.

Aside from these two gorgeous adults, it’s more than just double hawk trouble! The couple produced two baby hawks, eyasses, which have become visible in the nest as they’ve grown. They’ve traded their white fuzzy feathers for semi-adult plumage, and I believe they fledged this week, in the last day or so. No more bobbling baby hawk heads, the nest appears empty of its young occupants.

I caught a shot of these cute little raptors about 5 days ago. It always amazes me how quickly wild babies grow, especially birds.

I hope to see this family hunting in the ‘hood and I look forward to more hawk watching as summer moves forward. My neighborhood hosts this pair and their offspring, a pair of Red-tailed Hawks, Buteo jamaicensis, and at least one pair of Cooper’s Hawks, Astur cooperii. That’s a lot of hunting in the skies. I wish them all rodenticide-free rats and mice, as well as other delectables (ahem–we have plenty of White-winged Doves, European Starlings, and House Sparrows) for the taking.

Just sayin’.