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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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It has been a few days since I've walked in nature's busiest month of the year, so new exhibits are expected, and there are always surprises. As I approach a fallen oak, still holding last year's brown leaves, out jumps a black vulture. Only fifteen feet from the trail, it has two eggs on the ground under the leafy cover. Hatchlings will be black-faced, fuzzy, cinnamon-colored creatures, but I'll have to wait the forty days required for incubation. By June they will be adult-sized, have black feathers, and run about in a hunch-backed crouch, apparently trying to be inconspicuous. By August they'll fly. Black vultures habituate well to suburbia, an attribute I appreciate but my neighbors disdain, since vultures rank with snakes and bugs as undesirables. |
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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