On recent ranch trips over the last couple of months to El Mesteño Ranch and Arboretum, I began noticing what seemed to me to be an extremely large amount of cochineal (Dactylopius coccus) on the prickly pear cacti (Opuntia engelmannii var. linderheimeri)—significantly more than I had noted in previous years. Here in deep South Texas, we commonly refer to prickly pear cacti by its Spanish name “nopal.”
Author: Justin Case
While kayak surfing waves along the South Padre Island jetties, I decided to paddle out into deeper waters and back into the Brazos Santiago Pass. With excitement, I sighted dolphins approaching me. But, as they neared me, they weren’t dolphins. Their fins seemed odd. In the clear water the huge fins and bodies of manta rays became visible.
“A Monarch!” They eagerly misplace, Her gentle poise unflinching.
I first realized that we had a species of Gopherus in Texas when I came upon a small female G. berlandierii (Texas tortoise) at Santa Ana National Wildlife Refuge. She was in the last stages of covering a hole that likely contained eggs.
What a spectacular sight!! Each fall millions of monarch butterflies pass through our region on their way to their overwintering grounds in the oyamel fir forests of central Mexico. The following spring these migrants return to the southern tier of states so their offspring and successive generations can fly north to repopulate the summer range. However, it appears the numbers of this majestic butterfly continues to decline each year. One of the reasons for this decline is destruction of the habitat necessary for monarchs to reproduce and to sustain both the species and this migration phenomenon.
Almost every winter visitor to the Gulf Coast shores will sooner or later encounter the delightfully busy, medium-sized sandpiper, Calidris alba, or Sanderling, whose common name we’ve received from the Old English sand-yrðling, “sand-ploughman.” These little sandpipers are possibly the most common shorebird species in the world, being found on every continent but Antarctica.