Black Vulture
A highly social scavenger whose broad circles and white wing patches are familiar above both cities and wild rivers.
Oaxaca, Mexico: places and wildlife
Browse the published Explore collection for Oaxaca, Mexico. Open a discovery for its field guide, practical details, and background.
Neotropic Cormorant
A versatile diving bird found from Pacific harbors to Amazon rivers, often drying its wings on the nearest exposed perch.
Roadside Hawk
The small, vocal hawk of tropical roadsides often watches from a wire or bare branch before dropping onto prey.
Great Kiskadee
A loud, adaptable tropical flycatcher whose name echoes its ringing kis-ka-dee call.
Long-tailed Weasel
A fast, flexible hunter able to follow rodents into spaces far smaller than its apparent body length.
Common Vampire Bat
The best-known blood-feeding mammal is also a highly social bat that shares food with unsuccessful roost-mates.
Black Rat
The agile roof-climbing rat of ports and warm cities differs sharply from its heavier, burrowing relative.
Cane Toad
A broad-headed Neotropical toad carries large toxin glands behind its eyes—an effective defense that makes a curious dog, not a quiet observer, the urgent concern.
Green Iguana
A powerful tree-dwelling herbivore that can escape predators by diving from branches directly into water.
Northern Bobwhite
A round, secretive quail more often found by its clear bob-WHITE whistle than by a clean view.
American Robin
The familiar lawn bird whose upright pauses, orange breast, and liquid dawn song reward a much closer look.
Red-tailed Hawk
A broad-winged raptor commonly seen on poles, thermals, and highway trees, yet extraordinarily variable in plumage.
Turkey Vulture
A long-tailed scavenger rides warm air on raised wings, teetering with few flaps while its pale flight feathers flash across the entire trailing edge.
Eastern Cottontail
A compact rabbit that freezes into invisibility, then bounds for dense cover with its cotton-white tail flashing.
Virginia Opossum
A nocturnal generalist with a pouch, fifty teeth, a grasping tail, and a famous involuntary shutdown response.
House Mouse
The mouse most closely tied to people is best identified by a nearly bare scaly tail and muted gray-brown body—and best managed by sealing the building, not chasing the animal.
American Kestrel
North America’s smallest falcon hunts Kansas roadsides from wires, poles, and wind-held hovering flight.
Scissor-tailed Flycatcher
A pale summer flycatcher turns Kansas utility lines into launchpads for pink-flashed aerial loops.
Dickcissel
This grassland bunting broadcasts its own name from Kansas weeds, fences, and bluestem each summer.
Northern Flicker
A large spotted woodpecker hunts ants on Kansas lawns and prairie edges, then flashes a white rump and yellow—or sometimes reddish—flight feathers when disturbed.
Nine-banded Armadillo
An armored nocturnal digger is pushing north through Kansas creek corridors, leaving cone-shaped feeding holes before its long snout and banded back appear.
Golden-cheeked Warbler
The only bird whose entire breeding range lies within Texas weaves nests from strips of mature Ashe juniper bark in wooded Hill Country canyons.
Black-capped Vireo
A small migratory songbird depends on a shifting mosaic of low shrubs and openings maintained by disturbance, browsing, and careful land management.
Texas Madrone
Smooth red-orange bark peels from twisting evergreen trunks in West Texas mountain canyons, linking the Trans-Pecos to a wider Mexican highland flora.
Baltimore oriole
Maryland’s orange-and-black state bird whistles from leafy edges and suspends a woven pouch nest near a branch tip.