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 Please note that the articles are preserved mainly in their original form and may contain outdated information or links.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 — Ebony Loop Surprises
There are always surprises around Ebony Loop as we volunteers move from one garden to another. Ebony Loop is one of the trails at the south side of Harlingen’s Hugh Ramsey Nature Park. Rio Grande Valley Chapter, Texas Master Naturalists and a couple of friends of the park tend specialty gardens each Thursday morning…
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Anita’s Blog — How to Camouflage an Ordinary Fence
Trees and shrubs serve many purposes – food for insects, butterflies, birds and other critters; housing for things in the form of cocoons, chrysalises and nests; and shelter for countless critters. Trees can even modify local climate, reduce air pollution, and reduce soil and wind erosion. Something not ordinarily conceptualized is that trees and…
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Anita’s Blog — Rumble at the Resaca
In a July blog about Mexican Black Bellied Whistling-Ducks, I wrote that when one bows its neck and hisses, the other duck backs away. Well! That’s apparently not always true. The other morning we had a rumble like a scene from “West Side Story” between opposing duck-gangs on the banks of the Resaca. It…
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Anita’s Blog — Fashion and Style in the Park
Our faithful crew of Ramsey Park volunteers take precautions against the worst of the summer heat. Here’s how: taking plenty of water breaks working less strenuously planning shaded ventures heading for the breeziest spots working less hours wearing hats Watering some of the heat-stressed specialty gardens around Harlingen’s Huge Ramsey Nature Park’s Ebony Loop…
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Anita’s Blog — Read All About It
The Valley newspapers are regularly filled with local nature articles. From fish to plants to birds. The South Padre Parade weekly last weekend had an outstanding article on Mexican Black-Bellied Whistling-Ducks, Dendrocygna autumnalis, written by Texas Master Naturalist and Arroyo Colorado Audubon Society member, Marilyn Lorenz, who is a regular birding columnist in local…
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Anita’s Blog — Unusual Order of Grebes
Neptune is in retrograde. Generally I don’t read horoscopes but I do love a catchy headline. Neptune retrograde is a usual headline for mid June. Neptune is the planet that gives us the desire to unveil mysteries. Most of nature is a mystery to me. Fortunately, others have studied and explained what I see.…
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Anita’s Blog — The Case of the Flying Tree Limb
Those not born in the Rio Grande Valley probably think the trees here aren’t very big. If you were to put one of our gorgeous Honey Mesquite, Prospis glandulosa, trees up in an old-growth hardwood forest in New York, yeah, it would be dwarfed. Put that same mesquite tree next to a single-story house…
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Anita’s Blog — Week of the Reptiles
I don’t mind holding my cats, but anything else in nature just seems icky. On my way to bed the other night, I noticed a frog gripping the wall at the doorway to the bathroom. That was creepy. Yes, frogs and toads are amphibians, not reptiles, but that would have made a longer blog…
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Anita’s Blog — Kill all the . . . .
No, this isn’t one of my one-act inter-active murder mystery comedies. This is about Guinea grass, Urochloa maxima. Left to its own devices, whether we’ve had a three-year drought or great rainfall, Guinea grass (and Berumda grass, Cynondon dactylon, whose roots I swear go to China) are listed in reference books with strong negative…