Nature has ben astonishingly prodigal in Texas' Big Thicket. The teeming variety of its plant and animal life makes it a naturalist's paradise, an ecological system unique in the United States. In its woodlands, sloughs, and swamps, norther beaches and pine minle with magnolias; tough cactus and yucca intrude in a world of mosses, fragile fern, rare orchids, and carpets of wildflowers. Here bald eagles soar, and one hears of sightings of the ivor-billed woodpecker, perhaps extinct. Feral hogs and white-tail deer, bobcats and tiny shrews, armadillos and alligators thrive in the Thicket's wilderness. many species are not elsewhere seen together; some are seldom seen at all.
In the ninety-eight breathtaking color photographs included here, Blair Pittman presents a magnificent visual record of the natural world of the Big Thicket. The delicate hues and riotous color of its flora, the stillness of its swamps, the towering majesty of ancient trees, dense foliage that thwarts the midday sun, the mystery of an early-morning fog - such scenes reveal the Thicket's timeless beauty. The patterns of its life emerge in vivid shots of a pitcher plant awaiting a curious insect, a snake feeding on a frog, nesting egrests, an alligator waiting and watching, a shy fawn's hiding place. Whether one knows the Thicket well or sees it here for the first time, this book will delight and instruct for years to come.
1978
Texas A&M University Press, 100 pages
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