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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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Dusk is a magic time of bright stars and hooting barred owls in near-freezing air. The Pleiades are overhead. A Virginia opossum drinks at my pond and repairs to an old fox squirrel nest in a fifty-foot eastern red cedar. It forsakes nocturnal foraging, as does my neighbor armadillo, whose current burrow is beneath frozen brown Turk's caps fifteen feet from the house. A pair of Carolina wrens chortles and roosts on my front porch, nestled together in an upper corner. White-throated sparrows drink and bathe, while the tiny shadow of a winter wren sings a tinkling song like icicles falling on rocks. |
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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