photo by Jacob McGinnis
Our campus is home to lots of different birds that are impossible to miss: an inky black grackle flying dangerously close overhead, a chubby pigeon picking at a crust of pizza. But with winter upon UT, we also have another visitor: the Cedar Waxwings. These are strikingly beautiful birds that are less obvi...
Gambusia affinis, female. (Illustrations by Joseph Tomelleri)
Male.
If you visit the turtle pond on campus, you might notice the turtles have quite a few tiny fish neighbors. Some of these are silvery-grey fish called by their common name of “Western Mosquitofish” or just “mosquitofish.” This is the species Ga...
Great-tailed grackle, male. (Photo: Becky Matsubara)
If you pair the words “Austin” and “bird,” you get “grackle.” But these rambunctious omnipresent birds have an expanding breeding range, and have been around long before Texas was even a state. Austin, for better or for worse, cannot really claim them as our own.
Grackle is...
Fox squirrel vs. mesquite: this one is girdling a mesquite for lunch. (Photo: Dr. Larry Gilbert)
The fox squirrel (Sciurus niger) has made quite a comfortable existence for itself on the UT Austin campus. In trees, bushes, trashcans, or coming to beg for a bite of your lunch, it’s hard to miss these furry little mammals.
Commonly ...
An old mesquite on east side of MAI, near WCH
If you were a student at UT when the university was founded in 1883, you might have ridden a horse-drawn carriage by quite a few mesquite to get to class. Gradually with campus expansion, mesquite became fewer in number. Now only a few remain on campus. One of the oldest Prosopis indiv...