I love Bobwhite Quail. They are neat little birds that run along the ground which makes them difficult to photograph. These images were taken in or near the alley that borders my front yard. I am glad to see the numbers of these birds increasing in the area. And I may have more of these encounters if the stray cat numbers continue to stay low.

This bird is a male and is running from me because I tried to follow him and his friend to take their picture. I was careful to approach slowly and not to make any sudden moves. Somewhere in the process, I got too close and they began to move away from me.

Most of my pictures of Bobwhite are like these, quick snaps of a bird on the run. Makes them a challenge, and difficult to photograph without a blind and baiting them to a photogenic distance.

This image shows the male in front and the female following as they scooted out of camera range. She came with him into the yard but she was always far enough away that getting them both in the frame was not possible. Despite the technical frustrations, they are fun to watch and photograph when I can. These live in my neighborhood and it is always exciting to see them doing their thing.

For more information on these birds, you can pop over to the All About Birds website at the Cornell Lab of Ornithology. It’s where you can learn useful things like the family name for these birds has changed from Phasianidae to Odontophoridae sometime in the last 40 years. This site helps me make sure I keep up with the refinements in taxonomy. It is worth a look.

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This little Broad-headed Skink (Eumeces laticeps) has had an encounter with a predator, most likely some bird, that has marred her beauty but saved her life. Skinks are fairly small creatures, this one from nose to the base of her tail is 3 to 4 inches. She would normally be invisible in the litter on the floor of the forest where this picture was taken. She was scampering along the handrail of a boardwalk when I happened along. She was kind enough to pose for me and I have a series of photographs from this magical encounter. Most of the skinks I have ever seen were brief glimpses of them scurrying off at high speed. I was very lucky to be able to spend as much time with this tiny creature as I did.

Notice her yellow racing stripes, 2 down each side and her blue tail. Not all skinks are this colorful, many of the ones I have seen are dingy brown or grayish. The skinks as a group have a shiny, almost glass-like quality to their body scales. I suspect that slick, shiny appearance helps keep the dirt and mud from sticking to them.

If you look closely at the picture, you will see that this colorful, little lizard is missing the end of her tail. Many of the smaller lizards have a defense mechanism where a special band of muscles near the end of their tail can constrict when they are attacked and break off the end of the tail. The tail tip will squirm and wiggle.

The skink is betting its life on the wiggling tail tip distracting the predator while it makes a quick exit to safety. The lizard sacrifices a small portion of its tail in exchange for survival. The lizard, if it lives long enough, will regrow the missing tail to its former glory. And that, folks, is the end of my skinky tale.

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During our first December in West Texas, we experienced an ice and snow storm that left its aftermath on the ground through New Year’s.  During this time, I set up a bird feeder in the Elm tree in the front yard. As you can see, the snow is deep enough to keep Ms. Cardinal from finding something to eat beneath.

She spent some time in the snow, and then would perch in the dead Lantana vines while eyeing the nearby snow for any seeds she could spot that might have spilled from the bird feeder.

Several different kinds of birds came to my bird feeder. Here you see a female Northern Cardinal, Cardinalis cardinalis, and a male House Finch, Haemorhous mexicanus, sharing the bounty of the bird feeder. You can see their opposites at the bird feeder here.

Nothing went to waste because there were plenty of hungry birds who came by and picked up the seeds that others had spilled while feeding.

Ms. Cardinal was kind enough to pose for me despite the cold and busily searching for food. I got to see and photograph many different kinds of birds that spend the winter in West Texas. From the amount of the seeds consumed, my one little bird feeder helped keep many of them from starving while waiting for the snow to melt. I like song-birds and sometimes they need a little help from their friends.

It is now the fall of 2018, and I haven’t seen many cardinals this year. We had snow in early November for about a day. It has been wet enough this year and warm enough that my feathered friends are going elsewhere to eat. One thing you can count on in observing wildlife is that things change and sometimes you get to make pretty photographs and sometimes you don’t. Happy trails, all.

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The frog pictured here is a Green Tree Frog, Hyla cinerea. I was visiting the Fort Worth Nature Center and Reserve on a cool spring morning in 2012 and found this little guy on a sedge leaf growing on the edge of a marsh.  These frogs are found throughout the southern U. S. and Fort Worth is on the western edge of their range. I felt very lucky to see this little fellow because they are usually in the canopy of southern forests far from the ground. This frog was about 2 inches long and about an inch wide. The coloration here is typical for this species but their color can vary from yellowish to dull greenish to slate gray depending on the time of year and their activity. This little fellow was pointed out to me by a fellow hiker and was so well camouflaged I would have walked right by him and missed the chance to take his picture. I have seen this species in its natural environment only once in my lifetime.

This frog belongs to the family Hylidae. This is a diverse group that contains over 450 species and are distributed world wide. As a group, they are slim-waisted, long-limbed, and small in size. Females are generally larger than the males. In North America, members of this family include tree frogs, chorus frogs, and cricket frogs. Most folks learn that these creatures live in their area and learn to recognize their calls as evidence of their presence. The males of each species of these frogs have unique sounds they make to attract potential mates which make the night time forests musical places in the spring time. All frogs have to lay their eggs in water where they hatch and develop for a time as tadpoles, eventually becoming frogs which return to the environments where the adults live.  I was lucky that I happened to be there when this individual was heading back to his treetop home.

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When we first came to West Texas it snowed right before New Year’s. It was a big snowstorm and I felt sorry for the local birds since finding food underneath the snow was difficult at best. So, I put out a feeder loaded with seeds and during the few days that it was up, I got to meet several new species of birds I had never seen before. This fella is a Curve-billed Thrasher, Toxostomata curvirostre.

I had previously encountered brown thrashers in Fort Worth, and they were notoriously difficult to approach closely enough for a good picture. I was stunned by this bird’s willingness to let me crunch on icy ground within 20 feet of the Hackberry tree in the front yard. Of course, it was pretty cold and the bird feeder nearby was on his mind.

Here he is on the feeder, and you can see that it was designed for much smaller birds. He also seemed to prefer corn because he passed all the smaller seeds over for the kernels of corn he could reach.

The bird feeder was suspended on a single strand of monofilament fishing line and tended to pivot. This little fella persisted in hanging on and contorting himself while he fished for corn kernels. He had to flap a bit to keep from falling off. His size tended to keep the smaller birds off the feeder while he was there, but the two thrashers that visited that day ate their fill and moved off so the others could land on the filling station and tank up.

The next year, we had thrashers visit during November to feast on the pecan crop.

When he got tired of shaking pecans, this guy perched on top of the telephone pole at the corner of the yard. I took this picture because he seemed intently interested in something below. No idea what, though.

These guys have brownish gray feathers on the back and brown speckles on a sandy white breast. They are the only bird I have seen in Texas with those orange eyes. The eyes and the recurved bill are the standout features of these birds.

They range all over the dry parts of the Southwestern United States and on into Mexico. My part of Texas is on the eastern edge of their range. They are part of the Mimidae family which includes the Mockingbirds and all the other species of thrashers. When I first saw these, I was reminded of Mockingbirds. They are lively creatures with intense orange eyes, remarkable. It was fun to get the chance to watch them do their thing.

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My daughter and I were in Caprock Canyons State Park up near Quitaque, Texas and we were treated to a sighting of this beautifully marked Collared Lizard, Crotaphytus collaris, sunning herself on a rock near the Wild Horse trailhead.

This beauty shows the fading breeding coloration that this species attains during the spring. The fact that her throat lacks the leopard spotting means she is female. Notice the black line over the back of her neck by which she earns her common name.

She sat patiently while we took her picture. You can see her ear openings here. Notice how large her jaw muscles are. She earns her meals by pouncing upon smaller lizards and insects, so a strong bite comes in handy.

This specimen was about 10 inches long from nose to tip of her long tail. You can see her long legs and feet are built for running. This member of the Iguanidae family can zip along on two feet when properly motivated. Sometimes people call this species the mountain boomer because of the startling speeds they attain. We were lucky that she was enjoying the sun-warmed rock while we took her picture and got more than an empty frame for you to see.

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As you can see this little fellow blends in with the dirt along the edge of a country road. He is an immature male. When I first saw him, I thought he might be a young quail by the way he trotted along the road. His throat and breast markings also made me think quail at the long distance I was forced to view him because of his nervousness. At this distance, the horns they exhibit suggest the top knot of a quail. The little guy wouldn’t let me get closer than 100 feet before moving away which made taking his picture a challenge.

In this image, you can see the two horns visible on the top of his head and the yellow throat markings. The yellow in the throat makes one think he might be a Meadow Lark, but Meadow Larks lack horns. You can also see that this bird is not built like a quail, nor does he fly like one.

The day I saw this fellow, a little farther down the road I photographed another species I had not see before. You can see pictures of that adventure here . All in all, it is a remarkable day when you get to see two species of birds you haven’t seen before.

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Pictured here are two species of migratory shorebirds that stopped in Fort Worth on their way north. The larger, brown birds are Long-billed Dowitchers and the smaller birds are Wilson’s Phalaropes.

In the second image, you can see that these two species can feed side by side in the same habitat yet not compete with each other for the same food. By virture of their longer beaks, the Dowitchers can feed deep in the mud whilst the Phalaropes eat from shallower parts of the mudflat.

I included this last image because I like the juxtaposition of the Dowitcher and its reflection. Moments like these are one of the reasons I enjoy photographing wildlife.

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In January of 2018, my wife and I were invited to a cook-out on a local ranch owned by the family of our friends, Walter, and Kay. It was a beautiful day to be outside in late January. Family members use this land for hunting and recreation and they feed corn and other grains to the wildlife that come onto the property. We saw mule deer, wild turkey, wild hogs and quail that day.

In the first image, a yearling spike male and a yearling female are by the homemade feeding trough where we were treated to several family groups coming in to graze over the course of the afternoon.

In the second image, an older female is near the trough but she is on full alert for trouble. Her huge ears are what earn this species the name of mule deer. Desert adapted animals can have enhanced ears to help them detect and avoid trouble on their range.

We enjoyed the wildlife drama as each group came to the feeding troughs and their cautious approaches. They seemed to tolerate each other most of the time and were more worried that people were nearby.

This image shows the first appearance of an adult male with what appeared to be a fair sized set of antlers.

I was able to follow this individual and his consort to a shady spot where they were resting and doing a little cud-chewing. If you you look closely at his antlers, you can see that they are not symmetrical.

Here is another view from the front, notice that his right antler does not have as many tines as his left antler.

In talking with my friend Walter, I learned he was worried about this animal becoming the father of a whole generation of weird antlered deer since our region was going to be placed under a four year restriction on mule deer hunting to help improve the age and sex structure of the regional population which has been skewed due to hunting pressure. (See this article from the Caprock Courier Website)

At that point, I confess, I thought he had a reason to be concerned that he or some other hunter would be unable to eliminate this “aberrant” individual from the breeding population which would put more “weird antlered” deer into the local population.  However in preparing this post, I discovered that there were many nongenetic ways for mule deer, white-tailed deer, and elk to wind up sporting goofy antlers. In Antler Asymmetry by Elyse Henshaw (10-27-2014) on the Roger Tory Peterson Institute of Natural History website, she points out that injuries, infections, environmental stressors like food quantity and quality, pollutants, population density, and parasites as well as genetics can act to create asymmetry in the antlers of deer. On the Buck Manager website, the author discusses how leg or other bone fractures can interfere with the proper development of antlers. They also discuss how damage to the pedicle on the skull of the deer which produces the new antlers each year can produce malformed antlers during the rest of the buck’s life but can’t be passed on to offspring.

In the article on the Quality Deer Management Website by Gabe Karns, Mr. Karns addresses the tendency of hunter’s to attribute malformed antlers to genetic causes when there are many other non-genetic causes for antler malformation. His study of 71 specimens of asymmetrical white-tails tended to confirm that weird antlers came more from environment related injuries to the animal and not genetic mutations.

Check this one out in Colorado Outdoors Magazine which shows some radical elk antlers that are not due to genetic mutations!

As a result of my inquiries into deer biology, I am happy that I can put to rest my concern about mutant mule deer taking over the region where I live. I suspect that my friend Walter and any other concerned hunter-conservationists will also be relieved by the issues raised in this post. Needless to say, food quality and availability, and pollutants are things landowners can help control to support the health of the deer populations and the other species that share the space.  Good stewardship of the land means we will have mule deer and all the attendant species now and in the future.

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Black-tailed Prairie Dogs, Cynomys ludovicianus, live in a small colony inside Caprock Canyons State Park near Quitaque, Texas.
They share this park with people and buffalo. You can see in this image, they like to eat grass.

In this image, you can see the black tip of the tail for which this species is named.

Prairie dogs live in burrows. At the surface they will build conical or crater-like mounds that rise above the surrounding plain. This helps keep water out of their burrow. It also provides an elevated site for watching for predators that may be looking for an easy meal of unsuspecting prairie dog.

When they are far from their home burrow and the warning bark sounds, you can see them scamper for safety.

Prairie dogs eat some kinds of plants besides grass. They also trim and remove plants that get too tall and obstruct their vision or give hiding places for predators. This image shows a prairie dog engaged in pruning.

Sometimes, the ground is wet and soft and the prairie dogs will dig for plant roots to eat. This little fellow has been busy in the muddy ground looking for treats.

This image was taken in February and shows that late winter in the Texas panhandle provides dry grass for hungry prairie dogs. Poor fare, indeed.

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