Before you were born, kids listened to hot singles on small vinyl disks with a big chunky hole in the middle. They were played at a speed of 45 rpm rather than the usual 33 1/3 rpms that larger albums were played at. We called them 45s. On one side, they had the song you… 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 »
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 »
Between travel and an injured foot, it has been weeks since I’ve really spent time in the Park. The two hours I spent Monday felt like a great big hug. The prairie grasses are everywhere announcing themselves. Even pros (one of whom I’m not), can struggle to identify prairie grasses when they are not blooming…. Read more »
We have approximately 250,000 Mexican free-tail bats when the colony under the Waugh Drive bat bridge is rolling. That’s roughly 6,250 pounds of mammal. I’m not sure, pound for pound, there is a larger concentration of wildlife in the city. This huge biomass creates its own gravitational field. We have a pair of red-shouldered hawks… Read more »
Two years ago, I saw something I had never seen before. It was during our regular walking tour, so a bunch of other people got to watch it with me, but the only photograph I managed to get was of the footprints left behind. What we saw was a wasp laboriously dragging an immobile caterpillar… Read more »