by M. Kathy Raines “Diving ducks!” we cried as sleek, streamlined black cormorants seamlessly slipped beneath resaca waters behind our Brownsville apartment complex. Moving from Indiana in the ‘80s to teach school, we had never seen the like. An efficient hunter, our native Neotropic cormorant—with its round, emerald eyes and long, uplifted, hooked bill—has the…

by M. Kathy Raines Hundreds of massive black shadows patterned the frond-strewn pathways at Sabal Palm Wildlife Sanctuary one winter’s midday. A loud crinkly crunch heralded their heavy plopping into dried sections of palms. Distinctive dark shapes, as graceful as ice dancers, wheeled above. Each year, turkey vultures who opt to migrate from northern parts…

by M. Kathy Raines Iced confections spring to mind when I view clumps of wintering white pelicans resting and preening on a sandbank in the Laguna Madre—long carrot-colored bills slicing here and there. Though similar looking—with their pouches, hefty size and graceful, synchronized flight —white and brown pelicans, North America’s sole species, behave quite differently.…

Like an actor parting the curtains, a Texas tortoise took the stage from behind foliage near the visitors’ center at Palo Alto Battlefield one steaming August day, its curvy forelegs pigeon-toed, its back ones, elephantine.

This wide-eyed thrush—pot-belled, brown-spotted and robin-like in posture—traipsed among eager photographers at the South Padre Island Convention Center one October. It, like other migrants resting and refueling during their southward journey, looked weary.

The snowy egret slipped its yolk-yellow feet, toes first, into waters of the saltmarsh and strode across, stealthy and alert, ready to strike.