I cringe every time I see a grasshopper. Sure, I’ll stop and photograph them, but then turn my back, quelling the panic that could so easily arise. Many Midwesterners recall the summer of the near defoliation in the 1990s by grasshoppers – if not the year, certainly the event. I had a cute little cloth…

Flashes of yellow dart through the branches of a honey mesquite tree outside my kitchen window in the late afternoon. They’re Couch’s Kingbird (Tyrannus couchii) and I think there’s one or two adults and possibly four young from this year’s brood. These birds are a permanent resident in the very tip of Texas. We’ve had two or three…

by M. Kathy Raines I heartily recommend this new book, An Immense World, by Ed Yong (published in 2022, 464 pages), which explores the umwelten, or sensory worlds, of various species—including everything from scallops, orb weaving spiders and octopuses, to bats, manatees and lions. It is a humbling read, but he never denigrates our own remarkable…