While I certainly intend to keep putting up blog posts when I have something that fits better here than elsewhere, if you’re interested in keeping up with what I’m doing, for now, Facebook is where I am. There’s a badge at the upper left of the page that you can click to find my personal Facebook profile and send me a friend request.

There’s also a badge where you can become a fan of Peterson Field Guides and I would appreciate it very much if you would do that. At the moment, the PFG fan page is, well, it’s me. But only in that I’m responsible for posting content there and serving as moderator. Like all things social media, it is meant to encourage interaction. And in only a week and a half, we’re already seeing a great response, with fans sharing their own photos and experiences.

Of course, I’m honored that the people at Houghton Mifflin Harcourt have asked me to take on the PFG fan page. It’s an opportunity to share a lot of great content from the Peterson vaults, create my own, and to have other interested naturalists share theirs. I’m especially pleased that we’ll be covering the vast range subjects of natural history that are featured in Peterson guides, though you can expect that birds will feature most prominently. I know it will be a big opportunity for me to learn, which is wonderful.

As an example of the kind of things I’ve been doing on the PFG page, below is a video I made and posted last week. It’s just a quick sequence of calling Spring Peepers, but I think it’s nice, especially if you haven’t been out and actually watched this classic sound being produced.

You can also click here to go to the HD version of the video on Facebook itself. It’s much better looking in HD, to say the least.

So, that’s where I am these days. I don’t know if six months from now Facebook will be over and we’ll all have moved on, but at the moment–most of the time–it feels like the place to be.

But please, keep this blog on your RSS subscriptions…or check back every once in a while, if you don’t do RSS. You never know when I’ll have something that only fits here. Thanks for stopping by!

Self-portrait by Matthew Sarver

Good news for all of you who enjoy well-written, thoughtful, authoritative, and nicely-illustrated blog posts (and if that’s you, what are you doing here?). My buddy Matt Sarver has been cultivating his web presence, including launching a new blog, appropriately called The Modern Naturalist.

Matt’s a great birder, naturally, but he’s also lamentably talented in just about every field of natural history. Did I say lamentably? I meant laudably. Just a little jealous here, sorry.

Being afield with Matt is a little like drinking from the proverbial fire hose. It seems like he can put a name to everything that flies, crawls, or photosynthesizes. And usually not just a name–he almost always has some interesting tidbit to share about the life history of each animal or vegetable, turning an ordinary walk into something educational and entertaining. Last Sunday, he showed me a bee which despite all appearances, was not a bumblebee. He went on to tell me that this non-bumblebee specializes in eating the pollen of hibiscus flowers. This was just one of dozens of cool critters he alerted me to that day. I was impressed.

Matt’s a hands-on kind of guy. He manages a property he owns in southwestern Pennsylvania, striving to improve the quality of the habitat there. And now that the governor of Pennsylvania has given his blessing to fire as a management tool–look out. I expect to see some pretty hot posts coming out of that. He’s also a sailor, crewing on the Kalmar Nyckel, our friendly neighborhood tall ship. Some say he got that gig in classic high-seas fashion–by sleeping with the captain–but I’ll leave that to him to confirm or deny.

Though he’s only been in Delaware for a couple of years, Matt is already making quite a mark. He and his Captain already keelhauled us in the Delaware Birdathon this year.

I’m betting that Matt will quickly become a star in the nature blogging sky. So click on over and say hello.

I scheduled this post to pop during my net-absence while I was running around the forests and waterways at Sacha Lodge over the weekend, but somehow I managed to bungle it. Here it is as I’m heading home.

I expected the birds in Ecuador to be amazing, but the moths have been an unanticipated treat. I’ll have more to say about them in the future, but here’s a quick start.  I liked this shot of a silk moth that came to my cabin light at Cabañas San Isidro–isn’t the fuzzy thorax wonderful? It’s worth clicking on the photo for a larger view.

Purists, take note: I rotated this photo 180 degrees because I thought it was easier to interpret, especially for those not used to staring into moth eyes. In reality, she (I’m guessing she because of thin antennae) was hanging from the wood, not sitting on top of it.

A large, rapidly rotating disc-shaped object floats in the sky over a remote mountainous area know for sightings of UFOs. I want to believe–how about you?

Well, the truth, as they say, is out there: below is the same scene, photographed with a flash and with the camera set to macro:

OK, it’s not proof of extraterrestrial life, but it’s an awfully cool bug, nonetheless. It’s a Guava Skipper. In the first photo, I disabled the flash and the camera focussed on the mountains outside the window on which the skipper was resting. In the second shot, I fixed the focus and used flash. You can see the reflection of the skipper in the window just below its wings.

Guava Skipper is a species that regularly visits South Texas, always getting oohs and ahhs from those lucky enough to see it. It may not be quite as exciting as a close encounter of the third kind, but it’ll do.

We’ve been seeing a lot of each other recently and I have to say, I’m more than a little smitten.

I love the way you combine the transcendent with the ordinary.

I love the way you keep your secrets, revealing them so slowly.

I love the warmth and dignity of your people.

And of course, I love the marvelous array of life you hold in your big, strong, gentle hands.

Will you be mine?

Love,

Jeff

We set off for a 4-night trip to northeast Mexico on Halloween. After an uneventful border crossing and about 4 hours of driving south through the ranch lands, we arrived at the Hacienda Santa Engracia, pictured above. A favorite lodging of our friend and hostess, Marci Fuller, the Hacienda was indeed charming–you could spend many pleasant hours just sitting on one of the porches or by the pool and watching the world go by, as Jim White is doing in the photo below.

We were more interested in birds and bugs than relaxation at that point, so we enjoyed a quick lunch, geared up, and headed out of town toward the foothills of the Sierra Madre. There, we visited a riverside park called Balneario El Tigre. That name translates to something like, “Jaguar Spa,” which might be a bit grandiose. It was more of a swimming hole with a few rough-hewn cabins perched nearby. It was pretty, though.

Me wading in the Rio Corona at Balneario El Tigre  photo ©Jim White

More than that, it had some of the most enjoyable butterflying I’ve ever done anywhere. Though the numbers weren’t astronomical, there were just so many large and/or spectacular species that it was mind-blowing. I already shared a shot of a Guatemalan Leafwing I took there in an earlier post; here are a few more:

Zebra Cross-streak Panthiades bathildis

Balanced atop a tall cactus, this little beauty was great to look at from any angle. Perched, he showed lovely zebra bars and an ornate false face on his hind quarters. When he did fly, his upperside was an intense iridescent blue–you can see just a tiny bit of that color peeking out above the large orange blotch at the right end.

Guatemalan Cracker Hamadryas guatemalena

As big and cryptic as the cross-streak was small and showy, this Guatemalan Cracker clung to a tree trunk, the lichen-like pattern of its upperwings blending beautifully with the tree bark. Crackers, also known as Calicoes, are an unusual group, named for the loud popping or cracking noise the males sometimes make when they fly. Not all crackers are so subtle, though, at least if you’re blessed with color vision (remember, few mammals are–we’re lucky). Check out the Red Cracker below:

Red Cracker Hamadryas amphinome

It may be hard to understand at first why this gorgeous bug, with its gas-flame blue markings would be called a red anything. But that’s because crackers spend so much time perched with their wings splayed open. It’s only when they flex those wings or fly that the nomenclature becomes sensible:

Red Cracker Hamadryas amphinome

That’s some bug, huh? It seemed that every branch, trunk, and twig had a special lep (short for “lepidopteran“) on it. Even the ground was festooned with striking butterflies and moths, like this male Common Banner.

Common Banner Epiphile adrasta

Finally, it got dark enough that most of the diurnal bugs went to bed, photography and observation became difficult, and the Hacienda’s siren song of showers, beers, and bed began to worm its way into our consciousness. As we left, a group of young locals arrived, built a campfire, and clowned around, laughing and teasing each other. The boys at one point formed a massive “puppy pile,” on top of one of their comrades. We understood very few of the jokes and taunts they were making, but the overall warmth of their friendship shone through. I don’t know what they made of us, but I’d like to think it was something similar. That Halloween afternoon, the banks of the Rio Corona at the Jaguar Spa seemed to be a charmed place, whatever whims or wings brought you there.

Don’t know that I’ll become a weekly participant in Skywatch Friday, but it is Friday and I had what I thought was a cool picture of the sky, so here goes.

I took this picture November 1, just at sunrise, in the foothills of the Sierra Madre northwest of Ciudad Victoria, in the state of Tamaulipas, Mexico. Migrating Monarch butterflies were everywhere during our trip. Hiking up a path that morning, we came upon a roosting group and watched as they began circling up into the sky, rejoining the southbound stream. ¡Buen viaje!

Crossing the U.S. – Mexico border, Los Indios Free Trade Bridge

The picture above was taken when we were entering Mexico on Halloween morning, nearly two weeks ago. We returned to the U.S. on Election Day, in body, anyway. In the bureaucratic world, it turns out, we are still in Mexico. Or perhaps we are in some sense in two countries simultaneously, as we were officially granted entry into the U.S., too.

I like to think of myself as a fairly seasoned traveler, but that seasoning is no guarantee against bonehead mistakes. In our haste to return to Texas, Liz, Jim, & I completely forgot to stop and void out our vehicle pass and tourist cards before we left Mexico. In our own defense, this is surprisingly easy to do–much more so than it would be at an airport, where most countries won’t let you go anywhere without getting your tickets punched, passports stamped, and taxes paid. Still, it was a dumb, dumb oversight.

So it looks like a visit to a Mexican consulate may be in our immediate future. In the meantime, here are a couple of other shots from our Halloween Day:

 Guatemalan (=Forrer’s) Leafwing, Memphis forreri, NW of Ciudad Victoria, Tamaulipas, Mexico

Butterflies were the outstanding feature of this trip. We saw lots of great birds and other creatures, but the lepidopterans topped them all. 

Above, Liz–in her Halloween horns–and Marci scan a reservoir near the Hacienda Santa Engracia, where we spent the night. The Sierra Madre rise in the background. How much more popular would birding be if more of us dressed like this in the field, rather than in the dowdy duds so many of us seem to prefer?

I’ll let you know when and if the Mexican government decides to release us. In the meantime, life on the road continues to be good, though not without the occasional pothole.