Nature Notes
Why do rattlesnakes rattle and hummingbirds hum?
How do flowers market themselves to pollinators?
Why do tarantulas cross the road?
Nature Notes investigates questions like these about the natural world of the Chihuahuan Desert region and the Llano Estacado every week. Through interviews with scientists and field recordings, this Marfa Public Radio original series reveals the secrets of desert life.
Join host Dallas Baxter on Tuesdays and Thursdays at 7:45 am during Morning Edition and 4:45 pm during All Things Considered. New episodes premier on Thursdays and replay on Tuesdays. Episodes are written and produced by Andrew Stuart and edited by Marfa Public Radio and the Sibley Nature Center in Midland, Texas.
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The Borderlands Research Institute – at Alpine's Sul Ross State University – was founded in 2007, with a mission to empower land managers to conserve the… -
In 1894, a 22-year-old Texas Ranger named Everett Townsend was tracking stolen mules when he arrived at the South Rim of the Chisos Mountains. He looked… -
“There seemed to be nothing to see; no fences, no creeks or trees, no hills or fields. There was nothing but land: not a country at all, but the material… -
“The past,” it's famously been said, “is a foreign country.” But the deep human past is better described as another continent. We humans have had the same… -
Camp this summer in the Guadalupe, Davis or Chisos mountains – the West Texas “sky islands” – and you'll awaken to a symphony of birdsong. As the sun… -
Think of West Texas wildlife, and aquatic creatures aren't what comes to mind. But the Rio Grande and its tributaries are home to a stunning diversity of… -
The Rio Grande – like all the world's great rivers – meets many needs, and means many things. It's water for drinking and farming – a foundation for… -
It's a life-giving stream in a desert land, that for millennia has sustained human communities and creatures found nowhere else on Earth. The deep canyons… -
Twelve thousand years ago, the great ice sheets that had long covered most of Canada and the northern U.S. receded. The jet stream – the continent's storm… -
With the celebration Friday of Earth Day, there's occasion for both despair, and hope. In the 52 years since the first Earth Day, we've witnessed…
