There’s a new kid on the block. Literally. A juvenile red-shouldered hawk has been a pretty constant presence on the north side of the bayou just west of the Jackson Hill bridge. Last week, he or she decided to sit in the open at eye level and not fly away even if I got within… Read more »
Carolina wrens are adorable, industrious and fierce. They have the lives your parents hoped for you. They mate for life, settle down on a half acre that’s theirs, and start producing kids. Lots of them. Up to three broods a year. Instead of putting a fence around their half acre, male Carolinas define the boundaries… Read more »
This is the first blog post I ever wrote. And I never got to publish it until now. That’s because I have finally found another polyphemus moth cocoon. I found the first one (photo at the top of the page) two years ago and by the time the blog was up and running, the cocoon… Read more »
Field of Dreams is a 1989 movie in which a voice whispers to a farmer, “if you build it, they will come.” On the strength of this, he builds a baseball diamond in his cornfield. They turn out to be the 1919 White Sox who do come and play. It’s all very magical. Buffalo Bayou… Read more »
The processes of the natural world operate at all scales, from tiny to enormous. But however large or small, complex or simple, every living thing is pushed by two drives: stay alive and reproduce. Knowledge of the natural world is essentially the details of how each species manages these drives. The natural world in our… Read more »
I have a nemesis in the plant world. Dogfennel. This weed, in which apparently no one is interested, has blindsided me time and again. Dogfennel is the kind of weed you don’t even really notice. That’s a photo of it above and you can hardly find the outlines of the plant. The only reason I… Read more »
There are many lenses through which to view nature in general and our Park in particular. Recreation, tranquility, civic pride, aesthetic beauty. There’s a more prosaic lens as well. Nature, and our Park, can be seen as a collection of eaters and their food. Some organisms are always one or the other; some creatures can… Read more »
The black tipped white moth is active in the Park right now. I’ve seen this lovely moth only once before in the Park a few years ago and mistook it for a butterfly, which made for a challenging ID. iNaturalist AI wasn’t as robust back then, or I would have had the answer in a… Read more »
This week, I visited our miracle prairie and was blown away by how birdy it was. This almost never happens, but that prairie was genuinely full of birds. Maybe not rarely seen birds, but it was full of the birds that should have been there. I saw ruby crowned kinglets, phoebes, orange crowned warblers, a… Read more »
I am giving a birding presentation this week and preparing for it, I ran into something I never knew and I can’t stop thinking about it. As anyone who has used a bird guide knows, the organizational system behind all bird guides is identical and impenetrable. Experienced birders learn how to navigate the books and… Read more »