April 2014
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Texas Testudines
Texas Tortoise (Gopherus berlandieri). Very fond of eating tender cactus fruit. I also found the skeleton of one of these elsewhere and pulled off a few of the scutes to get some detail.Nice to see Red-eared Sliders (Trachemys scripta) in their native region. Here’s a recent hatchling, about the size of dollar coin.Texas Spiny Softshell…
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Scissor-tailed Flycatcher
Yowza! Kinda gobsmacking, the Scissor-tailed Flycatcher. Tyrannus forficatus is a backyard bird in Texas.We saw them every day. They’re the state bird of Oklahoma, too, where my mother was born. See it on the OK quarter. The males have longer tails, and more intense coloring. Look for the orange underwings. And those salmon flanks!The tail…
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Bill Strategies
Black Skimmer (Rynchops niger) with Laughing Gulls (Leucophaeus atricilla).American Avocet (Recurvirostra americana).Marbled Godwit (Limosa fedoa).Roseate Spoonbill (Ajaja ajaja).Reddish Egret (Egretta rufescens) and Black-necked Stilt (Himantopus mexicanus).Wait for it…Long-billed Curlew (Numenius americanus).Some of the birds at an afternoon’s stop at the Hans & Pat Suter Wildllife Refugue in Corpus Christi.You know you can subscribe to these…
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Brooklyn Update
When my plane descended into LaGuardia last Monday, there were a lot of gray/brown still-wintering trees in evidence. I’d just come from southern-most Texas, where spring was fully in motion, but things are stirring here, too.Question Mark (Polygonia interrogationis) amid the weeping cherries, which were throbbing with honeybees, and an occasional bumble.The nacreous heart of…
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He Xie
Ai Weiwei’s He Xie of 2010. At the Brooklyn Museum’s Ai Weiwei: According to What? exhibit, which just opened and runs through August 10th. The phrase “he xie” means river crabs — these are made of porcelain — and is also slang for the Chinese state’s censorship of the internet, because it sounds like the…
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Anoles
The Green Anole (Anolis carolinensis).As you might infer from its binomial name, a native of the south. In fact, the only anole native to the continental U.S. There are at least half a dozen non-native species in Florida. The southern-most tip of Texas also has the introduced Brown Anole (A. sagrei), who don’t observe any…
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Owl in the Hole
Twilight. We were in Bentsen State Park, looking for Elf Owls (Micrathene whitneyi). These are our smallest owls, 1.4oz (compare with House Sparrow, .98oz, and Great Horned Owl, 3.1lb). There was a nest in a snag, perhaps originally carved out by a woodpecker. An owl was periodically poking out as the sun set. “Owl in…
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Rio Grande Valley
A Tricolor Heron (Egretta tricolor) prowling the Laguna Madre off Padre Island. I’ve returned from more than a week in south Texas and I have many pictures to sort though. Stay tuned for news of the 68 new-to-me bird species I saw and other excitements.Great-tailed Grackle (Quiscalus mexicanus, omnipresent throughout the trip.
Backyard and Beyond 