Came the spring with all its splendor. All its birds and all its blossoms, All its flowers, and leaves, and grasses. Henry Wadsworth Longfellow. his is a small songbird of forest edges and dense brush. It’s about 4.5 inches long, has yellow underparts and olive upperparts, pinkish legs, and a small pointed bill. Males have a gray […]
MacGillivray’s Warbler (Oporornis tolmiei) Read More »
The rain forest was not a garden of easy abundance, but precisely the opposite. Its quiet, shaded halls of leafy opulence were not a sanctuary, but rather the greatest natural battlefield anywhere on the planet, hosting an unremitting and remorseless fight for survival that occupied every single one of its inhabitants, every minute of every
Bullet Ant (Paraponera clavata) Read More »
Out of their loneliness for each other two reeds, or maybe two shadows, lurch forward and become suddenly a life lifted from dawn or the rain. It is the wilderness come back again, a lagoon with our city reflected in its eye.We live by faith in such presences. It is a test for us, that
Great Blue Heron (Ardea herodias) Read More »
If I had my way, we’d sleep every night all wrapped around each other like hibernating rattlesnakes. William S. Burrourghs. Lampropeltis – Greek lampros meaning radiant, and pelta meaning small shields. Triangulum is derived from the Latin triangulus meaning “having three angles”. Other common names include chin snake, chicken snake, cow-sucker, milk sucker, and thunder-and-lightening snake. They are also known as checkered adder for
Eastern Milksnake (Lampropeltis triangulus triangulus) Read More »
Stellar’s jay is a common bird in western North American, its range extending from the Rockies west to the coast, up to SE Alaska and south through Mexico. This bird shows quite the variation in plumage, particularly where its range bumps up against the eastern blue jay (Cyanocitta cristata) but more on that later. The
Steller’s jay (Cyanocitta stelleri) Read More »