Nature Notes

By Marfa Public RadioScience Education Life Sciences Nature

Nature Notes episodes

October 31, 2019 The Roadrunner: Icon of the Southwest, and Ultimate Desert Survivor
For this episode, Nature Notes is teaming up with “West Texas Wonders” – a reporting series where listeners ask questions and Marfa Public Radio finds answers.
This question comes from Austin listener Heather Holland. Born in Houston, raised in Colorado, she was drawn to Big Bend for a Texas mountain experience, and she's become a frequent visitor.
Holland served in the military, in deserts overseas. But in Big Bend she met a creature she hadn't in those deserts.
“To just see this cute little bird running across the road was a delight,” Holland said. “I realized how much I didn't know about roadrunners – if they're migrating for diet, if they are only in the southern... Hosted by for KRTS
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October 03, 2019 At the Guadalupe Mountains, A “Community Volunteer Ambassador” Connects People with the Park
America's national parks have never been more popular. Parks visitation hit a record high – with 330 million recreational visits – in 2016, the year of the National Park Service centennial. And while Americans are notably dissatisfied with their federal government, three-quarters hold a favorable opinion of the park service, according to a recent survey. The Smokey Bear hat commands a certain esteem.
Yet the connections people make with parks can be fleeting, and the bonds between parks and the communities that surround them are often less than robust. The Community Volunteer Ambassador program was launched in 2015, as part of the centennial, with a mission to connect people and park... Hosted by for KRTS
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September 26, 2019 Below the Chinati Mountains, “Boulder Glyphs” Evoke a History of Violence and Conflict in the Big Bend
Rock art is a powerful expression of the Native American past here. From Palo Duro Canyon to the Pecos River, the region's first peoples painted and carved countless images – vast murals, shapes aligned to celestial cycles, renderings of creatures – like bighorn sheep – that were central both to survival and ceremony.
Now, archeologists are studying another distinctive rock art phenomenon. In the Sierra Vieja breaks, north of the Chinati Mountains, they're cataloging scores of images pecked into small, volcanic boulders. These “boulder glyphs” are mysterious, but they evoke a pivotal period in Big Bend history – one defined by violence and conflict.
In its archeological ... Hosted by for KRTS
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September 05, 2019 Native Plant Society Guide Is a Companion for Cultivating a High Desert Garden
The high, arid land of Far West Texas is a demanding, if sublime, context for life. Yet throughout its extent, plants and animals, of a hardy beauty, have adapted to its demands, to survive, even flourish.
Adaptation is key for humans here as well. It's a lesson gardeners in our region learn – often the hard way. Applying techniques and traditions developed in wetter regions can end in frustration, or hopelessness. Yet by respecting local conditions, and particularly by embracing the rich native flora, gardeners can succeed, and nurture landscapes that resonate with surrounding ecosystems.
The Big Bend Chapter of the Native Plant Society of Texas has published the second edition of ... Hosted by for KRTS
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August 29, 2019 At Spirit Eye Cave, A Cache of Corn Cobs Deepens the Mystery of the Ancient Big Bend
It doesn't take an archeologist to recognize it was an important place for prehistoric peoples. In a limestone cliff near the Chinati Mountains, two openings give on to a hundred-foot-wide chamber. For thousands of years, people returned to this cave – to cook, to craft the implements of daily life, to bury their dead. Sheltered from the elements, Spirit Eye Cave preserved a remarkable record of those occupations.
Much of that record has been removed. For almost a century, the cave was targeted, or plundered, by artifact-hunters.
And yet, Spirit Eye still has powerful lessons to share. Some of its most evocative artifacts are among the most humble: corn cobs.
Bryon Schroeder is ... Hosted by for KRTS
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August 15, 2019 The Lady in Blue: A Mystical Encounter in West Texas Echoes Across Centuries, Continents
From places as distant as present-day San Angelo and Albuquerque, the first Spanish expeditions encountered one particular Native tribe throughout the plains and deserts of West Texas and New Mexico – a people known as the Jumano. The Jumano traded widely. They farmed corn, beans and squash at La Junta, present-day Presidio-Ojinaga. They hunted bison on the Llano Estacado.
And, in the 1620s, they were at the center of a mysterious episode that continues to resonate today.
In those years, Sor María Jesús, a Spanish nun, is said to have been “transported by the aid of angels” from her Spanish convent to the Texas plains to evangelize the Jumano, on hundreds of occasions. The sto... Hosted by for KRTS
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August 08, 2019 Discovering a Botanical “Wonderland” With Alpine’s Patty Manning
There is “an involuntary hunger for greenness which lies at the heart of all desert-lovers,” novelist Lawrence Durrell claimed. He saw it in North African Bedouins. It's true in West Texas, too.
In our area, there's no better cure for that hunger than an outing with Alpine's Patty Manning. Manning moved here from Dallas in 1991. She had a master's in art, and a lawn business in her hometown, but, in a classic Big Bend country narrative, she needed a new start. She became an expert in West Texas botany, and she's making important contributions in understanding and preserving our native flora.
“I just love a limestone habitat, by God,” Manning says.
It's a rainy June day, aft... Hosted by for KRTS
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July 18, 2019 In the Heart of the Desert, Big Bend National Park is a Birder’s Paradise
No place can more quickly erase a vision of the desert as monotony than Big Bend National Park. From canyon to summit, there's a 6,000-foot range in elevations, and the park's 1,200 square-miles are a labyrinth of arroyos, washes, mesas, cuestas and monoclines.
Less evident, perhaps, is the diversity of living things this landscape supports. But from cacti to butterflies, bats to reptiles, Big Bend's biodiversity shames other national parks.
The most vivid illustration of that biodiversity may be the park's bird life. Big Bend is one of the nation's premier birding destinations. As of summer 2019, 452 species have been documented.
David Larson is the park's chief of science and r... Hosted by for KRTS
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July 11, 2019 Tracing the Dinosaurs’ End at Big Bend National Park
If, as Emerson said, “the health of the eye demands a horizon,” Big Bend National Park is the ultimate tonic for the eyes. Visitors are awed by expansive desert-mountain vistas.
The story that landscape tells about the history of life is equally vast. Big Bend's fossil record is unparalleled among national parks. With more than 1,200 species, it's a nearly uninterrupted record of 130 million years of evolutionary history.
It includes charismatic “stars” of the dinosaur age – tyrannosaurus, alamosaurus, quetzalcoatlus. But at multiple sites, Big Bend's rugged topography preserves a line, a layer of rock, where such fossils cease. In this feature of the West Texas landscape, ... Hosted by for KRTS
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June 27, 2019 Mesoamerica and the Southwest in Prehistory
They were more than a thousand miles from the Aztec cities they'd conquered, but when the Spanish arrived in what's now the Southwest, similarities were what they noticed. Maize farming, painted ceramics, village societies – this was a “new Mexico.”
The connection between the Puebloan world and Mesoamerica is hotly debated in archeology. What does it mean that cacao – chocolate from the tropics – was consumed at Chaco Canyon, in the Four Corners? Or that both the Maya and the Mimbres, of New Mexico, told stories of the “warrior twins,” who journeyed through the underworld and challenged the forces of death?
The U.S.-Mexico border has no bearing on what people were doing ... Hosted by for KRTS
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