The recent one is a road runner that was posing right beside the Rio Grande Village Nature Trail in Big Bend National Park:
The mittens in Monument Valley:
Nearby, this is the place where Forest Gump stopped running after 3 years, 2 months, 14 days, and 16 hours, and said "I'm pretty tired, think I'll go home now."
More random photos later.
Some additional images from my recent trip to Big Bend, supplemented with ones I said I would post from the 1998 January Term course that included a raft trip through Santa Elena Canyon.
When the Great Creator had finished making the Earth, a large amount of stony material was left over. Having finished with the main job, the Great Creator tossed the leftovers into a great heap in a remote part of the Earth, creating the Big Bend country – Native American legend.
The Chisos from Rio Grande Village
The Chisos from the west
It is a desert with lots of blind prickly pear
And Ocotillo
Here is a Santa Elena Canyon series
Finally an artistic view of the South Rim
Bird images, both recently captured at Aransas National Wildlife Refuge
Terns, but I am not sure what species
They are graceful in flight and fun to watch. I have posted about terns before.
Double Crested Cormorants
I figured I would post these, because I have them, and I have a colleague who both takes bird photos and likes to see other folks' bird photos. These were taken recently, some at Aransas National Wildlife Refuge, some at Hagerman National Wildlife Refuge, and some in Big Bend National Park.
Great Blue Heron (Ardea herodias) and Great Egret (Ardea alba)
The reddish egret (Egretta rufescens)
Ring-billed gulls (Larus delawarensis)
The Northern Shoveler (Anas clypeata)
Snow Geese (Chen caerulescens)
The second part of my trip to south and west Texas was to Big Bend National Park. Becky told me I couldn’t go to Big Bend alone, so my brother flew to San Antonio (from Oklahoma City) and I picked him up. We drove to Terlingua, TX, (through parts of Texas that contain a whole lot of nothing) where we had lodgings at Big Bend Resort and Adventures, which is a decent lodging for a place like Terlingua. Neither of us was keen on camping – too old for that.
We hiked the Grapevine Hills/Balanced Rock trail our first morning – an easy trail along an arroyo until the last quarter mile, when it goes steeply uphill to the Balanced Rock.
In the afternoon we drove the Ross Maxwell scenic drive to Sotol Vista, Mule Ears, and ended up at Santa Elena Canyon. This is an impressive canyon.
Here is a view of Sotol Vista.
Here are the Mule Ears.
And Santa Elena Canyon.
Here is the Rio Grande. Mexico on the right, US on the left.
Here is one for Becky.
Our second morning we hiked the Chimneys trail.
There are petroglyphs on one of the Chimneys.
We had a raft trip on the Rio Grande on the second afternoon, but I didn’t take my camera, so I don’t have any photos from that trip. I will post some images from my 1998 January Term Desert Biology course when I have a chance to scan the slides (yes these are actual 35mm color slides with Fujifilm).
The third morning we walked part of the Pinnacles trail, which goes up into the Boot Canyon part of the Chisos. We got to the point where the switchbacks go up the actual Pinnacles, and decided we were not keen on that level of effort, so we had a snack and a rest, and turned back toward the trailhead.
A view of Boot Canyon from a trip a long time ago.
And of the South Rim
And Casa Grande
I recently had the wonderful opportunity to visit Aransas National Wildlife Refuge, which is a place I had been to maybe 4 decades ago. This trip I took a boat tour of Aransas Bay and San Antonio Bay with Aransas Bay Birding Charters, which sails from near Rockport , TX. A boat tour is really the only way to see Whooping Cranes, which was my primary goal for this trip – this species was a “lifer” for me. Whooping Cranes are an endangered species, and most individuals overwinter at ANWR. We saw plenty of Whooping Cranes – pairs and the occasional family, which consists of a pair with an adult-sized chick. There was one point at which we could see three pairs and one family from the same vantage point. These birds are territorial even in the winter, but their territories are not very big.
During the boat tour we saw lots of other bird species, and I got decent photographs of some of them. Here is a series of Whooping Crane photos:
I also saw American Oystercatchers, which I think is another lifer.
And Black Skimmers, which is unusual in that it is the only bird species with the lower bill longer than the upper bill. Another lifer.
There were plenty of American White Pelicans and Double Crested Cormorants.
I got a good photo of the American White Pelican in flight.
And of the Brown Pelican.
More bird photos later.
I have posted about birds of prey on the Austin College campus in the past, so I probably shouldn’t call this “things you don’t expect to see.” Go here for broad-winged hawks, and here for sharp-shinned hawks. I have seen Cooper’s Hawks on campus before, but I haven’t had the opportunity to get a good photo of one. Cooper’s Hawk is the medium-sized North American accipiter – larger than the Sharp-shinned, smaller than the Goshawk. These are birds of prey that are generally smaller than the buteos, and feed more on smaller birds rather than mammals. They are migratory, so we see them in north Texas in the fall and winter, but there are individuals that spend the breeding season here as well. Their preferred habitat is open woodlands, so it is not a surprise to see them on a college campus.
The Cooper’s Hawk is a somewhat nondescript, relatively small bird of prey, but is attractive nonetheless.
My last summer trip was short one but one that I have been wanting to do for some time. I dropped Becky off at DFW, then drove about 4.5 hours northwest to Cheyenne, Oklahoma. The purpose of this trip was to see both the visitor center and the actual historic site of the Washita Battlefield National Historic Site.
Having grown up in Oklahoma, I have known about this place for a long time, and in spite of having spent a lot of time in western Oklahoma, I had never been to Cheyenne or the NHS. This is the place where Lt. Col. George Armstrong Custer led about 700 soldiers of the 7th cavalry in a surprise dawn attack on the village of Peace Chief Black Kettle, on the morning of November 27th, 1868. This village was mostly occupied by old people, women, and children. The warriors were camped several miles downstream along the Washita River.
There was a surprising amount of Big Bluestem along the trail
The National Park Service signage and documentation says between 30 and 60 Cheyenne were killed, and 20 soldiers in the main attack. Major Elliott, Custer’s second-in-command, led a squad of the 7th cavalry in pursuit Cheyenne warriors that attacked from downstream. Elliott and all 17 of his soldiers were killed by the Cheyenne warriors. After the attack, Custer reported to his commander, General Sheridan, that his soldiers had killed 103 Cheyenne warriors.
When I was young, I would often see bumper stickers (in Oklahoma) that said “Custer had it coming.” This was in reference to the battle of Little Bighorn, in Montana, in which Custer led 215 soldiers of the 7th cavalry in an attack on about 3000 warriors of the Lakota, Sioux, Arapaho, and Cheyenne tribes. The result of this battle is well known as “Custer’s last stand.”
Another main goal of my Florida trip was to observe nesting behavior in Loggerhead sea turtles (Caretta caretta). I teach about the ecology and behavior of this species in my Animal Behavior and Vertebrate Biology courses. Loggerhead sea turtles exhibit “natal homing.” Females return to the beaches where they hatched to nest, typically at least a couple of decades later. We think the female turtles accomplish natal homing through a phenomenon that is being called “geomagnetic imprinting.”
On the evening of July 10th, I participated in a “turtle walk” at Archie Carr National Wildlife Refuge. Archie Carr was a sea turtle biologist at the University of Florida who advocated strongly for the conservation of sea turtles as an important part of the marine and terrestrial ecosystems. Population sizes of most species of sea turtles had been decimated by overexploitation by humans by the 1960s. Carr encouraged the preservation of the most important nesting beaches of central Florida, and the resulting National Wildlife Refuge now bears his name. Sea turtle populations of many species are rebounding, although most are still listed as threatened or endangered.
Access to the beaches of the Carr Refuge is strictly limited to guided walks led by members of the “Friends of Carr Refuge” who have special use permits from the Fish and Wildlife Service. On the evening of July 10th, the leaders of the turtle walk found a nesting female Loggerhead sea turtle, and a group of “walkers” got to watch as she dug her nest, laid her eggs, then buried the eggs and camouflaged the nest before going back down the beach to the ocean. Any type of photography disturbs the nesting turtles, so is strictly forbidden during the turtle walks. Here are some views of the beaches of Archie Carr NWR:
The Barrier Island Center is near the northern end of the Carr Refuge.
I jokingly said the Carr Refuge is 20 miles long and 100 yards wide, and this is not far from the truth.
One of my main goals on my biology field trip to coastal central Florida was to observe and photograph Florida scrub jays (Aphelocoma coerulescens). This is a threatened species that is endemic to Florida, and is a separate species from the western scrub jay. Florida scrub jays are known for their behavior of “cooperative breeding.” Young jays from previous years assist their parents in raising younger siblings. I teach about this behavior in my Animal Behavior course, so I wanted to see Florida scrub jays in their natural habitat, which I did at the Pine Flatwoods Trail within Merritt Island National Wildlife Refuge.
Here is the Pine Flatwoods Trail
The birds are not easy to observe; they occupy a habitat that offers protection from predators (oak scrub, which is a successional stage of dense, low-growing vegetation maintained by periodic fires).
Pine trees will eventually shade out the oak scrub, so the periodic fires prevent the pine forests from doing so. At Merritt Island NWR, they intentionally burn parts of the refuge to promote scrub jay conservation.
You can clearly see the oak scrub on either side of the trail.
In spite of the habitat conditions, scrub jays are naturally curious and unafraid of humans, so individual birds would perch in dead pine snags or the tops of scrub oaks, and scold me with screechy alarm calls.
Because they live in family units, sometimes several birds at a time would be perched together.
I visited the Pine Flatwoods area of MINWR on four successive mornings, and learned something new each day. On one day, I was able to easily distinguish between adults and juveniles – the juveniles have brown heads and the adults (even the non-breeding “helpers”) have blue heads.
I didn't know it when I arranged this trip, but July is when the juveniles from the current year have fledged, so the families have grown, and bird biologists survey to assess population growth.
The helpers assist the breeding adults in a variety of ways, including watching for predators, defending the family territory against intruders from neighboring families, foraging and caching food, and feeding the babies.
Professor of Biology, Dean of Sciences at Austin College
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