Red-bellied woodpeckers abide. They don’t depend on any particular food source, happy to tuck into a nice beetle or chow down on an orange. In fact, as far as citrus farmers are concerned, they are a bit too fond of oranges. RBWs are also happy to eat the eggs of other birds, nuts and vegetables…. Read more »
Sometimes your shrubbery can get, let’s not mince words, a bit buggy. The leaf suckers start to pile up. The mites get a bit mitey. Beetles are out-beetling you. You need help, but who do you call? Well, you call the gnatcatcher. That’s who! If only. We cannot summon birds to do yard work, although… Read more »
“Birds of a feather flock together” is an old saying based on an observable avian truth. When you see a flock of birds, they are almost always all the same species. Until I began to write this post, which is about birds not of a feather, I hadn’t thought much about why birds flock by… Read more »
I spent Thanksgiving day in Galveston on east beach because there are always tons of birds on east beach, right at the point where the ship channel and the Gulf meet up. This year, I really needed to be surrounded by wildlife and Galveston did not disappoint. Camera in hand, I immediately settled into my… Read more »
This is the season for juvenile Cooper’s hawks to entertain everyone as they struggle up the learning curve. Cooper’s hawks are about the size of a crow. In their juvenile plumage, which is mostly what we have right now, they are a mass of brown streaks and yellow legs and look more or less like… Read more »
Galveston Island State Park was the balm my soul needed. Not nature in little pockets; not hooray, I stumbled on something; NATURE, glorious, free, exuberant nature. I needed to be surrounded by wildness, dipped into it and rolled around until the stench of indoors had completely washed away. Mission accomplished. I spent over an hour with… Read more »