This is an archive of articles written by Anita Westervelt between 2015 and 2021 for the Rio Grande Valley Chapter, Texas Master Naturalist. To focus on the most current information, these earlier articles were retired from the original site. We are pleased to provide a permanent home for them here. Please note that the articles are preserved mainly in their original form and may contain outdated information or links. For Anita’s current work, please visit the South Texas Border Chapter’s blog: stbctmn.org/blog.
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Anita’s Blog — Surprises on Ebony Loop
Harlingen’s Hugh Ramsey Nature Park is still reaping benefits from the fall rains. December’s First Friday guided native plant walk around Ebony Loop was anything but boring! The recent cold snaps, and then subsequent warm weather, have urged a few pink mint, Stachys drummondii, into bloom at the entrance to Tom Wilson Garden. Generally the…
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Anita’s Blog: Vines add vertical interest while attracting birds and butterflies
Several years ago, I dedicated a partially dead mesquite tree as a natural trellis for a native climbing milk-weed (Funastrum cynanchoides). The vine traveled up the trunk and reached the highest branches by the second spring. Lovely globes of pink-edged white blooms peppered the vine in summer. Flowers turned into dangling, short fleshy tear-drops, like…
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Anita’s Blog — Not So Usual Suspects
November’s winding down. Thanksgiving feasts extended to the resaca this year, as flock-friends and their relatives arrived to partake of the water’s bounty. No less than 50 White Pelicans have been feasting. Although fun to watch and photograph, they can deplete the fish stores in a hurry. They really need to move along to…
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Anita’s Blog — Love Affair with Vines
If ever there was a love/hate relationship, it’s with vines. Some people hate them while others think they’re pretty cool. I’m in that latter category. I like to know something’s value before I categorically pluck it out of the soil. It’s no different with vines. I try to research what they’re all about. It…
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Anita’s Blog — Papillionian Peculiarities
It’s November and I’ve never seen so many butterflies in Harlingen’s Hugh Ramsey Nature Park! First Fridays (from now through May 2019) begin at 9 a.m. with a Guided Native Plant Walk around Ebony Loop — a one-quarter mile, level caliche trail in the above mentioned park. Every month is different because of what…
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Anita’s Blog — Feed the Butterflies
September’s rain has done a tremendous favor for our fall kaleidoscope of butterflies. It’s created a burst of blooms in our native plant communities. More blooms, more butterflies. If you haven’t given this a thought, the opposite is true in drought years. No rain, no blooms, — butterflies go elsewhere to seek nectar in…
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Anita’s Blog — Easy Bat Habitat
Torrents of rain come to the Rio Grande Valley once or twice a year. After a few days, the air is thick with hordes of mosquitoes. There’s no escaping — except to run screaming into a building swatting at your bare skin. Nighttime comes; bats awaken, unfold their mammalian wings and soar through fields,…
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Anita’s Blog — All in a Row
August and September are family reunion months. Clans get together all over the country catching up on family members not seen for a year. It’s no different on the resacas around San Benito. Mexican Black-bellied Whistling Ducks have arrived en masse as they do every year. Sure, bird migration is all about the food.…
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Anita’s Blog: Cane toad — as toads go, it’s a giant
The largest toad in the world calls the extreme south of Texas home. The cane toad (Rhinella marina), also known as giant toad, neo-tropical toad or marine toad, is a large land toad native in the Rio Grande Valley, south to Mexico and into Central and South America. Cane toads are in the Bufonidae family…