BioBlitz 2014!

The 2014 BioBlitz at Lick Creek Park has come and gone!  I was a member of the bird survey team this year.  Other participating TMNers (for the Bird group) were: Jim and Kitty Anding, Katherine Cupps (and her husband John), Jackie Girouard, Rick Laughlin, Mark McDermott, and Bruce Neville.  We started a survey on Friday night at about 7 pm at the Chimney Swift Tower.  It was nice and cool with cloudy skies.  We first heard a Black and White Warbler singing loudly nearby.  

Friday Night Bird Survey, Waiting for the rest of the group to show up... and the birds are here, too!  From Left to Right: John Cupps, Bruce Neville, Katherine Cupps, and Rick Laughlin.

As we were waiting for the whole group to show up, about 40 Mississippi Kites flew over or near us prompting several clever remakes about the “Mississippi River” or “it’s a good day to fly a kite!” (By the way, a “river” used by birders refers to a stream of raptors flying overhead so “Mississippi River” is just really funny...ok, ok, it's a dorky birder joke).  Our goal with a night survey was to document evening and night birds like owls.  Although I’ve heard Barred Owls and Eastern Screech-Owls in the park before, they apparently didn’t get the memo to come out for us.  But we did get a fairly common night bird, a Chuck-will’s-widow (heard only).  The night walk wasn’t only about birds.  It’s hard to ignore the other night critters in the park (besides the children running around looking for bats and insects)!  Our first non-bird sighting was an Ironclad Beetle, so named for its extremely hard exoskeleton.  We also saw a Ground Skink crawling along the edge of the trail.  Actually, trail edges were a popular place for a lot of critters.  There were many Gulf Coast Toads hopping along and while I’m not a big fan of spiders, I appreciated a sight of a Wolf Spider carrying her young on her back.

Ironclad Beetle on Iron Bridge Trail, Lick Creek Park.

The bird survey began again bright and early at 7am.  We divided ourselves into 4 groups, each covering a different trail.  Rick and I headed down Iron Bridge Trail and were treated to excellent views of a KentuckyWarbler, Swainson’s Warblers, Black-throated Green Warblers, Yellow-breasted Chat, and a singing Northern Waterthrush.  Every bird group had something interesting to report.  Along Raccoon Run Trail a small flock of Baltimore Orioles were mobbing a Barred Owl and a Northern Bobwhite was spotted along Post Oak Trail.  Besides our birds, at the southern end of Iron Bridge Trail Rick and I came across a good-sized Box Turtle.  He was one of several we would see throughout the rest of the day… the others having been caught by the Herpetology survey team (they were released during the course of the day). 

Box Turtle on Iron Bridge Trail, Lick Creek Park.

Ok, now it was booth and kid activity time!  I spent the morning at the Rio Brazos Audubon table.  Kids and parents trickled in.  We had the bird board, which is always a hit, and nest and egg displays.  In the afternoon I switched to the TMN booth.  Barb and Jay Pritchard had their mammal footprint cast and stencil activity for the kids.  Other TMNers helping out at BioBlitz were: Jim Balthrop, Dwight Bohlmeyer, Joyce Conner, Terry Junek, Cheryl Lewis, Greg Pitts, and Michael Stecher.  

The TMN Booth!  From Left to Right: Me, Greg Pitts, Jim Balthrop and Cheryl Lewis.   Photo by Joyce Conner.

TMN Booth with visitors!  From Left to Right: Jim Balthrop, Greg Pitts (blocked) and Barb Pritchard.  Photo by Joyce Conner.

TMN Booth with more visitors!  From Left to Right: Greg Pitts, Jim Balthrop, and Cheryl Lewis.  Photo by Joyce Conner.

Overall, it was a great outreach day!  Kids went home happy, hopefully gaining some knowledge of the native critters in the park.  Volunteers went home happy knowing we made some connections to park visitors.  Thanks to everyone who showed up to help!  I went home happy having seen some first of season birds (Mississippi Kites!) and having made a friend with a shy box turtle (ok, I know I’m not his friend but he’s mine!) and delighted in the knowledge that the park will soon be full of baby Wolf Spiders crawling around…. Ok, ok, I’ll stop there before I creep myself out any more!  Besides, the Skinks have to eat something!  All in all, it was a good day to be outside.  J

Did you go to BioBlitz?  Do you have any interesting sightings or stories?  Please share them in the Comments section!

April Showers Bring May Flowers….

But in Texas the Flowers are Here Early!

April is a fantastic month to be in Texas.  So much is happening!  Old friends are migrating across the Gulf of Mexico… not tired Spring Breakers but birds!  The weather is warming up but we can still enjoy cool mornings and nice breezes.  And the early spring rains have grown a carpet of color on all the roadsides and meadows.  Now, I’m not a plant person but I’m trying to learn.  I think learning about flowers is a nice way to dip my toe into the world of plant identification.  I don’t think I’ll even get to the point where I can be an expert on grasses but knowing a few individuals from each general plant group would be useful… and flowers should be an easy place to start. First, flowers are nice to look at and in general, are different enough to remember.  Second, different flowers (as with any plants) provide food and shelter for a variety of critters so if you are trying to attract or look for specific insects/critters, knowing their host plants is a step in the right direction.  Finally, it’s just cool to know more about the natural world. 

So I decided to travel around and take pictures of flowers, try to ID them, and learn a little bit more about the colors of the living carpets covering the ground here in the Brazos Valley in April.  Sounds easy, right?  Except in one small patch of grass there may be 5-6 different types of flowers!  I’m not talking about the big showy ones either, like Bluebonnets or Indian Paintbrush… what about all the smaller flowers?  It’s pretty amazing what’s around when you look under your feet.  Rick and I went to the Cox Cemetery outside of Milican (Rick was birding, I was stalking flowers), the fields around the George Bush Library, Brison Park, County Club Lake, and our own back yard.  After take “a few” pictures and then trying to ID flowers, I realized I had 18 different individuals named (maybe not the correct name, but it’s a start!) and 6 unidentified individuals.  Driving around over the weekend I kept seeing new flowers that I hadn’t seen elsewhere.  As much as I want to go and take pictures and try to ID them, I realized flower identification for a blog is much like a thesis… you have to know when to stop because it can go on forever! 

What you’ll need for flower identification:

1) A camera!  Using a good camera is great but any camera will do, really.  Some of the pictures I took were with my cell phone.

2) Some sort of resource for looking up your flowers.  I could only rely on Dwight’s calendar of Wildflowers of Lick Creek Park for so long!  His fantastic pictures allowed me to ID 3 of my unknowns… and now I know I have Scarlet Pimpernel in my backyard!  However, for the rest, I needed something else to use:

Websites:

This is a site where you select certain characteristics (# of petals, color, leaf shape, etc…) and hit “search”.  I liked it because you do not have to know the name of the flower to search:  http://www.realtimerendering.com/flowers/flowers.html

This is the Ladybird Johnson Wildflower Center’s image gallery.  You need to know the flower name in order to search however, there’s a lot of great information that goes along with the images:   http://www.wildflower.org/gallery/

Book:

Texas Wildflowers by Campbell and Lynn Loughmiller, 1999

A great book with nice pictures however, it did not contain all the flowers I needed.  It was a good place to start!

3) Patience!  Trying to get a good picture of a flower can be more difficult than it needs to be.  My biggest problem was that I’d find the perfect flower and then the wind would pick up.  Every picture I’d end up with showed a blurry yellow or white blob that was nowhere near the beautiful flower I was looking at.  I ended up doing the best that I could but if you’re going to photograph flowers, try to pick a non-breezy spot (ha ha, not as easy as it sounds!)  Also, some flowers can look amazingly similar!  Sometimes that picture you take just doesn’t show the right characteristics to correctly make an identification. 

Picture Time!

Below I present my attempts at identifying April wildflowers in the Brazos Valley.  I've included one common name for each as well as the latin name (taken from the Ladybird Johnson Wildlife Center website).  Hopefully, I at least got the species names correct... I can't guaranty the genus names!  Again, I am not a plant person so if I have misidentified something, please let me know in the comments section below (so that everyone can see, too!).  

Left: Blue-eyed Grass, Sisyrinchium sp., George Bush Library.  Right: Bluebonnet, Lupinus sp., George Bush Library.

Left: Chickweed, Cerastium arvense, Cox Cemetery.  Right: Cutleaf Evening Primrose, Oenothera laciniata, George Bush Library.  EDIT: From Monique: "Cerastium arvense"--this photo is of Arenaria drummondii--Drummond Sandwort 

Left: Indian Paintbrush, Castilleja indivisa, Cox Cemetery.  Right: Lyreleaf Sage?, Salvia lyrata, Brison Park.   EDIT: From Monique: Your Lyreleaf Sage is correctly identified  

Left: Phlox, not sure which type, Cox Cemetery.  Right: Pink Evening Primrose, Oenothera speciosa, Brison Park.  EDIT: From Monique: Phlox is Phlox cuspidate, Pointed Phlox

Left: Salvia?  Not too sure about this one, George Bush Library.  Right: Scarlet Pimpernel, Anagallis arvensis, My Backyard.  EDIT: From Monique: The "Salvia" is Orobanche ramose, Branched Broomrape, an invasive, parasitic exotic weed 

Left: Common Sneezeweed, Helenium autumnale, George Bush Library.  Right: Southern Dewberry, Rubus trivialis, George Bush Library.  EDIT: From Monique: The Helenium is probably Helenium amarum. Much more common locally. Weirdly, it is flowering in the spring this year. It's usually a summer and fall bloomer.

Left: Spiderwort, not sure which type, Brison Park.  Right: Texas Dandelion,  Pyrrhopappus pauciflorus, Country Club Lake.

Left: Texas Vervain, Verbena halei, George Bush Library.  Right: White Gaura? Not too sure about this one,  Gaura lindheimer, George Bush Library.  EDIT: From Monique: Gaura--this small and this early, it is probably G. brachycarpa. G. lindheimeri doesn't take off till later.

Left: Wild Onion,  Allium canadense, Country Club Lake.  Right: Wine Cup, Callirhoe digitata, Cox Cemetery.  EDIT: From Monique: Winecup--Callirhoe involucrate is by far the most common local species, but can't tell from the photo.

                 Unknowns!  I'm not sure what any of these are... so any ID help would be appreciated!

#1 Unknown. Cox Cemetery.  #2 Unknown. Cox Cemetery.  EDIT: From Monique: #1 is Hypoxis hirsuta, Yellow Star Grass.  #2 is Phacelia sp. Probably P. glabra, but would need to get my hands on the plant.

#3 Unknown.  George Bush Library.  #4 Unknown. Brison Park.  EDIT: From Monique: #3 is a Yellow composite in the front, a yellow Trifolium (clover) in the back.  #4 is Triodanis perfoliata--Venus' looking-glass

 #5 Unknown. Cox Cemetery.  #6 Unknown. My Backyard:  I thought this might be False Garlic/ Crow Poison but it really doesn't look like False Garlic in the resources I've used.   EDIT: From Monique: #5 is Yellow Wood Sorrel--Oxalis stricta.  #6 is one of our dwarf Blue Eyed Grass species, Sisyrinchium rosulatum. It comes in pink, lavender, yellow, and white.