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Nature Notes

Marfa Public Radio

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. Through interviews with scientists and field recordings, this Marfa Public Radio original series reveals the secrets of desert life. Join host Dallas Baxter for new episodes on each week on Thursdays. Episodes are written and produced by Andrew

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All Episodes

4:00

Wild Women for Good: April 25th Book Event Celebrates...

Nature Notes ·

2026/04/09

On April 25th, Alpine’s Front Street Books hosts an event to celebrate the publication of “Wild Women for Good,” from Texas A&M University Press.

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4:00

Seeking Insight into Pinyon-Juniper Woodlands, the...

Nature Notes ·

2026/04/02

PJ woodlands are the Southwest’s dominant forest type, covering 100 million acres here. Pinyons typically top out at 20 feet – and alongside diverse junipers, they thrive in dry, rocky places where Ponderosas, firs and aspens can’t make it.

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4:00

Local Nonprofit Works to Celebrate & Sustain West...

Nature Notes ·

2026/03/26

West Texas avians have passionate local advocates. That includes Trans-Pecos Bird Conservation, or TBC. This small but potent cadre of bird experts is cultivating the bonds between our region’s birds and its people.

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4:00

In West Texas Pictographs, Archeologist Sees Roots of...

Nature Notes ·

2026/03/20

Kachina dolls are an iconic Indigenous art form. Their craftsmanship is striking, and non-Native people have long admired and sought to acquire them. But they’re just one element in an encompassing religious outlook.

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4:00

Ask the Bones: Practicing “Taphonomy” in Big Bend

Nature Notes ·

2026/03/12

Dr. Rachel Laker, of Hanover University in Indiana, specializes in taphonomy, which explores the processes bones undergo between an animal’s death and fossilization. Big Bend National Park is one site of her research.

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4:00

In the Pecos Canyonlands, Ancients Foragers Created a...

Nature Notes ·

2026/03/05

Painted on cave walls where the Pecos and Devils rivers join the Rio Grande, the rock art of the Lower Pecos canyonlands casts a powerful spell. Its imagery is intricate, depicting human-like figures with upraised arms, geometric forms and animals like snakes, birds and mountain lions. And its scale is vast. Some panels span a hundred feet or more, and there are hundreds of such sites.

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4:00

Weather Underground: Studying “Speleometeorology” in...

Nature Notes ·

2026/02/26

Cave scientist Riannon Colton is working to unlock one of the cavern’s mysteries: its “speleometeorology.” Because it turns out that big caves, like big mountains, create their own weather.

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4:00

In the Pecos Canyonlands, Discovering the Daily Lives...

Nature Notes ·

2026/02/12

The Lower Pecos Canyonlands – where the Pecos and Devils rivers join the Rio Grande – contain globally significant rock art. But these same shallow caves have preserved much else from prehistory: bits of tools and textiles, plant and animal remains.

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4:00

Dating La Junta: Filling in the Story of an...

Nature Notes ·

2026/02/05

It features prominently in the earliest European account of the American Southwest, and it’s a fascinating chapter in Texas history. And yet, much about La Junta – the Native American society that flourished at the confluence of the Rio Grande and Rio Conchos, at present-day Presidio-Ojinaga – remains mysterious. Archeologists haven’t given it the same attention as other farming and village societies.

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4:00

Alongside Landowners, the Devils River Conservancy...

Nature Notes ·

2026/01/29

The Devils River is frequently described as the most pristine river in Texas. Flowing where the Chihuahuan Desert blends into the Hill Country and the South Texas shrublands, it’s a luminous ribbon of water in an arid land. It’s also a hunter’s paradise, with a rich ranching heritage, and home to globally significant cave paintings. And it’s an ecological wonder, a last stronghold for aquatic creatures that have vanished elsewhere.

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4:00

Can We Keep It a Forest? Fire & the Future of the...

Nature Notes ·

2026/01/22

Wildfires burn landscapes, but they also sear themselves into memory, and many Big Bend National Park enthusiasts remember the South Rim 4 Fire of April 2021. It began near a backcountry campsite, suggesting a possible human cause, and burned across 1,300 acres of the Chisos Mountains. It was the most intense blaze in the storied range in decades.

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4:00

An Archeologist Uses Pottery Fragments to Illumine...

Nature Notes ·

2026/01/15

Broken pieces of prehistoric pottery – known to archeologists as “potsherds” – are striking artifacts. As fragments of painted vessels, they vividly evoke Native American life, in both its aesthetic and practical dimensions.

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4:00

Science, Art & Community Come Together at Alpine’s...

Nature Notes ·

2026/01/08

The Trans-Pecos is Texas at its wildest, and, though many of its creatures are secretive, the region stands out for the glorious diversity of its wildlife.

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4:00

In the Pecos Canyonlands, Pictograph Dating Reveals...

Nature Notes ·

2025/12/17

At the threshold of Far West Texas, the Lower Pecos Canyonlands contain some of North America’s most remarkable rock art. Here, where the Pecos and Devils rivers join the Rio Grande, on cave walls, prehistoric hunter-gatherers painted more than 350 rock-art panels of a distinctive style.

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4:00

Hoo’s That? New Study Reveals the Owls of the Davis...

Nature Notes ·

2025/12/11

Owl sightings aren’t unusual in West Texas. You might spot a great horned owl in Alpine or Marfa, a barn owl in a farm building in Presidio or a burrowing owl on the Marathon grasslands. And the irresistible elf owl – which, at less than 6 inches long, is the world’s smallest owl – summers in Big Bend.

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4:00

For Grassland Birds, West Texas is an Essential...

Nature Notes ·

2025/12/04

Chihuahuan Desert grasslands are the main winter home for birds known as grassland specialists – chestnut-collared and thick-billed longspurs, lark buntings and horned larks, Sprague’s pipits and diverse sparrows. These birds are deeply imperiled, and supporting them is a top priority for West Texas conservationists.

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4:00

Silent Spring to Snowbird Surge: How Rainfall Shapes...

Nature Notes ·

2025/11/20

Extreme drought tests nature’s resilience. And birds are a particularly vivid example of how the creature world responds to drought, and to a landscape recovering from it.

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4:00

River Revelations: Archeologists Make Surprising...

Nature Notes ·

2025/11/13

Big Bend Ranch State Park is promoted as “the Other Side of Nowhere,” and the park’s River Road – FM 170 between Lajitas and Redford – fits that billing. It’s a breathtaking landscape of volcanic badlands and imposing canyons, and it can seem like a timeless wilderness, untouched by history.

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4:00

Big Bend Conservationists, Big Business Partner to...

Nature Notes ·

2025/11/07

Facilitated by the nonprofit Texan by Nature, and funded by oil giant ConocoPhillips, the Delaware River Basin Restoration project aims to revive an historic stream in Culberson County, 70 miles north of Van Horn.

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4:00

“Big Bend Bold” Rock Art Speaks of a Turning Point in...

Nature Notes ·

2025/10/30

Known only from sites in southern Presidio and Brewster counties, “Big Bend Bold” rock art is distinctive for the size and style of its imagery, which is painted in black or dark green. The style was named by archeologist Tim Roberts, who argues it was created by Indigenous Big Bend farmers and foragers at the time the Spanish first arrived here.

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