The Valley newspapers are regularly filled with local nature articles. From fish to plants to birds. The South Padre Parade weekly last weekend had an outstanding article on Mexican Black-Bellied Whistling-Ducks, Dendrocygna autumnalis, written by Texas Master Naturalist and Arroyo Colorado Audubon Society member, Marilyn Lorenz, who is a regular birding columnist in local…

  Neptune is in retrograde. Generally I don’t read horoscopes but I do love a catchy headline. Neptune retrograde is a usual headline for mid June. Neptune is the planet that gives us the desire to unveil mysteries. Most of nature is a mystery to me. Fortunately, others have studied and explained what I see.…

  Those not born in the Rio Grande Valley probably think the trees here aren’t very big. If you were to put one of our gorgeous Honey Mesquite, Prospis glandulosa, trees up in an old-growth hardwood forest in New York, yeah, it would be dwarfed. Put that same mesquite tree next to a single-story house…

  I don’t mind holding my cats, but anything else in nature just seems icky. On my way to bed the other night, I noticed a frog gripping the wall at the doorway to the bathroom. That was creepy. Yes, frogs and toads are amphibians, not reptiles, but that would have made a longer blog…

  No, this isn’t one of my one-act inter-active murder mystery comedies. This is about Guinea grass, Urochloa maxima. Left to its own devices, whether we’ve had a three-year drought or great rainfall, Guinea grass (and Berumda grass, Cynondon dactylon, whose roots I swear go to China) are listed in reference books with strong negative…

  As a Navy trained news photographer, I spent a good number of years with a 30-pound camera bag hanging from my shoulder. Now, I’m never without my less-than-one-pound Smartphone in my back pocket. What freedom! I do miss selecting my own shutter speed and f-stop and Texas windy days (of which there are many)…