Cin-Ty Lee

Thanks for having me callan!!!!

San Francisco volcanic field near Flagstaff on the Colorado Plateau, Arizona. Cinder cones formed by Strombolian eruptions. These volcanoes are so young (ky) that they have hardly eroded.

Ubehebe crater. A phreatomagmatic eruption, where magmas impinge upon wet sediment or groundwater causing rapid vaporization. Volume expansion during vaporization causes the water saturated overburden (roof) to explode. Sudden depressurization causes magma to then erupt catastrophically.

Pleistocene cinder cone in the southern part of the Owens Valley. Coso volcanic field.

Anna’s Hummingbird in the Mojave desert they are curious birds.

Last year, my kid discovered one of very few Pinguiculas ever in the country of Belize. Their closest relatives seem to be from the cloud forests of southeastern Mexico, but they look different. The Maya Mountains. We are just now putting all our observations together!

Boat-tailed Grackles eating crayfish. That’s why they like marshes.

More hybrids. Today on the Texas coast. FulvousxBlack-bellied Whistling Duck. The barred rump is particularly intriguing.

be very careful of folks that throw around the word "sustainability" too much. What used to be a good word has been hijacked by careerists looking out for their own good. The only thing they are trying to sustain is their own job. Environment is second priority.

One of the most fascinating sagas I've experienced. We recently found what we thought was a typical Black-chinned Hummingbird @riceuniversity.bsky.social but after more photos came in, it became clear we were looking at a hybrid Ruby-throated x Black-chinned, one of few ever documented in the field.

One of the most bizarre conversations I had today. A gentleman came up to me tell me he had a stuffed passenger pigeon and wanted to know what to do with it. And indeed he has a stuffed passenger pigeon

First year students at @riceuniversity.bsky.social have to take a writing class. With AI, teaching these writing classes has become challenging but we focus on nature journaling and relearning how to observe and then communicating our observations thru words and sketches. We beat AI everyday.

I don’t know why this bird in the middle never changes its position n

Sub-zero

My local rufous hummingbird before sunrise, sitting in the freezing cold. These little guys somehow produce enough heat to make it through the sun-zero temperatures. Even the bill is warm! Thermal imaging scope.

Myiarchus flycatchers ordered by size and intensity of yellow underparts. When it comes to flycatchers, differences between species tend to be very subtle. Impressions of size and color in the field can be quite subjective, but the differences are real.

Jan and Feb are typically when we get the strongest cold fronts along the Gulf of Mexico. These fronts push their way down and bring odd birds. This California Gull showed up today just outside of Houston, TX.

Benitoite on natrolite with neptunite. Benitoite is a barium titanium cyclosilicate. Formed when Ba-bearing hydrothermal fluids pass through Ti-bearing blueschists during retrograde metamorphism associated with serpentinite mélanges.

Nutting’s Flycatcher from a ranch in Marathon, Texas. We had two birds out there. They are probably more regular here than we think. So much of west Texas is on private lands that have been under-explored.

Out in west Texas where there are no city lights, the skies are filled with stars. The night is perfectly quiet except for the screech owls calling beneath Jupiter and its moons rising.

Ripples in the Cretaceous Aguja Formation in Big Bend National Park. These formation is mostly composed of marine shales and mudstones but there are occasional sandstone layers that mark brief changes in depositional environment.

I think sometimes it is harder to ID flycatchers in the hand (at least for me) because many of these proportions are distorted on an agitated bird. Also, there is a lot of overlap in absolute metrics between different species, making it often impossible to ID. Ratios are far less variable.

These are the relevant morphometrics to measure on a flycatcher. Although absolute measurements are very helpful, relative metrics, essentially proportions, are just as useful. These are the features that can be measured from photos or what you see, with some training, in the field.

All of this was made possible by the ever-growing photo archives on ebird and inaturalist, which allowed us to go back and evaluate how good old sight records are. Advances of community science.

Down thru Florida, across Cuba and south to Central America, minimizing the amount of water they have to cross. Acadian has the longest wings of all the Empidonax, so it can take the eastern, island-hopping route. The other Empidonax are too weak. They go back essentially the same way they came up.

In the fall, these southerlies still continue and are even stronger. They only die out in late October. The same southerlies that were tailwinds in spring become headwinds in fall, so most songbirds, even those that took a trans-gulf route in spring, really can't fly across the gulf. They head east.

Empidonax flycatchers, however, are not really strong enough to fly across water, even with these tail winds. A small fraction fly across the Gulf, but most take the long, safer land route through eastern Mexico and coastal Texas. Acadian is no exception.

Many songbirds in spring take a trans-gulf route. From late April on, the baseline circulation patterns of the Gulf of Mexico are southerlies that flow north. These southerlies form because Mexico and Texas force the tradewinds to turn north. The birds going north use this as a tailwind.

Acadian Flycatcher thus takes a clockwise migration path. This is very unlike other flycatchers but very similar to many warblers, thrushes, and tanagers. In spring, many of these birds go up Texas or cut north across the Gulf from the Yucatan, and then return through Florida.

Acadian Flycatcher migratory routes rewritten. In spring, most of the migration takes a largely land-based western circum-Gulf path. In fall, they take an easterly route through Florida and across the western Caribbean, bypassing most of Texas. Most fall Acadians in Texas are misidentified.