Category: Wildlife Weekly

At the top of the food chain in the natural world are the apex predators. They are the lions and leopards in Africa, the tigers in Burma, the jaguars in Brazil and big cats generally where they exist worldwide. Some say human...

Much of the flora and fauna in North America is not native to our ecosystem but was imported from Europe. Rock pigeons came from England with the first colonists in the 17th century and spread west with the pioneers. In 1851 an...

Despite what one might read on a blabosphere post, mugwort has nothing to do with a scaly skin blemish that shows up on a jailhouse booking photo. California mugwort (Artemesia douglasiana) is a fast-growing shrub often found in...

Philologists (those who study b’s) would go bonkers without the letter b: no more begat, begin, beguine or buckminsterfullerene. Melittologists (those who study bees) would be equally upset because there would be no bees (OK,...

Catching sight of one during daylight hours maybe hit-or-miss, but they’re out there or down there. American badgers (Taxidea taxus) are mostly nocturnal creatures that live in burrows they dig underground in open areas with...

Late winter and early spring bring so many colors to the Central Valley: White almond blossoms, pink peach blooms, dark green valley oak leaves and in the sky, flashes of brilliant orange. Bullock’s orioles (Icterus bullockii)...

It is a fine line between feisty and fierce, one defined by the beholder. The long-tailed weasel (Mustela frenata) straddles that line, feisty as it stands up to a curious coyote and fierce as it attacks and kills a rabbit for...

The zoological term sexual dimorphism doesn’t define anything as weird as one might think. Translated to common speak it means male and female birds have different colored feathers. In general, the boys sport the brightly...

It’s a long journey for Swainson’s hawks (Buteo swainsoni) from South America to the San Joaquin Valley. The semiannual trek to their summer breeding grounds has ended for most of them and now they are being seen in large...

Animals are often named after some physical characteristic they may have such as the black bear or the white-tailed deer or the duck-billed platypus. They may also derive their name from a sound they make such as the screech owl...