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Other Nations: A Naturalist’s Blog about Buffalo Bayou
by Alisa Kline

Dec 18

A small adventure

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 »

Dec 11

Dogfennel

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 »

Dec 04

Who’s feeding the Park?

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 »

Nov 27

A rule-breaking moth

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 »

Nov 20

Exotic, Invasive, Native

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 »

Nov 13

Bird guides, who knew!

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 »

Nov 06

November hug

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 »

Oct 30

A bridge full of bats

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 »

Oct 23

Do over

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 »

Oct 16

Autumn

The calendar says fall and the heat just laughs, but the Park is nevertheless changing. Nectar is getting harder to find. The sunflowers that filled every glade are gone to seed. Morning glory is still lighting up the morning, but those flowers are done by mid day. The prairie grasses are poking their flowers higher… Read more »

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“[Animals] are not brethren, they are not underlings; they are other nations, caught with ourselves in the net of life and time, fellow prisoners of the splendour and travail of the earth.”

—Henry Beston, The Outermost House

 

For sightings, questions or comments email blog@alisakline.com.

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