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The Chihuahuan Desert and the Llano Estacado have a wealth of wintering hawks. Several species nest in the region, too. Each family of hawks has its own hunting behavior. Can you use their behavioral cues to identify each hawk species on the wing?

In many of the supermarkets and drugstores of the southwest, many medicinal plants are sold in plastic bags with Spanish-name labels. Some of these plants are native, while others were brought to the New World by the settlers of the colonial period. In San Antonio, Laredo, and many other towns in Texas, a person can visit a botanica, a shop which specializes in herbal medicines as well as religious figurines, incense, “milagros,” and other necessities of the Hispanic “curanderismo” tradition.

How many kinds of birds eat fish, and what different methods they use to catch their slippery prey? Like Kingfishers, Ospreys spot their prey from the air and plunge in to get it, but Ospreys plunge feet first, while kingfishers go in headfirst.

If the deserts of the southwestern United States and northern Mexico were in the pharmacology business, then creosote would be their perennial best seller.

The bite of a kissing bug – also known as a cone-nose or assassin bug – is an unpleasant experience. The insect takes its blood meal at night, numbing the…

At the buzz of a rattlesnake, the heart races, and the adrenalin flows. Our response is primal, physical. But rattlesnakes also exert a power over the…

Rising a mile above desert plains, the Guadalupe Mountains are an icon in the West Texas landscape. They draw geologists, biologists, artists – and Texans…

There are a thousand stories about mesquite. Some people hate it and poison it with chemicals. Some people love the wood for its rich, dark hardness and use it for gun butts, clocks, tables, or rolling pins, or for the flavor it adds to grilled foods.

It may be small, but the eastern screech owl is a formidable hunter. Its prey – whether rodent, bird or reptile – rarely survives the raptor's strike. But…

Ford Motor Company CEO Bill Ford says the automaker will cut up to 30,000 North American jobs by 2012. The moves are part of a restructuring plan that will see a number of manufacturing plants close, as well.