Cin-Ty Lee

Long-billed Thrasher @riceuniversity.bsky.social. Epic! This bird is a fairly common resident in South Texas but to get one up in east Texas is crazy. Even more crazy is that it is with a Brown Thrasher, which shouldn’t be here in late May. May be first record of these two species mating.

every quantitative model of magma differentiation implicitly assumes that crystals form inside the magma body and reflect the evolving magma body. The evidence points to crystallization nearly all happening in cold boundary layers. If so, one's world view changes over night. Santa Claus is not real.

Our paper on the first field-documented backcross hybrid between Black-chinned and Ruby-throated Hummingbird is out in the Texas Ornithological Society Bulletin. Based on observations on the campus of @riceuniversity.bsky.social

We have a new paper. This one is about generating highly differentiated, low F melts through a series of interconnected magma chambers, each undergoing only moderate crystallization (moderate F), with the effects compounding after each successive staging. www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

Here is a quiz. What flycatcher is this? Photographed May 3 along the gulf coast just west of the Texas - Louisiana border.

Buff-breasted Sandpiper displaying and getting ready for breeding. These birds have been staging here for an over a week now.

What is an idea? It’s about connecting the dots. No dots, no ideas.

There are a lot of gatekeepers out there and you are destroying the future of the field with your lack of creativity. Do something useful. Step aside and allow the field to advance.

Our gardens @riceuniversity.bsky.social continue to deliver. Painted bunting and summer tanager.

Scientists that do not like to teach can never really rise to their full potential. Teaching, even elementary classes, is the path to deeper understanding.

Two grosbeaks @riceuniversity.bsky.social a female rose breasted and an immature male blue grosbeak.

On earth day, we are running a fundraiser for Houston Audubon for conservation of birds and to bring birds and nature to people. Please come to this all day event if u r around. we could also use your help in fundraising. You can donate to our team! houstonaudubon.app.neoncrm.com/np/clients/h...

A massive goatsucker. Chuck-wild-widow over @riceuniversity.bsky.social today!

So coming as an outsider, I’m going to ask the most basic question out there that nobody seems to be able to tell me. How did Mars become so red. Obviously oxidation but by what process? Have we figured it out?

Mulberry picking time.

And two more swallow-tailed kites today @riceuniversity.bsky.social. Today, raptors, swallows, swifts and waders were flying overhead, going north. Even in this urban environment, migration is going on, just high in the sky.

Swallow-tailed kite @riceuniversity.bsky.social they have arrived!

The European Starling is quite handsoquite handsome bird.

New work challenges the idea of a “wet” Moon🌙💧 Our GCA study, with Raj and @cintylee.bsky.social, shows water-rich lunar melt inclusions form via magmatic recharge, instead of requiring a wet mantle! The Moon may still be strongly volatile-depleted. @riceeeps.bsky.social doi.org/10.1016/j.gc...

Two yellow birds at @riceuniversity.bsky.social. A hooded and a Prothonotary Warbler. Both breed in the hardwood or bottomland forests of southeastern North America so the are typically the first to arrive.

I laid some boards down in our flood control @riceuniversity.bsky.social area hoping one day I’d find a narrow mouthed toad (really a frog) underneath. I hear them but these are tough frogs to actually see. Today, after many years, I found one!! What a beautiful but weird looking frog!

arclogite sample from the Sierra Nevada, California. These are deep arc cumulates. I got started on these rocks when I was an undergrad... they have taken me down many many paths. But above all, they are just pretty to look at.

Long-tailed Skipper @riceuniversity.bsky.social

Promachus hinei, a robber fly. These are indeed flies, but they are quite the predator. I have seen them take down dragonflies much larger than itself. But besides what they do, they are just beautiful creatures.

An Arabesque Orbweaver with dew on its web.

Spring is here. Black-and-white warbler @riceuniversity today. That plant on the left is known as “ball moss” but it’s not a moss. It’s a bromeliad, like pineapples. These epiphytes host a number of insects so the birds are often seen probing them.

Our first of season scissor-tailed flycatcher @riceuniversity.bsky.social flew over while we were hawkwatching. Spring is here. This bird was moving north very fast but we managed to get a couple of photos as it passed overhead.

Rufous-tailed jacamar from Honduras. They are in the Piciformes order, which contains puffbirds, woodpeckers, and toucans. They feed on insects by catching them in flight from exposed perched.

A red-throated loon and a western grebe turned up in Galveston, Texas. Both very rare birds this far east, but somehow they were together for a brief moment in time.

The Honduran Emerald. A hummingbird endemic to the dry interior mountains of Honduras and the Chortis block.

Red-legged Honeycreepers. Honduras. They are a type of tanager. They feed on flowers and fruits, and like hummingbirds, they have a long tongue for probing into flowers. The vivid blue color is not from pigments but is a structural color, where nanostructures in the feathers scatter blue light.

@edyong209.bsky.social and I just had an amazing view of Buff-breasted Flycatchers and a Guatemalan Northern Pygmy Owl in the mountains of Honduras.

Stellar’s Jay from the mountains of Honduras. These look and sound different from those in North America. Seems like every mountain range has its own variant of Stellar’s Jay.

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