The story behind the birds everyone wants to see
Halfway between Dallas and Mexico City, along the last few hundred miles of the Rio Grande, lies a subtropical outpost where people come from all over the world to see birds. Located between the temperate north and the tropic south, with desert to the west and ocean to the east, the Lower Rio Grande Valley of Texas provides habitat for a variety of birds seen nowhere else in the United States. If you want to see a Hooked-billed Kite, Muscovy Duck, or Altamira Oriole, this is the place.
Drawing on years of personal observation and study,...

The story behind the birds everyone wants to see
Halfway between Dallas and Mexico City, along the last few hundred miles of the Rio Grande, lies a subtropical outpost where people come from all over the world to see birds. Located between the temperate north and the tropic south, with desert to the west and ocean to the east, the Lower Rio Grande Valley of Texas provides habitat for a variety of birds seen nowhere else in the United States. If you want to see a Hooked-billed Kite, Muscovy Duck, or Altamira Oriole, this is the place.
Drawing on years of personal observation and study,...

When a mysterious manila envelope reached the hands of Henry "Milt" Reeves, no one could have anticipated the story that waited inside. Enclosed he found a manuscript written half a century earlier and yellowed with age. Each fragile page unfolded the first-person story of a trip Dorothy Chapman Saunders had taken to Mexico in 1948 and 1949 with her husband and seasoned ornithologist, George, to conduct field surveys of waterfowl and white-winged doves for the U.S. government.
In Chico, George, the Birds, and Me, Saunders adeptly describes the birds they saw and the survey work they did....

In this invaluable new book, Jim Stanley charts a practical course for understanding and handling a variety of problems that both new and established landowners in the Texas Hill Country will confront--from brush control, grazing, and overpopulation of deer to erosion, fire, and management of exotic animals and plants.

If you imagine the Texas Hill Country as dry limestone slopes of cedac and scrub oak, prepare to have your eyes opened. The Edwards Plateau, upon which the Hill Country sits, is also a land of lush cypress-lined streams, thickets, and shady hardwood bottomlands. Edged by canyonlands and intersected by creeks, these rocky hills support an abundance of trees, shrubs, and vines that provide food and cover for wildlife and create a distinct and durable landscape. In this book, Jan Wrede has compiled a field guide to more than 130 species of mostly native, mostly woody plants of the Texas Hill...

Previously published in 1980 as The central Texas gardener and in 1999 as The new central Texas gardener.

Texas hosts an unparalleled number of butterfly species, and whether one lives near the beaches of the Gulf Coast or in the mountains of the Trans-Pecos, all Texans can enjoy the color and tranquility that butterflies bring to any outdoor space.

In Butterfly Gardening for Texas, author and expert Geyata Ajilvsgi shares a wealth of practical information about all kinds of butterflies and the many flowers and other plants they utilize in their miraculous life cycle: from hidden egg to munching caterpillar to cryptic chrysalis to nectar-sipping, winged adult.

Written in an...

." . . includes some stunning images of Mexican and less-well-known Texas species . . . the authors have provided a unique and elegant publication that is truly an important contribution to Texas ornithology." --"Great Plains Research"
"Everyone interested in Texas birds must have the "Handbook of Texas Birds," a marvelous book. It is full of up-to-date information about Texas birds that cannot be found in one place anywhere else. The annotations] are full of good information that anyone interested in birds will sooner or later refer to when trying to better understand their own yard's...

In this controversial culmination of a lifelong quest, Alexander F. Skutch, a well-known ornithologist who has studied birds for more than sixty years, makes a case for "believing that birds' mental capacities have been grossly underestimated." Lacking hard scientific proofs of what birds think and feel, we are left, Skutch argues, with inferences gleaned from observation of their behavior. His intimate, six-decade study of tropical and north temperate birds and his wide survey of the literature inform this remarkable review of the psychic life of birds. Although varying widely by species,...

Gardening in Texas is not for the faint of heart or weak-willed. Given the remarkable variety of soils, climate ranges, and the obstacles of stifling heat, humidity, and drought, the dedication of so many gardening enthusiasts speaks to the powerful hold plants have over people.

Living and gardening in Central Texas since 1969, Bill Scheick has celebrated successes and analyzed failures. Techniques and plants that worked in one yard did not necessarily work in another just a few miles away. In Adventures in Texas Gardening, Scheick shares, through personal accounts as well as...