MLB and I spent last week at Horseshoe Bay, and it turned into quite a busy time. (Important Note: The following is the equivalent of showing blurry vacation slides from that trip with your parents to Knott’s Berry Farm to captive friends who reciprocate by never coming back to your house, even when tempted by… Continue reading A Week in the Texas Hill Country
Category: Wildlife – Birds
Rooftop Serenade
Lately, this is what we’ve been hearing, coming down our chimney and serenading us, unbidden. Your browser does not support the audio element. If you live anywhere in North America, you no doubt recognize the random stylings of Mimus polyglottos, otherwise known as the Northern Mockingbird (although the georeference seems superfluous since there’s no Southern,… Continue reading Rooftop Serenade
Bird Talk
First, listen to this: Your browser does not support the audio element. No, that’s not Donald Trump’s mating call*. It’s the dulcet tones of the Black-crowned Night-Heron, a bird that I have heretofore never seen, but one appeared on the banks of our neighborhood pond a fortnight ago. MLB and I were out for a… Continue reading Bird Talk
Fish Dinner
We were giving some friends an afternoon tour of Horseshoe Bay and were driving across the low water crossing where Slick Rock Creek empties into Lake LBJ when I spotted a crane* diving under the water, presumably in pursuit of a fish. Sure enough, he surfaced shortly thereafter with a large silver fish grasped firmly… Continue reading Fish Dinner
When Species Collide
Update (6/21/15) – A lot of people have asked if we’re feeding this fox, and that’s why he’s in our yard so often. The answer is an emphatic “no.” I have no doubt that there are some people who are providing food, perhaps inadvertently, in the form of cat or dog food, but I would… Continue reading When Species Collide
Local Nature
Just a few random observations from the Wide World of Nature – Midland, Texas Edition. First, the following video is noteworthy in spite of its poor quality (shot through an office window with a zoomed-in iPhone), because it shows a ladder-backed woodpecker who landed on a red yucca and began working over the blooms. These… Continue reading Local Nature
Another Ill-placed Dove Nest
If you’ve spent much time around doves you know that they run a close second to sheep for being the dumbest animals on God’s green earth. I make this assessment based primarily on the ridiculous places they choose to build their nests. For all I know, they’re geniuses when it comes to differential calculus and… Continue reading Another Ill-placed Dove Nest
Raptor Breakfast
My favorite chair in the living room looks out onto the back yard where I get to see all sorts of interesting things (and it makes me wonder how much I haven’t seen). Such was the case this morning. As I was finishing my daily Bible reading a movement in the Mexican Elder near the… Continue reading Raptor Breakfast
Nest Report
One of the guys at work claimed he’d seen a hummingbird nest in one of the trees outside our new office building. I was skeptical; in all our years of putting up feeders and watching the little guys, I’d never seen a hummer’s nest. So, today after lunch, Debbie and I walked past a live… Continue reading Nest Report
Pardon me…could you spare some T-Rex urine?
MLB was trimming the ground cover on the east side of our yard and when she pulled back a section from the wall, this is what she found: As perceptive Gazette readers – which is both of you, I believe – will recall, we recently had a family of quail in our back yard, including… Continue reading Pardon me…could you spare some T-Rex urine?