Utopia Nature - Exploring the Sabinal River Valley Flora and Fauna

Welcome to Utopia!

Utopia, of course, is in TEXAS! Roughly 75 miles West of San Antonio, so south central Texas. It lies in the Sabinal River Valley, near the southern edge of the Edwards Plateau on the Balcones Escarpment. It was named for its climate in the late-1800's. Elevation is 1350' and the population in town and surrounding area is about 200 and change, except on weekends in summer.

To navigate this site, there is a link bar at the top of most of the pages and link boxes at the bottom of the pages ... scrolling over the subjects in the nav bar above will provide a dropdown box giving you the selections. Click one and you're off!

Over time, our site will grow so please bookmark it now before you lose it. :-) We hope you enjoy this window into Utopia's nature.

Here we have collection of pages about the incredible natural history of the Utopia area. The pages feature the local fauna ... birds, butterflies, dragonflies, "critters, bugs and stuff," and more. It will start small, but we hope grow with time and can give you a good idea of the fauna present. The idea being to educate others, share, and document the incredible diversity of wildlife in this area.

Most of the photos are simple "snapshots" and not high quality photos, but are generally enough for you to make an identification of a bird, butterfly, dragonfly, or other animal you may have seen. Probably 95% of the butterflies you see locally could be identified from the butterfly photo pages, and most of the common local dragonflies and damselflies are on our dragonfly or damselfly photo pages. A large percentage of the local birds species are on the bird photos pages now too.

In now our 19th year of bumbling around the area I have seen over 360 species of birds, 144 species of butterflies, and 81 species of dragonflies and damselflies around Utopia. It is world class bio-diversity for such a small area.

Painted Bunting, adult male, which are common late April to early August locally.

Most of the action is at the "Bird News" page, which should really be called "Nature News," since butterfly and dragonfly (Odes) news is there too. Current updates of local bird and other sightings are there, generally updated weekly on Friday evening. Directions to some local spots to see all of this interesting stuff, as well as some local business information is also shared on various pages. We hope you enjoy the pages and view into Utopia nature.

Many birders come to the area to see the Edwards Plateau's two endemic threatened bird species, the Golden-cheeked Warbler and Black-capped Vireo. Huge draws for their small size. Besides the roles they play in the ecosystem, they are very important economically to the area, locally to the tune of many tens of thousands annually. If you can't guess which is which in the photos below, birding might not be your thing. ;)

If you come out and visit, we hope you have a good time, just remember to go home!

smile and wink

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Utopia Recycles

Crimson Patch
aka the crimson wonder

Texas Coral Snake ~ Do not handle!
Thanks to Nancy Walling for her photo.
Red next to black is a friend of Jack,
Red next to yellow will kill a poor fellow.