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 »
Below is a video of two ladybugs doing what ladybugs do. I stumbled on this pair because the hamelia in the small nature preserve I manage is thick with aphids. Were I a gardener in search of a landscape that maximizes visual impact so as to demonstrate my utter control of “nature,” this would be… Read more »
Let’s blame the pandemic, or the heat. I played hookey down in Galveston on Tuesday and saw four or five things that warrant an entire post exploring them in detail. But I seem to lack the energy. So here are the amazing things with brief description of why they amazed me. Above is an aptly… 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 »
A mandolin is a wonderful kitchen tool. It is a hand-operated, razor-sharp blade that can make quick work of slicing cucumbers for pickling. However, if you are too fond of cooking shows and like to emulate the techniques you learn from them, you might throw caution to the wind and slice up said cucumbers without… Read more »
Anyone who spends time with this blog will know that there is a special place in my heart for native bees. So when one of these ladies worked her way onto the screened porch area of this small private nature preserve, I knew I had to save her. I had in my hand a dish… Read more »
The closer you look at something, the more questions you develop. And I have a new lens that lets us look very closely indeed. For example, the photo at the top of this post. It is a butterfly known as a gulf fritillary. It is one of the more common butterflies in Houston, but that… Read more »
Cardinals have a special place in my heart. They are ubiquitous. Everywhere I have traveled in the U.S., I have been awoken by cardinal song. It is the same song I listened to in bed as a child and every time I hear it, I get a warm cozy feeling. Also, and I can’t really… Read more »