Category: Wildlife Weekly

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...

Birders from all around the globe often come to central and northern California to observe a member of the corvid family that exists nowhere else on the planet. The yellow-billed magpie (Pica nuttelli) is not only native to the...

The Golden Eagle (Aquila chrysaetus) is a feathered superlative. It is the fastest, biggest and most global of all North American large raptors. Its territory is so widespread the bird has earned the title Holarctic, meaning it...