brentano's Identifications

Female Macromia illinoiensis with wing aberration

I have never seen or never noticed this in an odonate's wing cells before. It looks to have originated from within (as seen by one set of patterning that is incomplete, and the basic restriction to wing cell borders).

Unfortunately I didn't notice at the time so I didn't get closer shots.

Went over to Village Creek Historic Area to look for the Limpkin. Ran into Brentano -- didn't spot the bird at first... until I was looking at my photos and found it hanging out in the background! :)

This guy was sitting out in the middle of the river. He was perched on a tree that was slumped over. Not to sure what kind of cormorant this is. I know that we mainly get Double- Crested up here but I am not sure if this one is or not. Normally they are a grayer bird but this one was much darker.

Crested Caracara
near Palmetto State Park,
Gonzales Co., Texas
28 December 1980
this image scanned from 35mm slide

I was the compiler of the Palmetto State Park CBC in 1980. During the count, observers counted nearly 100 Crested Caracaras going to roost at dusk. This represented the largest number of Crested Caracaras ever reported on a single CBC at that time. @gcwarbler and I returned to the area before dawn the next morning and were able to document this concentration of caracaras. The two images here are some of the shots I took on that occasion. I later published a paper on this occurrence in the Bulletin of Texas Ornithology. A link to that issue is below and the article is available if anyone is interested.

1. High Numbers of Caracara found at temporary roost. Bulletin of Texas Ornithological Society, Vol. 15:pp. 18-20

https://sora.unm.edu/sites/default/files/journals/tos/v15n01-02/btos_v15n01-02.pdf