Natural History Journal

In the world of birding, " Big Days " are competitions to see how many species of birds a birder can find in a specified area in just one 24-hour period.  They range from formal to informal, and the competition may be shared with others or simply with oneself.  This month, Eric and I were excited to set aside a whole day for our own, unofficial, just-for-fun "Big Day," setting ourselves the challenge of finding 100 species (or more) in our own county.   Here in North America, January is not the time of year when most Big Day birding events take place.  (In fact,  Global Big Day , a birding event in which birders from around the world participate, takes place annually in May - a much more reasonable season to be out birding!)  At this cold and often dreary time of year, many birds across much of the U.S. have migrated south for the winter, and most habitats are just too iced over to yield a great deal of bird diversity.   But here in the Cent...

During the first week of April, Eric and I spent six amazing days birding in South Texas, starting in the McAllen area and ending on South Padre Island.  Follow along with our journey here: Part I:  Lower Rio Grande Valley Thornscrub and Woodland Part II:  Coastal Prairie and Thornscrub Part III:  Gulf Coast Wading Birds Part IV:  South Padre Island Neotropical Migrants After moving down the Rio Grande River toward the Gulf of Mexico, we left the woodlands behind us and ventured out onto the coastal prairie of South Texas.  Here, we spent an incredibly windy April morning birding along Old Port Isabel Road, at Palo Alto National Battlefield, and, briefly, Laguna Atascosa National Wildlife Refuge.  The beautiful flowers of a prickly pear cactus In the open country of the coastal prairies, we spotted Scissor-tailed Flycatchers hanging out on barbed wire fences and powerlines.  This gorgeous flycatcher, with its long, elegant tail feathers and salmo...

Nature is all about life - and death. As lovers of the natural world, we delight in the abundant, thriving, humming life all around us, which is at no time of the year more apparent than during the spring season of growth and rebirth.  As the world breaks free from the grip of winter, we revel in a season of renewal and resurrection. But remember that in the natural world, it is through death that the way is made for life to flourish.   The death and decomposition of organic matter provides nutrients for the ecosystem.   Plants must die to feed herbivores.  Herbivores must die to feed carnivores.   Seeds that fall to the ground must die to themselves in order to germinate and grow, their rough seed coats falling away to transform into roots stretching down for water and shoots reaching up for sunlight. So too in our spiritual lives, it is through death that the way has been made to experience abundant life.   Specifically, it is the deat...

I am continually overawed by the beauty of California's grasslands.   Golden through the heat of summer and autumn, winter rains bring transformation to the hills, cloaking them in verdant splendor to rival any other landscape for beauty.  Though fleeting, the glories of spring on wildflower-spangled grasslands are a delight to behold. Just have a look for yourself! Grasslands in eastern Stanislaus county at sunrise. Sunrise is without question my favorite time on the grasslands.  Check out this article to experience an autumn sunrise at this same location! More than just aesthetically pleasing, California's grasslands provide critical habitat for a number of species that are in decline as their habitat shrinks, like Horned Larks and Grasshopper Sparrows . Learn more about the value of California's grasslands , along with how and why to protect them, in this article. Tiny treasures in the grass, wildflowers are undoubtedly the stars of the spring grasslands. ...

Most of the time, I am prompted to write about birds and other wildlife that I have encountered recently while out and about exploring.  Today, I am writing about a bird precisely because I haven't seen it recently, or at all this entire 2023-24 fall-winter season. Rough-legged Hawks are special birds in California's Great Central Valley, and certainly one of my favorite raptors.  For one, they are simply gorgeous hawks.  But they're more than a pretty face: They are incredible migrants and amazingly hardy, nesting on cliffs and rocky outcroppings in remote tundra, boreal forest and alpine regions of the Arctic, where they spend the short summer breeding season feeding on lemmings and voles.     But every winter, the world's entire breeding population of Rough-legged Hawks leaves the Arctic behind to migrate south, where they spend the colder months feeding on the rodents of open habitats across much of the U.S., including prairies, fields, shrublands and ...

Christened the "Rocky Mountain Plover" in 1834 by John James Audubon, the Mountain Plover, as it is now called, is actually a bird of short grass prairies rather than true mountain habitats.  Named for its breeding range in the Rocky Mountain region of the United States, specifically in parts of Colorado, Wyoming and Montana, a large percentage of Mountain Plovers spend a significant portion of their lives in California, where they winter on remnants of grassland, alkali flats and, most notably, plowed and fallow agricultural fields. The Mountain Plover is a habitat specialist, adapted to life on short grass prairies and other areas of bare ground and sparse coverings of very short vegetation.   And in California, the bare ground that Mountain Plovers need to survive is rapidly dwindling. Mountain Plover, Yolo County California, January Almost exclusively insectivorous, Mountain Plovers spend their entire lives on the ground, scurrying along with a distinctive run-and-sto...