Nature and Natural History

A history of the Texas coast told through the bird species that inhabit it.

Often called magical or mystical, the Maderas del Carmen of Northern Mexico have stirred imagination for centuries. Stories of bandits, Indians, ghosts, incredible flora and fauna, cool forests, waterfalls, and vast woodlands filter to across the Rio Grande. In intimate photographs and loving words Bonnie McKinney, who has headed up a conservation program there since 2001, takes readers on a fascinating armchair journey, introducing them to the incredible biodiversity of this jewel of Mexico.

Travel just about anywhere in the southern United States, and you will find pecan trees. The “nut too hard to crack by hand”—the derivation of the pecan’s Algonquian name—is one of the most successful native agricultural crops of North America. So popular are pecans that Thomas Jefferson once wrote home from Paris for a supply, while many people today consider their holidays incomplete without a pecan pie. Jane Manaster’s Pecans, updated from its original 1994 publication, explores the natural history, cultivation, and uses of the pecan tree and nut. Her engaging account pieces together a fascinating mosaic of the peoples caught up in the pecan story—Native Americans, Spanish explorers, European immigrants and their American descendants, African Americans, and Mexican Americans. Manaster also describes the life cycle of the pecan tree, the development of many cultivated species, and predators and diseases of the pecan. She chronicles the successes of commercial growers...

The javelina, or collared peccary, is the only peccary species native to the United States and is as much a part of the Southwestern landscape as the roadrunner, armadillo, and horned lizard. Its name is likely derived from the Spanish word for javelin, referring to the animal’s sharp tusks. Javelinas are mentioned in documents dating back to the seventeenth century, when their range was somewhat larger. Very distantly related to the pig family, javelinas may be found in Texas, Arizona, and New Mexico, where they feast on one of their favorite foods, the prickly pear cactus. Living in herds numbering up to fifty animals, javelinas are generally said to be nearsighted and shy, although they are beginning to turn up as pests in some suburban areas. Due to a dorsal scent gland, you are likely to smell a javelina before you see it. With colorful and endearing illustrations of this...

Horned lizards, or horny toads, as they are popularly known throughout the West, have long had a particular mystique in American folklore. The ancient peoples of the Southwest, the Anasazi and the Mimbres, depicted the little lizard on pottery and in petroglyphs. In more recent times, it represented health and happiness in the symbology of Native Americans. Among Americans today, the horny toad has an almost legendary appeal. Many westerners remember times when the lizards were plentiful and children kept them on string leashes or in boxes as pets. Dried horned lizards were sold in the roadside curio shops along the nation’s major highways. More recently, as the lizards’ habitat has shrunk and as imported fire ants have supplanted their favored prey, the numbers of horned lizards have declined drastically. In many regions where the little creatures once abounded, they are no longer seen. In Texas, two of the three...

Of the canyons that break the eastern edge of the Staked Plains, Palo Duro is by far the most spectacular. As one approaches the edge, the earth opens up into a vast gash, a geological and ecological...