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Come back to this page each day to read another entry from Frederick R. Gehlbach's almanac of suburban natural and unnatural history, "Messages from the Wild," which chronicles the world of a forested ravine in central Texas.
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Blue-headed (solitary) vireos have been here two weeks, but if the weather becomes severe, they'll head farther south. The past few days one has been roosting inside a dry cluster of curled leaves on a Shumard oak twig tip. It sleeps at dusk, about the same time as Carolina wrens roost on the front porch and a downy woodpecker enters its newly chiseled tree hole. I stand motionless on my upstairs deck, watching the tiny vireo peering around through eye-ring "spectacles." It fusses a little before disappearing into the leaves. What does it hold onto in there? Until a winter storm tears the leaves off, they are its nightly protection on the south side of the house only ten feet from my own bed. |
Frederick R. Gehlbach is Professor Emeritus of Biology and Environmental Studies at Baylor University. His ecological studies have taken him from New Zealand to Slovakia and, in the Americas, from Alaska and Newfoundland to Guatemala, Belize and Honduras. His research interests include the life-history strategies of small owls, small burrowing snakes and urban wildlife ecology.
From MESSAGES FROM THE WILD: AN ALMANAC OF SUBURBAN NATURAL AND UNNATURAL HISTORY by Frederick R. Gehlbach, Copyright © 2002. Courtesy of the University of Texas Press.
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