Category: Anita’s blog

Check out this link as we head into Week 2 of the 4th Annual Texas Pollinator BioBlitz! https://content.govdelivery.com/accounts/TXPWD/bulletins/263c397 I challenged myself to the “Something Blue” from the Daily Challenges last week and found a Red-Shouldered Bug — what’s not red is blue, in real life — a startling bug color to come upon. Track minute-by-minute…

BioBlitz opportunities are fun! You get to compete with yourself — how fun is that? And you earn volunteer hours while having all that fun! Really, you can compete with fellow Citizen Scientists or simply enter as an individual participant and just go at your own pace. 4th Annual BioBLitz — Pollinators — October 4…

August was dreadfully hot. Drought- and heat-stressed ash trees are nearly bare, their leaves dropping like a late Midwest autumn — the only good to come of their dead leaves is the addition of carbon to the compost piles and nitrogen for the grass. Just when the horizon — and the habitat — looked its…

In the deathly stillness of a hot, breezeless, cloudless August afternoon, humidity reaching the limits, anyone with a tan might see their skin glow — and that, my friends, is a recipe for a gnat attack! No tan? No sweat — gnats are attracted to moisture — eyes, nose and ears. There’s no escaping. “Gnat”…

Not the weather — the cicada — Superb Dog-day Cicada, Neotibicen superbus Listening to night songs was a wonderful aspect of growing up Kansas. Prior to the onslaught of air conditioning, old, two-and-a-half-story wooden homes had huge attic fans that pulled a breeze into upper-story bedroom windows — most nights. Other nights, especially airless nights…

You’re doing your morning rounds and all’s right with your summer world when suddenly, your eye catches something the color of a perfectly roasted marshmallow — WHAT-T-T-T-T? But it’s bigger — much bigger — than a marshmallow, and upon closer inspection, not something you’d want on a S’more. The glob has swamped some southern coastal…