Frank Wiseman was the quintessential group photo guru. No matter what, it either began with a group shot or ended with a group shot.
Author: Anita Westervelt
Christmas was long past. The weak afternoon glow of a cloudy west Texas fading March sky had only enough strength to highlight the golden dagger tips of an erect, five-foot tall, spent Christmas Cholla. I was mesmerized by the plant’s startlingly wicked achromatic beauty. The plant was off the beaten track, three layers deep, nearly hidden by ancient, drought-petrified thorn scrub – but worth the shredded clothing to get the shot.
There’s just something about a bug named Texas to make it personal and foster a real kinship with this unique land and its critters.
Rio Grande ground squirrels populate the southern and western areas of Texas. They are less than 11 inches in length, their moderately bushy tail is about four and one-half inches long; they usually have nine rows of squarish white spots on the back of their coat and whitish buff underparts. Males weigh less than three-quarters of a pound, nearly twice as much as the female.
An aura of grey-olive drab fur on the moth sheet caught my eye in the early dawn light. The lone moth was on the sheet long after the other night flyers had scarpered off to their daytime venues. I took advantage of the opportunity to capture photos from several angles. I rely on www.iNaturalist.org to help identify what I find on my moth sheet/black light apparatus.
Scientists, as we were taught in the early days of our Texas Master Naturalist training, use a two- name system called a Binomial Naming System, naming plants and animals using a system that describes the genus and species of the organism. The first word is the genus and the second is the species. It’s as simple as that.