Author: Anita Westervelt
-
Anita’s Blog — The Mockingbird Sings
When the morning is warm, the winds have calmed and a fine mist of fog shrouds the land, it’s fun to wax poetic and play with words in my mind; nature is waking up and inspiration is everywhere. The distant call of unseen chachalacas and low grunts of a great blue heron at the…
-
Anita’s Blog — Thistle While You Work
It’s time to start mowing — but wait! Don’t mow this: Or this: Both Texas thistle and red poppy start out as large, flat-to-the-ground, rosettes. Texas thistle can reach to two feet or more in diameter; an individual leaf can be 18 inches long. The rosette of the red poppy is smaller,…
-
Anita’s Blog — Something’s Happening on the Resaca
January’s freezes led to some interesting resaca happenings. This particular tale happened to a friend who lives on a resaca near Bayview. After the first January freeze, frozen fish popped up to the water’s surface and drifted to the edge of the resaca where he could scoop them out and examine. Some of the…
-
Anita’s Blog — The Boringness of Flocks
While researching for the previous post about yellow-rumped warblers, the use of the word flock became monotonous and I was reminded that there are so many more fun and creative words to describe the gathering of more than two or three birds. It’s called collective bird nouns and they’ve been around since the 15th…
-
Anita’s Blog: Bring bird diversity to your garden with native trees
BY ANITA WESTERVELT Hosting our resident and winter-visiting birds is always fun here in the Rio Grande Valley. It’s possible to increase the variety of birds coming to your property by planting native trees. You may recognize the mantra, November through February is the ideal time to plant trees in the Valley. Cooler months help…
-
Anita’s Blog — Flashes of Yellow
Yellow-rumped Warblers are hosting a convention outside our kitchen window. It’s pretty cool. They’re doing exactly as the book says, fluttering out from the mesquite trees to catch flying insects some days and other days skimming insects from above the surface of the resaca. About 50 of the wee birds, barely bigger than…