Picture A Day - November 7, 2009
Northern Black-Bellied Whistling Ducks

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Often called the most "un-duck-like" of duck species, the Black-Bellied Whistling Duck is common throughout Central and South America, but can only be found on the far southern fringe of the United States, and usually during the summer months. This brace of about ten whistling ducks was spotted just before sunset in the swampy lakes at Brazos Bend State Park, south of Houston, in late October. Very wary, they would come to a complete stop and bunch together when I came within a hundred feet.

Picture A Day - November 6, 2009
Hill Country Low Water Crossing

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A typical view along the road in the Texas Hill Country - which is criss-crossed by little one-lane trails just like this. Before the age of highways, all of the roads in the region were like this: twisted, narrow paths wending between ranches, crossing small watercourses that would flood at a moment's notice. Some of these roads are popular trips for weekend warriors in search of wildflowers during the spring, such as the Willow Loop just to the north of here. This spot is a little more out-of-the-way, along the Wahrmund-Ahrens Road at Willow Creek (a minor tributary to Grape Creek), leading from Ranch Road 1531 to Cave Creek School and Ahrens Ranch. During the summer, this part of Texas had been under extreme drought conditions for many months, until a recent spate of fall showers dropped several inches turning the hillsides green with splashes of whites and yellows from flowers that had been waiting months to bloom.

Picture A Day - November 5, 2009
Paleface Hibiscus at Big Bend Hot Springs

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A single delicate pink flower near the former general store at Big Bend Hot Springs - a former resort community on the banks of the Rio Grande near Boquillas Canyon, where a geothermal spring burbles directly into the river. The Paleface Hibiscus is a common variety found throughout the Sonoran and Chihuahuan Deserts.

Picture A Day - November 4, 2009
Pronghorn Antelope of the Trans-Pecos

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The Pronghorn Antelope is the only antelope native to North America, and used to be quite common throughout a large swath of the United States. However, hunting had severely reduced the population in the early part of the last century, and nowadays can only be found in Texas in a small corner of the trans-Pecos and Panhandle regions. While mule deer and white-tailed deer are a dime a dozen around the state (I practically see deer near where I live and work every day), this was an unusual sight for me - spotted just off the roadside a few miles south of Marfa. While at one time the species was endangered, the population has rebounded to the point that limited hunting of the pronghorn is allowed. But still quite unexpected for me.

Picture A Day - November 3, 2009
Badlands of Rough Run near Study Butte

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Among the most unforgiving of desert landscapes in west Texas, along the western edge of Big Bend National Park on the outskirts of Terllingua/Study Butte. The intermittent watercourse of Rough Run crosses the barren desert before joining with Terlingua Creek, cutting a deep canyon into the soft sedimentary soils. Clay-rich bentonite is terrible at supporting plant life, but forms colorful tan, brown, yellow and red layers in the canyon walls. Maverick Mountain rises modestly to the right, with the anything-goes community of Study Butte (pronounced stoody byoot) just beyond.

Picture A Day - November 2, 2009
Green!!!

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Bright green ground cover springing up in a solid carpet after the drought-breaking storms that passed through Texas in September, located at the cemetery of the uniquely-named Swedish immigrant community of Type, Texas in Williamson County.

Picture A Day - November 1, 2009
Loggerhead Shrike at Brazos Bend

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A solitary Loggerhead Shrike atop a dead tree post along the trail at Brazos Bend State Park in southeast Texas. While the park is better known for its native alligator population and numerous waterfowl, the bayous and swamps are perfect for all kinds of birds.

Picture A Day - October 31, 2009
Along the banks of the Frio River

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Walking along the banks of the Frio River at Garner State Park. It's the most-visited park in the state system, with hundreds of thousands of visitors each year, but if you drop by during the middle of the week, the park is relatively deserted. Twisted roots and branches of old cypress trees line the banks of the river, as they do most watercourses in the Hill Country.

You know that popular internet meme, Cats 'n Racks? Well, here's little Pipsqueak in a rack. ...No, silly! Not that kind of rack! Get your mind out of the gutter! It's a towel rack - if the cat can climb on top of something, she'll find a way to get up there. Slowly but surely, Pippie is conquering every vertical surface in the apartment. Click on individual pictures above to view on Flickr.

Picture A Day - October 30, 2009
Red Barn Outside Brenham, Texas

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See, Texas is not all desert scrub and cactus! There's farmland, too - a late fall morning outside of the east central Texas town of Brenham (the home of Bluebell Ice Cream). Google Maps Streetview of the location Here.

Picture a Day - October 29, 2009
Trailing Four O'Clock

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Tiny little flowers in bloom along the desert floor at Big Bend National Park in mid-October. Known as the Trailing Four O'Clock or Trailing Windmills, these wildflowers are found in Texas, but more common in the Sonoran Desert to the west during the spring months.

Picture A Day - October 28, 2009
Colima Warbler of the Chisos Mountains

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My best guess at identifying this bird is that it is the Colima Warbler, whose range in the United States is limited exclusively to the single mountain group in west Texas, the Chisos Mountains. I did take some other pictures, but this was the clearest I could get - the bird was very active and flitting all over the bush - and in some of the other pictures some of the light yellow coloration is slightly more visible under the rear feathers.

This was spotted in a small bush deep within the canyon leading to the Window View in the Chisos Mountains. The Chisos are an isolated stand of mountains rising abruptly half a mile into the sky in the center of Big Bend National Park, forming an island of green in the sky, with small remnant plant and animal species left over from the last ice age that used to cover the entire region when the planet was cooler. The Chisos form a big basin, and the only drainage (when there is enough rain to actually produce running water) leads through a narrow slot in the mountains called 'The Window' or the 'Window Pouroff'. There were a pair of small birds jumping between two flowering bushes deep in the shadows of the canyon. Exceptionally friendly little birds, they allowed me to get within just a few feet - although they were almost constantly in motion the entire time. I must have spent ten minutes moving around them trying to get a clear shot.

The Colima Warbler ranges only in the upper reaches of the Sierra Madre Occidental in Mexico, plus the tiny island of the Chisos Mountains. In fact, it was not even identified in the United States until 80 years ago. While an exceptionally uncommon bird by national standards, it is actually fairly common within Big Bend.

Picture A Day - October 27, 2009
Stocking Up for Winter at Sauer-Beckmann Farm

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The Lyndon B Johnson State Park and Historic Site is adjacent to the LBJ National Park, along the banks of the Pedernales River. One of the attractions of the park is the Sauer-Beckmann Living History Farm, which shows what life was like a hundred years ago, when President Johnson was growing up in the area. It's an actual, working farm with animals and crops and a period homestead, with intepreters and docents in costume who tend to the daily tasks on the farm. One of those jobs include canning the harvest so that they will have food available for the upcoming long winter months.

Picture A Day - October 26, 2009
Rio Grande near the Santana Mesa

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While a steady stream of vacationers head to Big Bend National Park each year, almost completely ignored to the immediate west is the little-known Big Bend Ranch State Park - over a quarter million untamed acres in one of the most remote and inaccessible corners of the state. In fact, for the entire year of 2008, the state park registered only 2500 visitors! Highway 170 threads its way through the park, between Lajitas and Presidio, following along the Rio Grande. This is a spot near the Santana Mesa overlooking the river, running muddy with recent rainwater. To the left is Mexico, just a stone's-throw away. Google Maps Streetview of the location Here.

Picture A Day - October 25, 2009
Wild Blackberry Flower

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Along the twisty-turny highway between Vanderpool and Medina in the Texas hill country, a few wild blackberry bushes were blooming and producing edible fruit in the middle of the hot, dry summer. Located here.

Picture A Day - October 24, 2009
Along the Upper Dry Frio River Canyon

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Turn left off the main highway along Ranch Road 1051, past the small mineral springs resort town of Reagan Wells, past the tiny former townsite of Heard, past where the state-maintained highway crosses the cattle-guards and becomes County Road 424, following along the twisted watercourse of the Dry Frio River, until the public road dead-ends at a series of private ranches. A friendly horse comes up to greet me, hopeful for a treat.

Picture A Day - October 23, 2009
'Hey Maude, call Home Depot and get a quote on a remodel job!'

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Way out on the edge of west Texas sits the ghost town of Dryden - the only outpost of civilization for a hundred miles along Highway 90, and a railhead shipping point for cattle ranchers along the Rio Grande. Today, Dryden officially has a population of thirteen, centered around an old general store/post office at the highway intersection and several abandoned buildings - including this residence located right next to the railroad tracks. This aqua-and-pink kitchen from a bygone era seems to have seen better days.

Picture A Day - October 22, 2009
Immature Male Cardinal

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At first I thought this was a female cardinal, which is generally devoid of most red color except on the tips of the wings and tail. But there's just too much red, and upon closer inspection I tend to think this is really an immature male cardinal, less than a year old, which has mottled, patchy red throughout. Spotted in the trees along the windy mesa above Seminole Canyon.

This one is for the geology buffs out there.

Last Friday, I came across an interesting spot in the United States - where the East meets with the West, as two giant seams that cross the entire US come together in one spot. At a location a few miles south of Marathon, just to the west of US Highway 385, the southernmost extension of the Ouachita/Appalachian 'Mountains' come to an abrupt end at the southernmost extension of the Rocky Mountains -- this is where the two great mountain ranges that cover our nation sputter out.





Roughly 300 million years ago, the European and African continents were crushing up against the eastern edge of the North American continent. Along a line from Georgia to Maine, this created the Appalachian Mountains. Where the Appalachians come to an end, the Ouachitas begin, forming a snaking curve through Mississippi, Arkansas, Oklahoma and Texas. (I'm greatly simplifying things here). For most of this line, the Ouachita Orogen (as it is called) is buried several thousand feet underneath sedimentary deposits -- in fact these ancient mountains are currently deep beneath my feet as I type this in San Antonio (they roughly follow the Balcones Escarpment, wrapping around the Llano Uplift). They only peek through on the surface as true mountains in western Arkansas and eastern Oklahoma, as well as a small spot near Big Bend at the Marathon Uplift.

Meanwhile, on the western edge of the North American continent, the Rocky Mountains were formed as oceanic crustal plates collided with the continental plate. During the Laramide Orogeny (from 40-70 million years ago), the Rockies reached great heights; the very southern edge of this mountain-building episode helped create the Del Norte and Santiago mountain ranges in west Texas - two small, minor chains just north of Big Bend.





The ancient Ouachita Orogeny is heavily worn, greatly metamorphosed and deformed, forming a series of low-lying ridges running from northeast to southwest in the foreground of the first and second photos above. These abruptly come to an end at the Santiago Range, which is a thin ridge of mountains running north to south, with the exposed volcanic plug of Santiago Peak in the background. Third photo is from the other side of the ridge; fourth photo is a closer look of some of those Ouachitan rocks. Much more clearly visible along some ridges a mile or two north (kicking myself for not stopping to take a snapshot of those), as highly tilted, white ridges known as 'caballos' - here are two other people's photos of them:



The state of Texas erected a marker near this spot to explain it to roadside travelers. The text reads:

Highly deformed rocks in the Ouachita Fold Belt, a northeasterly trending range, uplifted about 275 to 290 million years ago. The intricate folding is shown by whitish rock bands--called caballos (the Spanish word for horses)--exposed on both sides of this highway. The Ouachita Fold is comparable in age to the uplift that formed the Appalachians in the eastern part of the United States. The northwesterly trending Del Norte-Santiago range (southmost extension of the Rocky Mountains) forms the southwestern skyline. The rocks of the range were deposited in a sea that covered the Ouachita Fold Belt after erosion had reduced the highlands and a later submergence lowered the area. Santiago Peak (named for a local man who was killed by Indians and buried beneath the peak) is the high, flat-topped mountain to the southwest. It was once a mass of molten magma that cooled and hardened underneath the earth's surface and was uncovered by later erosion. The Del Norte-Santiago range, uplifted and folded 40 to 60 million years ago, is not half the age of the Ouachita Fold. This is a remarkable fusion of "old" and "young" mountains--and is unmatched at any other site in North America.

There you have it - from this spot in west Texas, you can look to the northeast and imagine the ridges of rocks snaking all the way up towards Maine. And then look off to the north, you can follow the Santiago and Del Norte mountains as they join with other ranges climbing across the United States into Canada. Two massive continental seams, joining at this one lonely spot.