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 Please note that the articles are preserved mainly in their original form and may contain outdated information or links.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 – Dried and Salted
There are three salt lakes in the Valley. That’s where the latest road trip saw freelance travel writer and fellow Texas Master Naturalist Eileen Mattei and me. We ventured to the closest one very early one morning — the one with the shortest hike from the parking lot — La Sal del Rey, 18…
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Anita’s Blog — Whose Scat is That?
If you read the last blog post, you’ll note that I hadn’t yet found information about the Giant Toad that hopped in front of us as fellow Texas Master Naturalist Eileen Mattei and I traversed Lyford’s Hilltop Gardens. Recall, that big dude measured some five inches from snout to bum on my iNaturalist Nature…
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Anita’s Blog — Getting Out and About
The Sunday after our wild and wonderful rains had stopped, I was off on another assignment with magazine travel writer and fellow Texas Master Naturalist, Eileen Mattei. Travelling along Sixth Street in Brownsville, the road along the back of the zoo, Texas ebony trees were nearly unrecognizable so laden with blooms were they. Certainly,…
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Anita’s Blog — Raining in the Valley
A couple of weeks ago, I awoke to flashes of light visible even beneath closed eyelids, and a syncopated, steady sound I attributed to our younger cat, annoyingly delighted with one of his toys. I vaguely recall sleep-shouting, “Izzy,” into the darkness as my brain began to rouse itself into cognitive awareness. The pulsing…
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Anita’s Blog — A Peculiarity of Owl Pellets
A few weeks before I’d even heard about iNaturalist and the 2018 City Nature Challenge, I spied a peculiar lump of matter on the ground as I was mowing around a sextet of Washingtonian palms on our property. I purposefully did not mow over the weird looking object. Earlier in the year, I’d overheard…
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Anita’s Blog — Yay, Valley Diversity!
The results are in. Everyone can breathe a sigh of relief, and also applaud themselves for helping the Lower Valley reach an amazing 10th place for “Most Species” in a steep competition that involved 68 of some of the largest cities in the world! YAY, all the Texas Master Naturalists who took up the…
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Anita’s Blog — The Great Valley Challenge of 2018
This is big! Mark your calendars for April 27 – 30. It’s a City Nature Challenge. Some call it a Bio-Blitz. It’s the great INTERNATIONAL city challenge — worldwide for the first time. And we want to WIN IT! The Valley is entering as its own entity. From Falcon to the Gulf Coast, including…
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Anita’s Blog — The Mockingbird Sings
When the morning is warm, the winds have calmed and a fine mist of fog shrouds the land, it’s fun to wax poetic and play with words in my mind; nature is waking up and inspiration is everywhere. The distant call of unseen chachalacas and low grunts of a great blue heron at the…
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Anita’s Blog — Thistle While You Work
It’s time to start mowing — but wait! Don’t mow this: Or this: Both Texas thistle and red poppy start out as large, flat-to-the-ground, rosettes. Texas thistle can reach to two feet or more in diameter; an individual leaf can be 18 inches long. The rosette of the red poppy is smaller,…