Category: Kathy’s blog
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Our Native Javelinas
by M. Kathy Raines A javelina is not a pig. It’s not even in the same family. Though the rather pig-like javelina (Pecari tajacu)—a lean, compact native creature with a bristly salt-and-pepper coat—inhabits the same local brushlands as the invasive feral hog, the two certainly differ. And the javelina, mainly a fan of prickly pear…
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The Vital and Prolific Eastern Cottontail
by M. Kathy Raines The big-eyed cottontail, crouching amid a bed of purples, mimicked a garden statue. A four-foot bull snake sprawled nearby, alert to the slightest motion. Neither budged. I watched for twenty minutes, rooting for the rabbit, but never saw how the drama played out. Snakes can be mighty patient. Like other ready-to-eat…
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The Intriguing but Maligned Bronzed Cowbird
by M. Kathy Raines A bronzed cowbird is not a bad bird for depositing her eggs in the nest of an unwitting host, whose own brood often dies. No, the cowbird, like ourselves, does what it does to survive and prosper. An obligate brood parasite—like about 1% of bird species, including some cuckoos—a cowbird never…
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June Bugs, Harbingers of Summer
by M. Kathy Raines June bugs make my heart sing. Sheathed in glossy caramel shells, they zip about within swaths of springtime porch light—with some hapless beetles smashing into bulbs and landing sprawling, legs a-wriggle, onto concrete. To schoolchildren, they are happy harbingers of summer. Groundskeepers and farmers, though, do not share this joy. While…
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Killdeer, Masters of Deception
by M. Kathy Raines A reedy, insistent whine of “Kill-dee!” alerted me to this handsome plover with its roundish head, signature double breast bands and dark, massive eyes ringed with flaming orange. Pacing the shallows of a receding resaca, this plover, a killdeer—so-named for its namesake cry—probed the mud with its pointed beak, then halted,…
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White-tailed Kites
by M. Kathy Raines Thinking they were seagulls, I once paid them little mind. Then a whitish gray “gull”, like a fluttering, suspended marionette, hovered for minutes, legs a-dangle, beating its wings mightily—a remarkable spectacle amidst swirls of pearly clouds. Now I frequently watch these raptors, white-tailed kites, as they perch or hover over fields,…