Under a blue sky a white dove glides, its wings fixed and round head arc, the legs stretched out and thin talons split the air as it approaches the branch of the yucca. Then a flash of lead-like color zooms in from above knocking the dove to the ground. A blur hovers then drops to the downed dove and clinches it between its claws rising now in the swirling wind where it joins its mate in the thin air of the Trans-Pecos.
The Aplomado Falcon has returned to west Texas after a long hiatus. 1952 was the last sighting of a mating pair up until the recent revival. Finally listed as an Endangered Species in 1986, few were seen until captured Aplomados from Chihuahua were released in south Texas in the 1990’s. Another substantial release of Aplomados occurred in west Texas on private lands in 2002. Today the Peregrine Fund has documented six mating pairs in the area, most of them in Jeff Davis County.
Aplomado is a Spanish word meaning lead color, but along with the bird’s blue-gray back are splashes of dark orange on its head and belly with yellow rimmed eyes.
Aplomados often hunt in pairs and their long tails make for agile rudders allowing for quick changes in direction. These hunters, who eat both insect and small vertebrae including smaller birds like the dove and the meadowlark need wide open grass land to survive.
Over-grazing and erosion to the land, a by-product of the cattle industry that dominated this part of the world over the past 100 years, changed and reduced the habitat of the aplomado forcing the bird south into the lesser developed region of Chihuahua,Mexico.
But today environmental factors are reversing as Chihuahua becomes more developed, through increased mono-culture farming practices in the Mexican desert and grasslands that deplete water reserves and eliminate habitat. An increased awareness in west Texas led by conservation minded ranchers and other land owners are restoring the great grasslands and providing another chance for wildlife like the Aplomado Falcon.
Sunday, May 31, 2009
Tuesday, April 28, 2009
Longhorns
Trans-Pecos legends Ira and Ann Yates, namesakes of that famous conjuncted Texas town, Iraan, bought rough country along the Pecos River in 1915 and barely survived with their nine children until 1926 when black crude bubbled out of their ground. Instantly endowed, they focused on their first love, ranching, and their favorite breed, the Texas Longhorn.
Shipped over the Atlantic in the belly of Spanish Galleons, the longhorn was introduced to the Americas at the port of Vera Cruz, Mexico in about 1541. Gnarly and un-keen to be domesticated, many feraled and worked the low shrub and cactus country with their long legs and nearly hairless bellies north and west up to Texas. Multiplying profusely in a fenceless land, they used their horns to fend off predators like the big cats and grey wolves of that time. They became part of the territory, and their hides originally black from Spain, mutated, turning out brindles, speckles, reds and whites, that blended with the earth and rock. They became regular denizens in northern Mexico and were known as “Corrientes,” a Spanish word meaning “common.”
At the age of twelve, in post-civil war Texas, Ira Yates ran longhorns up the Goodnight-Loving trail to Dodge City where buyers bid cattle, primarily for tallow and hides, because meat and refrigeration had not yet co-mingled. Up to 1890, it’s estimated that 10,000,000 of the feral beasts were rounded up by free-lancing cowboys and driven north to the slaughterhouses.
New breeds gened into existence with higher grease content and larger hides. These hybrids such as Charolais, and Hereford displaced the pure scrawny Texas Longhorn, quickening its route to oblivion.
But Ira’s son, Cap, born in 1886, and buried in the Glass Mountains, was a crucial link in the family effort to preserve the Texas Longhorn. Finding few pure strains in the southwest, Cap traveled to Mexico and rounded up descendants of those first four-legged Spaniards that crossed the pond with the Conquistadores. Cap’s eventual 1500 strong longhorn herd became the seed stock for most of the Texas Longhorn living today.
Cap’s son, Fayette Yates, continued the family tradition, and became the first charter member of the Texas Longhorn Breeders Association. His horn collection can be seen today at the Old Lajitas Trading Post.
Wednesday, April 1, 2009
Marfa Lights
When aliens first visited Earth four billion years ago, they left two things to confound us: language and the Marfa Lights.
Explanations for the lights abound, from vehicle headlights to the genie in the iron dark of the world. The first written report was filed in the 1880’s by railroad workers about the time Marfa was coming into its own. The luminous spherical objects bouncing oddly across the horizon were seen from parts of the Chihuahua-San Antonio Trail just before Paisano Pass.
Strangely no reports of sightings were filed during the operation of the Marfa Airfield during the 1940’s when tens of thousands of military personnel were stationed here.
Scientists from around the country, Japan, and Germany have studied the phenomena. Nucleated dust has been one theory, an event that occurs when water in the atmosphere condensates with dust creating prismatic orbs in the sky.
Another theory, first discovered by Marie Curie’s husband Pierre, called the Piezoelectric effect, suggests that quartz in the surrounding mountains (the Chinatis and Paisano Plateau) build up electricity during thermal expansion of the rock and discharges the voltage on contraction. This pressure induced charge is especially active when great swings in ambient temperature occur. The luminous release is known as ball lightening. Unlike lightening flashes, these discharges can last for many seconds.
Another theory centers on the mirage principle where inter-stellar light is refracted through layers of cold and warm air in the earth’s atmosphere, essentially bending light. The dense cold air has a greater refractive index than the warm air and as the light passes through, it bends away from the temperature gradient, producing the mirage.
A recent study by the University of Texas at Dallas concluded after four nights in the field at the Marfa Lights Viewing Center on Highway 90, that they were nothing more than headlights from vehicles on Highway 67.
But written, video and photographic evidence of the lights might suggest otherwise. The unpredictable nature of these rare colored orbs bouncing yellow, blue and green along the horizon, suggesting a Sing-a-Long-with-Mitch rhythm, are different from the commonly seen white headlight spheres of the vehicles, the distant ranch lights, the flashing red of the railroad switch station and the Border Patrol checkpoint.
Explanations for the lights abound, from vehicle headlights to the genie in the iron dark of the world. The first written report was filed in the 1880’s by railroad workers about the time Marfa was coming into its own. The luminous spherical objects bouncing oddly across the horizon were seen from parts of the Chihuahua-San Antonio Trail just before Paisano Pass.
Strangely no reports of sightings were filed during the operation of the Marfa Airfield during the 1940’s when tens of thousands of military personnel were stationed here.
Scientists from around the country, Japan, and Germany have studied the phenomena. Nucleated dust has been one theory, an event that occurs when water in the atmosphere condensates with dust creating prismatic orbs in the sky.
Another theory, first discovered by Marie Curie’s husband Pierre, called the Piezoelectric effect, suggests that quartz in the surrounding mountains (the Chinatis and Paisano Plateau) build up electricity during thermal expansion of the rock and discharges the voltage on contraction. This pressure induced charge is especially active when great swings in ambient temperature occur. The luminous release is known as ball lightening. Unlike lightening flashes, these discharges can last for many seconds.
Another theory centers on the mirage principle where inter-stellar light is refracted through layers of cold and warm air in the earth’s atmosphere, essentially bending light. The dense cold air has a greater refractive index than the warm air and as the light passes through, it bends away from the temperature gradient, producing the mirage.
A recent study by the University of Texas at Dallas concluded after four nights in the field at the Marfa Lights Viewing Center on Highway 90, that they were nothing more than headlights from vehicles on Highway 67.
But written, video and photographic evidence of the lights might suggest otherwise. The unpredictable nature of these rare colored orbs bouncing yellow, blue and green along the horizon, suggesting a Sing-a-Long-with-Mitch rhythm, are different from the commonly seen white headlight spheres of the vehicles, the distant ranch lights, the flashing red of the railroad switch station and the Border Patrol checkpoint.
Thursday, March 5, 2009
Alligator Gar
The molecules of air surged through the beast’s throat down a slippery tube and into the buoyancy bladder. Inside the membrane, blood vessels seine out the oxygen, maintaining a strategy that started perhaps 150 million years ago when this fish’s ancestors may have reptiled about the banks of a long ago sea. The mighty tail thrusts and propels it across the surface of the Rio Grande to lurk under a thicket of Giant Cane.
The largest Alligator Gar ever caught on a rod and reel came from the Texas side of the Rio Grande in 1951. At over seven feet long and 279 pounds, this marine leviathan ranks with the largest freshwater fish in the world.
The Alligator Gar has two rows of upper teeth and a powerful jaw both very much like the saltwater crocodile. A carnivore with a reptile-like ball and socket vertebrae and the ability not only take oxygen from the water with its gills but also to breathe out of water with a lung, this fish and its history have confounded scientists for years. Is it a fish trying to become a reptile, or a reptile that morphed into fishness?
Unusually well preserved fish fossils of the Green River, take the gar back over 100 million years ago, but new DNA research suggests this creature may have come from the Jurassic period or 150 MA. Either dating, the evidence suggests the fish has changed very little over the eons.
The diamond shaped interlocking scales that were once used by Native Americans for jewelry, breast plates and arrow tips, cover the fish in a tight armor and are part of the hydro-dynamics that make this fish a swift and great hunter.
The life span of an Alligator Gar runs 50-75 years but an increased mortality rate caused by pollution, dwindling habitat, and un-regulated fishing, is threatening the gar’s future. No longer found in the Upper Ohio Valley, many states have imposed bag limits. Texas and Louisiana still allow unlimited gar fishing, but in March, Texas Parks and Wildlife will host a public meeting to consider limiting commercial and sport fishers to one gar per day.
The largest Alligator Gar ever caught on a rod and reel came from the Texas side of the Rio Grande in 1951. At over seven feet long and 279 pounds, this marine leviathan ranks with the largest freshwater fish in the world.
The Alligator Gar has two rows of upper teeth and a powerful jaw both very much like the saltwater crocodile. A carnivore with a reptile-like ball and socket vertebrae and the ability not only take oxygen from the water with its gills but also to breathe out of water with a lung, this fish and its history have confounded scientists for years. Is it a fish trying to become a reptile, or a reptile that morphed into fishness?
Unusually well preserved fish fossils of the Green River, take the gar back over 100 million years ago, but new DNA research suggests this creature may have come from the Jurassic period or 150 MA. Either dating, the evidence suggests the fish has changed very little over the eons.
The diamond shaped interlocking scales that were once used by Native Americans for jewelry, breast plates and arrow tips, cover the fish in a tight armor and are part of the hydro-dynamics that make this fish a swift and great hunter.
The life span of an Alligator Gar runs 50-75 years but an increased mortality rate caused by pollution, dwindling habitat, and un-regulated fishing, is threatening the gar’s future. No longer found in the Upper Ohio Valley, many states have imposed bag limits. Texas and Louisiana still allow unlimited gar fishing, but in March, Texas Parks and Wildlife will host a public meeting to consider limiting commercial and sport fishers to one gar per day.
Dust Devils
A whooshing suck roared out of the earth as if some ginny had been released from the metallic fiber of the inner world. The spiral of dust and air danced across the field inhaling rocks, sticks, seeds and centipedes, a commotion unto itself on an otherwise hot and calm day.
Dust Devils, also known as Remolinos, in west Texas, are brief whirl winds that form when hot air from the earth’s surface rise unevenly, like bubbles in a Topo Chico. Cooler air rushes in to the column of hot air to fill the voids and the reciprocating air of unlike densities begins to spin. Slowly at first until, like the arms and legs of an ice skater tucked in tight for the encore, the atmospheric vortex of the dust devil becomes fully formed spinning at speeds of up to 70 mph and demonstrating the science principle of conservation of angular momentum.
As the vortex bops across the surface, more hot air is sucked in along with dust and debris, lowering the air pressure inside and causing the dust devil to rise. These augers of sand and dust can change colors depending on the landscape they run over and can even be transparent if formed over a clean grassy area.
Like tornados, they are weather phenomena, but most dust devils form under sunny conditions during fair weather and are seldom dangerous with few lasting longer than a minute. They generally form in arid and semi-arid regions and a flat barren terrain increases the likelihood of the hot air fuel. Diameters of three feet are common but some grow as large as 300 feet across the base, lasting thirty minutes and can lift more than 15 tons of dust and debris into the air. The whirling particles inside the vortex become electrically charged and create a magnetic field that helps lift more dust off the ground.
The Viking orbiters of the 1970’s, photographed Dust Devils on the planet Mars climbing out of craters, creating columns of Martian dust ten times higher than those found on earth.
Dust Devils, also known as Remolinos, in west Texas, are brief whirl winds that form when hot air from the earth’s surface rise unevenly, like bubbles in a Topo Chico. Cooler air rushes in to the column of hot air to fill the voids and the reciprocating air of unlike densities begins to spin. Slowly at first until, like the arms and legs of an ice skater tucked in tight for the encore, the atmospheric vortex of the dust devil becomes fully formed spinning at speeds of up to 70 mph and demonstrating the science principle of conservation of angular momentum.
As the vortex bops across the surface, more hot air is sucked in along with dust and debris, lowering the air pressure inside and causing the dust devil to rise. These augers of sand and dust can change colors depending on the landscape they run over and can even be transparent if formed over a clean grassy area.
Like tornados, they are weather phenomena, but most dust devils form under sunny conditions during fair weather and are seldom dangerous with few lasting longer than a minute. They generally form in arid and semi-arid regions and a flat barren terrain increases the likelihood of the hot air fuel. Diameters of three feet are common but some grow as large as 300 feet across the base, lasting thirty minutes and can lift more than 15 tons of dust and debris into the air. The whirling particles inside the vortex become electrically charged and create a magnetic field that helps lift more dust off the ground.
The Viking orbiters of the 1970’s, photographed Dust Devils on the planet Mars climbing out of craters, creating columns of Martian dust ten times higher than those found on earth.
Tuesday, March 3, 2009
Vinegarones
“Three bucks on the scorpion,” a bearded hombre waved his cash in the crowd as the greasy flow of the Rio Grande slapped at the pebbled banks of the island on which they stood.
“Got a buck here,” The dealer grabbed the bill from the bettor’s hand and moved to the next.
An iron tub had been dragged into this no man’s land somewhere between Texas and Mexico. As the sun dipped below the mountains the hawker announced the fight was about to begin: Two arachnoids faced each other at the bottom of the white tub, a tarantula and a vinegarone.
The vinegarone often referred to as a whip scorpion, is no scorpion at all, but an arachnoid, part of the spider family. With four pairs of legs, the vinegarone is nocturnal, and scoots across the desert surface at night in search of fresh meat, like crickets or millipedes. Like the scorpion, they have a pair of eyes in front and three on each side of the head, but have poor vision. To pick their way through the desert, they rely on their first set of legs. Modified over the eons, these legs act as antennae-like sensory organs, that feel the ground as they walk with the other six.
Many vinegarones grow as long as six inches, including the thin whip like tail, which is shaped much like the scorpion’s but without the poisonous barb. Vinegarones subdue their prey with a set of powerful pinchers.
The vinegarone when cornered is capable of spraying a mist of acetic and octanoic acid, a foul combination that smells like vinegar or vinagron in Tex-Mex and hence the name vinegarone.
In the scientific community vinegarones are known as Uropygids, meaning tail rump in Greek. Many varieities flourish throughout the world. The black sometimes orange Texas vinegarone is found primarily in the Chihuahuan Desert but has been found as far north as the Texas Panhandle.
Vinegarone was also the name of a railroad camp near the confluence of the Pecos and Rio Grande. At its peak in 1883, 3500 people lived there. Judge Roy Bean, who was also known as a vinegarone, operated a saloon there and occasionally hosted paramutual events on the un-lawed islands of the Rio Grande.
“Got a buck here,” The dealer grabbed the bill from the bettor’s hand and moved to the next.
An iron tub had been dragged into this no man’s land somewhere between Texas and Mexico. As the sun dipped below the mountains the hawker announced the fight was about to begin: Two arachnoids faced each other at the bottom of the white tub, a tarantula and a vinegarone.
The vinegarone often referred to as a whip scorpion, is no scorpion at all, but an arachnoid, part of the spider family. With four pairs of legs, the vinegarone is nocturnal, and scoots across the desert surface at night in search of fresh meat, like crickets or millipedes. Like the scorpion, they have a pair of eyes in front and three on each side of the head, but have poor vision. To pick their way through the desert, they rely on their first set of legs. Modified over the eons, these legs act as antennae-like sensory organs, that feel the ground as they walk with the other six.
Many vinegarones grow as long as six inches, including the thin whip like tail, which is shaped much like the scorpion’s but without the poisonous barb. Vinegarones subdue their prey with a set of powerful pinchers.
The vinegarone when cornered is capable of spraying a mist of acetic and octanoic acid, a foul combination that smells like vinegar or vinagron in Tex-Mex and hence the name vinegarone.
In the scientific community vinegarones are known as Uropygids, meaning tail rump in Greek. Many varieities flourish throughout the world. The black sometimes orange Texas vinegarone is found primarily in the Chihuahuan Desert but has been found as far north as the Texas Panhandle.
Vinegarone was also the name of a railroad camp near the confluence of the Pecos and Rio Grande. At its peak in 1883, 3500 people lived there. Judge Roy Bean, who was also known as a vinegarone, operated a saloon there and occasionally hosted paramutual events on the un-lawed islands of the Rio Grande.
Tuesday, February 10, 2009
Creosote Bush
With leathery hands, the shaman laid the creosote twigs across the corpse then positioned the male cadaver in the prone position, facing north in the shallow grave. Pottery jars of seeds and dried venison for the afterlife were sealed by creosote lac and tucked up next to the dark dead skin of the La Junta warrior.
The creosote plant covers over 120 million acres of land in Mexico and the southwestern USA. Native people of this region have used the plant medicinally from birth to death for centuries in the form of tea, smoked leaves or chewed raw. Perhaps as common as penicillin today, the creosote bush or greasewood, remedied pain at childbirth, rheumatism, menstrual cramps, coughing, poisonous bites and sore throats. Today the plant is used to combat fatigue in patients undergoing chemo-therapy. And, although the Food and Drug Administration considers it unfit for human consumption, it is used to stabilize Vitamin A and has also been administered for the treatment of lyme disease and the melting of kidney stones. Studies have shown its properties to be anti-septic, anti-viral and anti-inflammatory.
Scientists believe that a creosote plant seed was deposited in North America from South America by birds during the last ice age some 10,000 years ago. It crept into the Chihuahua Desert 4500 years ago and because of its unique concentric stem growth, some plants live to be a thousand years old. A descendant of one of these early bird droppings lives in Johnson Valley, California. At 9400 years old it is thought to be the oldest living organism in the world.
Like pine, greasewood is a bodega of resin, an amber syrup rich in flavinoids, oils and waxes which can make up to 20 percent of the weight of the bush. These resins shield the leaf from the strong UV light and heat of the desert allowing photosynthesis to go uninterrupted inside the leaf. Three hundred and sixty chemicals have been isolated in the oils of the creosote bush including forty-nine types of volatile oils.
Defense mechanisms include foul tasting oils that repel herbivores like deer, javalina and cattle. Some creosote leaf proteins are indigestible. But one grasshopper, the Astroma, has found a way to undo the creosote’s chemical defense and not only eats the leaves but lives within the plant’s canopy. The female resembles old stems and hide in the shade of the creosote while the male looks like the young leaf sprays. Another insect, the Tachardiella Larreae, lives on the creosote plant and secretes a gum-like substance called lac that was also used medicinally by Native Americans.
The chemicals in creosote roots also inhibit the growth of other plants, keeping them at distance and creating the image of a symmetrical mono-culture in many areas of the plant’s range.
After many days of drought, a fresh rain in the Trans-Pecos brings out the smells of vinyl, camphor, methyl ketones from the clean washed leaves of the creosote plant that many still call hediondilla or “little stinker.”
The creosote plant covers over 120 million acres of land in Mexico and the southwestern USA. Native people of this region have used the plant medicinally from birth to death for centuries in the form of tea, smoked leaves or chewed raw. Perhaps as common as penicillin today, the creosote bush or greasewood, remedied pain at childbirth, rheumatism, menstrual cramps, coughing, poisonous bites and sore throats. Today the plant is used to combat fatigue in patients undergoing chemo-therapy. And, although the Food and Drug Administration considers it unfit for human consumption, it is used to stabilize Vitamin A and has also been administered for the treatment of lyme disease and the melting of kidney stones. Studies have shown its properties to be anti-septic, anti-viral and anti-inflammatory.
Scientists believe that a creosote plant seed was deposited in North America from South America by birds during the last ice age some 10,000 years ago. It crept into the Chihuahua Desert 4500 years ago and because of its unique concentric stem growth, some plants live to be a thousand years old. A descendant of one of these early bird droppings lives in Johnson Valley, California. At 9400 years old it is thought to be the oldest living organism in the world.
Like pine, greasewood is a bodega of resin, an amber syrup rich in flavinoids, oils and waxes which can make up to 20 percent of the weight of the bush. These resins shield the leaf from the strong UV light and heat of the desert allowing photosynthesis to go uninterrupted inside the leaf. Three hundred and sixty chemicals have been isolated in the oils of the creosote bush including forty-nine types of volatile oils.
Defense mechanisms include foul tasting oils that repel herbivores like deer, javalina and cattle. Some creosote leaf proteins are indigestible. But one grasshopper, the Astroma, has found a way to undo the creosote’s chemical defense and not only eats the leaves but lives within the plant’s canopy. The female resembles old stems and hide in the shade of the creosote while the male looks like the young leaf sprays. Another insect, the Tachardiella Larreae, lives on the creosote plant and secretes a gum-like substance called lac that was also used medicinally by Native Americans.
The chemicals in creosote roots also inhibit the growth of other plants, keeping them at distance and creating the image of a symmetrical mono-culture in many areas of the plant’s range.
After many days of drought, a fresh rain in the Trans-Pecos brings out the smells of vinyl, camphor, methyl ketones from the clean washed leaves of the creosote plant that many still call hediondilla or “little stinker.”
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