Much of the Preserve was once used for ranching so if you’ve done a lot of hiking, you’ve no doubt come across a Tank (a man made retention pond created for the purpose of watering their cattle). We’ve had some heavy rains in the last month and a half so there is a good deal of water in some of them. Since discovering a tank during a recent insect survey outing, I’ve been frequenting it regularly for the purpose of documenting water birds for our Bird Survey. (http://ezpixels.com/mscblog/beating-the-bushes/).

I also enjoy looking for interesting shapes and patterns so I went back specifically to photograph the abstracts I knew I’d find in the cracking ground. There were lots to photograph but when I looked really closely at the surface through my macro lens, I was fascinated by what looked like tiny green eggs.

 

 

 

 

I sent an email to Ron Rutowski to see if he knew what they were and he passed my request to a couple of his Aquatic Ecology colleagues who confirmed it as a colony of Cyanobacteria which is commonly called Blue-Green Algae. Like the Red-spotted Toad, these Algae can lay dormant for years and then come back to life with the least bit of water. I love learning something new! To learn more about this algae, click on the highlighted/bold word in the previous sentence.