Author: Justin Case

  • City Nature Challenge 2022 & Spiders

    City Nature Challenge 2022 & Spiders

    Observers in the 15 participating Texas regions identified 7,500+ species over the two phases of the challenge. Phase 1 was four days to photograph and make observations. Then we had the next week to finish uploading and get things identified on iNaturalist. This year, 2022, was our best year by far in observations and species…

  • Spring Migration 2022 Champion Plants

    Spring Migration 2022 Champion Plants

    Spring was back this year! There was so much missing in the landscape last spring after the “Big Texas Freeze” as the habitat struggled to recuperate through the season. I remember how the migratory birds had little to no food available for them in their passing. The insects were hardly there, and some of the…

  • A Sticky Situation

    A Sticky Situation

    One late spring, I was volunteering at Hugh Ramsey Nature Park in Harlingen and noticed a man walking along the trail followed by his three sons. The boys were each about two years apart and were in stair step order, the smallest one trying to keep up. As they passed me, the man asked me…

  • Excitement grows at STEC

    Excitement grows at STEC

    Since the opening of the South Texas Ecotourism Center (STEC) in Laguna Vista this past February, there has been a lot going on at the Center. We are receiving a steady amount of visitors to the Center as well as holding a number of events.

  • Milkweed: from Aphids to Zizotes

    Milkweed: from Aphids to Zizotes

    As the plight of the Monarch Butterfly in North America is discussed, the conversation always includes their host plants in the Milkweed family. An excellent source of information on these plants and their impact on nature is a booklet that is, unfortunately, no longer in print Milkweed, Monarchs and More by Ba Rea, Karen Oberhauser,…

  • Harlequin Flower Beetle

    Harlequin Flower Beetle

    by M. Kathy Raines The ornate creature in the soil-filled crotch of our ash tree appeared to be a decorated rock or a lost jewel, a pendant perhaps. Never had I seen such a thing—a beetle’s yellow carapace embossed with an ink rendering of an outspread tree, or maybe a Rorschach test.  Then I picked…