Category: Blogs
-
A Striking Red Bird—the Summer Tanager
During April, the peak of spring migration in South Texas, one often spots a summer, scarlet, or, occasionally, a western tanager resting on one of our low branches—to the delight of photographers unable to convince fluttery warblers to strike a pose. We are indeed fortunate hosts. In much of their nesting and wintering grounds, tanagers…
-
Black-necked Stilts
A cartoon animal springs to mind when I watch this round-headed, needle-billed, tuxedoed bird that, walking on pink stilts, rises above its fellow shorebirds probing the mud for edible treats.
-
Winter Ducks
As the lakes and ponds up north begin to freeze over the birds that make their living in the water need to find open, ice-free water. Naturally, this sends them south looking for warm breezes and tropical water where they can spend a comfortable winter; a sort of Margaritaville for ducks.
-
A Striking Winter Visitor, the Ruddy Turnstone
This busy little fellow’s rust and black feathers blend so seamlessly with the quartz and feldspar crystals embedded in the granite of the jetties, one might miss the creature were it not for its bright orange legs, white underparts and dappled head.
-
Eastern Fox Squirrels
Leaping from branch to branch, chasing one another and outwitting birdwatchers who try to block them from feeders, an expanding population of fox squirrels now thrives in the Rio Grande Valley.
-
Large Carpenter Bees
by M. Kathy Raines Bzzzzz! scolded a plump black bee, swooping and darting at me as I hacked at the last stump of an unwanted bougainvillea. Yikes! I sped off, fearing it was a member of a gang of killer bees. Gingerly, I returned—spying no evidence of its cohorts— and inspected a tidy, round hole…