An Early April

After a cold and snowy start to winter, April has made an early appearance in the American Midwest. Strong southerly winds, ahead of the ne...

Winter & the Elderly

In nature, winter is the culling season. Wild creatures that are old, sick, injured or malnourished often succumb to the harsh conditions; ...

Unnoticed Visitors

Novice birders, focusing on common, local, avian residents, often overlook migrants and seasonal visitors that resemble those birds. One su...

Unaweep Canyon Mystery

While the field of plate tectonics has solved many geologic mysteries, others remain. One of these is Unaweep Canyon in the northern portio...

The Davis Mountains

Looking at a satellite map of the U.S., one notices a dark smudge in West Texas, north of the Big Bend area and just south of I-10. This da...

Red-Shouldered Hawks

Though less conspicuous and somewhat smaller than their red-tailed cousins, red-shouldered hawks are fairly common throughout the eastern ha...

White Christmas

Caught between high pressure over the Northern Plains and low pressure over the Texas Panhandle, we are getting our Christmas snow here in M...

The Pineapple Express

Produced by an atmospheric trough over the eastern Pacific, the Pineapple Express is a plume of deep, tropical moisture that is swept into t...

Merry Consumption!

It's the most wonderful time of the year....especially for retailers. Pressured by tradition and expectations, Christians of all kind, ...

A Morning of Raptors

Venus gleamed brightly in the eastern sky as I drove to our meeting site for the annual Christmas Bird Count. Our group, as usual, was assi...

The Scent of Skunk

In winter, cold, dry air and frozen ground suppress most of nature's fragrance. One potent exception is the scent of skunk musk, which ...

Great Gray Owls

One of the least conspicuous birds in North America, the great gray owl inhabits the boreal forests of Alaska and Canada and the mountain fo...

Winter Farmlands

Yesterday afternoon, the farmlands east of Columbia presented a bleak winter landscape; snow covered the ground, dead corn stubble and dry, ...

Mourning Dove Sit-In

Faced with snow-covered ground and an invasion of Arctic air, mourning doves have gathered in our large magnolia over the past two days; sin...

Night of the Geminids

While not as famous as the Perseids of August or the Leonids of November, the Geminid meteors of December offer the most reliable display of...

Backside Blizzard

In the Northern Hemisphere, as storm systems track from west to east, the winds around their center of low pressure move counterclockwise. ...

Cheshire Moon

Stepping onto the deck last evening, I caught sight of the crescent moon, turned on its back in the western sky. Catching the orange glow o...

Life, Dinosaurs & Time

Life first appeared in Earth's primordial seas some 3.6 billion years ago and evolved into a wide diversity of marine and terrestrial cr...

Eastern White Pines

It is during the winter, when the deciduous trees are bare, that we pay most attention to the conifers. But, since I park by pickup beneath...

Evolution of the Sonoran Desert

The Sonoran Desert of the Southwest U.S. and Northwest Mexico is a product of its latitude, the global climate and the regional topography. ...

Madagascar and its Primates

As Pangea continued to break apart, Madagascar split from Africa, some 160 million years ago. Drifting to the south, it merged with the rem...

The Voice of Winter

Winter is the quiet season. Compared with the rest of the year, there are relatively few natural sounds that greet us on our excursions thr...

The Benefits of Aging

Aging has its disadvantages. Our physical strength and stamina tend to deteriorate, we are more prone to a variety of illnesses and, for so...

December

A northwest wind developed yesterday afternoon, behind the latest cold front, and, overnight, ushered in the coldest air and lowest wind chi...