Nature Notes
Why do rattlesnakes rattle and hummingbirds hum?
How do flowers market themselves to pollinators?
Why do tarantulas cross the road?
Nature Notes investigates questions like these about the natural world of the Chihuahuan Desert region and the Llano Estacado every week. Through interviews with scientists and field recordings, this Marfa Public Radio original series reveals the secrets of desert life.
Join host Dallas Baxter on Tuesdays and Thursdays at 7:45 am during Morning Edition and 4:45 pm during All Things Considered. New episodes premier on Thursdays and replay on Tuesdays. Episodes are written and produced by Andrew Stuart and edited by Marfa Public Radio and the Sibley Nature Center in Midland, Texas.
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In March, a hunter on the O2 Ranch south of Alpine found what appeared to be an ivory tusk in an arroyo bottom. Ranch Manager Will Juett contacted archeologists at Alpine’s Center for Big Bend Studies. They confirmed the find: this was a mammoth tusk. -
Grasshopper mice are fierce, if diminutive, predators, that routinely dine on scorpions, centipedes and other venomous prey. And as they set out on their nightly hunts, they emit a long, piercing cry. It’s been called “a wolf’s howl in miniature.” Listening closely to these desert mice reveals the surprising world of “bioacoustics.” -
The garden’s namesake was a passionate advocate for our region’s plants. Manning, who passed away September 8th, managed the Sul Ross greenhouse for 18 years, worked as a teacher and consultant and, with her partner Cindi Wimberly, founded Twin Sisters Natives. That business offered plants Manning had cultivated, with careful expertise, from seeds she’d collected. -
Zone-tailed hawks are among the birds of prey that rely on riparian forests – woodlands along creeks and streams – as nesting sites in the Big Bend. Each summer, these hawks return from the tropics to raise young in the same creek-side cottonwoods. -
In 1944, near the town of Plainview - 45 miles north of Lubbock - archeologists discovered two dozen examples of a previously unknown spearpoint – the Plainview style – among the bones of at least 100 Ice Age bison. -
It’s the first discovery of a new plant genus in a national park in decades, and a landmark find. But the identification of Ovicula biradiata, the “wooly devil,” began with a simple walk in the park. The discovery is a reminder that while known for its vast landscapes, Big Bend National Park is also a place of hidden surprises. -
Drawn by people, dogs or, later, horses, travois were a mainstay of traditional Native American life in the West. Up through the 19th century, nomadic peoples used these sleds – typically fashioned of two long poles lashed together into an A-frame – to transport their belongings. -
Lubbock Lake is one of several important archeological sites on the West Texas plains that testify to the earliest Americans, the “Paleoindians.” -
Mississippi kites are slender and elegant, with 3-foot wingspans and plumage that fades from black to a pale gray-white. They once summered mostly in the Southeast, nesting in deciduous trees. But as people brought those trees to the Texas plains, the kites followed -
Pound-for-pound, grasshopper mice are among the fiercest predators in the desert borderlands, and they’re unfazed by venomous prey.
