Nighttime, dusk, and dawn are best for outdoor activities, during a South Texas summer plagued by drought and triple-digit temperatures. Some mammals adopt this pattern year round, and are well-suited to the local environment. One such creature is the Blacktail Jackrabbit, or Desert Hare, found throughout the western US and Mexico. If you are outdoors around dawn or dusk, you might catch this jackrabbit feeding, on cactus, mesquite, sagebrush, or perhaps clover, but during daylight hours it’s likely that you’ve disturbed the hare from its scrape. This sudden appearance of a bounding jackrabbit provides a very good excuse for your horse to feign terror and spook in a calculated and annoying manner.

Blacktail Jackrabbit, Lepus californicus. Prismacolor pencil and Caran D’Ache watercolor pencil.

In addition to the swallows and nighthawks that I described in a previous post, Mexican Freetail Bats accompany my late evening walks through the neighborhood, with my dog. Sometimes there are dozens of them, fluttering over a narrow stretch of boulevard that’s about half a mile in length. The human cochlea can detect at least some of their chirps – pit, pit, pit; I’m not sure whether other bat species would sound much different to us. There are very large colonies of freetail bats under bridges in Austin and San Antonio, and in caves throughout the Hill Country. The presence of a cave – particularly a cave with a bat colony – on your rural property will increase its value; fortunately, it seems that most Texans have a positive opinion of the freetail bats, and support their conservation. Anne-Marie Hodge has a fascinating post on aging and senescence in bat species that’s definitely worth reading.

Mexican Freetail Bat, Tadarida brasiliensis. Prismacolor pencil and Caran D’Ache watercolor pencil.