The park is famous for moose (of which I saw at least one most every day), but I saw lots of our winter birds in their summer haunts. Lots of our migrant warblers breed in Algonquin at the southern edge of the northern coniferous forests. Some other birds live in deciduous hardwoods such as sugar maple forests that still are northern to us but are a southerly ecotype at Algonquin.

In many of the bogs and by rivers, too, I heard the whistled, repetitive song of White-throated Sparrows. Their song is commonly interpreted as “Old Sam Peabody, Peabody, Peabody” or “Oh sweet Canada, Canada, Canada.” I hear it once in a while here at home, so I recognized it quickly.

White-throated Sparrows come in tan and white morphs (males and females can be either color). I mostly saw the understated tan morphs. Apparently Algonquin is where several of the studies on these color morphs were conducted. I can see why, since they were so common.

Golden-crowned Kinglets also have a vocalization with which I am familiar, a very high “see see see.” I heard and saw them everywhere. They were often foraging lower in spruce trees, making them easy to see. Some years at home we have tons of them. Other years they are harder to find.

Yellow-rumped Warblers are common here at home in the winter. I don’t usually hear them sing, though, so I had to work to figure out which of the many singing warblers they were. I did finally see several and sometimes would just find a juvenile one foraging in a tree by a beaver pond.

I saw a few other familiar “faces,” too. Brown Creeper, one of our winter species, breeds in Algonquin, and I saw one with a mixed flock of young warblers and chickadees. I got a quick look at a Blue-headed Vireo in that flock, too. It only migrates through Wise County.

A few times I heard what I believe was a Winter Wren singing. They have a fast, bubbling song. I never could see the bird to confirm it. They are rare winter visitors here but are a breeding species in Algonquin.

Speaking of chickadees, in Ontario they have Black-capped Chickadees. They look very similar to our Carolina Chickadees but are a tiny bit bigger, have a bit more white on the edges of the wing feathers and have hoarser voices. The song also differs fewer whistled notes. Mostly I heard them calling. There were family groups of young chickadees and their parents everywhere.

Spruce bogs were at several places in the park. The first one I wasn’t expecting to see. It was at the end of an 11-kilometer (about six to seven miles) hike past many beaver ponds and through maple forest.

I suddenly came upon a lake with a spruce bog around the edge. There were these really weird, smooth, maroon-and-green flowers growing out of the bog. I noticed their leaves were an oddly bright lime green with ruby-red veins. As I continued along the trail, I found more of the flowers and finally got a better look at the leaves.

Many were folded together into a rounded shape. Pitcher plants! These are carnivorous plants that use the insects they trap to get nutrients like nitrogen that are not available from acidic bogs.

Once I realized what the pitcher plants were, I knew I should look for another carnivorous bog plant called a sundew. It is a smaller plant, with a modified round leaf that has sweet secretions to attract insects and sticky droplets to catch them. I quickly found several near the boardwalk. On a different boardwalk the next day, I saw even more sundews and a few more pitcher plants.

It was fun to see both new critters and habitats and our winter friends in their northern breeding haunts. I’ll think of the sparrows singing in the bogs and the kinglets making their familiar calls in the spruces when I see them again this winter.

Whether you are here at home waiting eagerly for winter, or at least cooler weather, or traveling, keep your eyes peeled for whatever surprises nature has for us.

The next monthly field trip on the Lyndon B. Johnson National Grasslands is Sept. 5. We will depart at 9 a.m. from the Forest Service District Office in Decatur. For information, contact Mary Curry (see below) or the Forest Service at (940) 627-5475.

Claire and Mary Curry are nature enthusiasts based in Greenwood. To contact them, email larksparrow@eeclaire.com.

Right now there are lots of butterflies in the sulphur family (Pieridae) out and about. These include the big, lemon-yellow Cloudless Sulphurs, the tiny, dark-smudged Dainty Sulphurs and the in-between-sized Little Yellow (yellow with black wing tips).

This is also a good time of year to look for dragonflies and damselflies. With a bit more rain this year than last year, there are more of them out. Sometimes it gets too hot even for these warmth-loving animals, though. Some dragonflies will perch in the shade, while others adopt a position called the obelisk. They stick their abdomens up in the air to reduce the surface area exposed to the sun.

The spring wildflowers are gone, and a few summer ones are struggling open now. Ironweed has tops of magenta-purple flowers that are favored by butterflies. Gayfeather is another purple flower that blooms all along its stalk. Bluebells only bloom at this time of year, too. They have big blue-purple flowers with yellow centers and green-gray foliage.

Lizard’s tail gaura is a tall, gangly plant with small pink and white flowers. I assume it gets its name from the tail-like shape of the flower stalk. There are lots of caterpillars on it right now. Some small ones that are either green or purplish-yellow with vertical stripes are the larvae of the Clouded Crimson moth (Schinia gaurae). The adults are small but beautiful, with pale sherbert-pink and cream colors.

There are also White-lined Sphinx moth (Hyles lineata) caterpillars on the gaura. These are hornworms, rather like the ones that eat everybody’s tomato plants, except that they specialize on different host plants.

With the heat, you are likely to see birds doing what they can to cool off. They often pant with their beaks open for evaporative cooling (since they don’t sweat). They also love a good bath, as you are likely to see if you have a sprinkler on your yard.

Providing water in a bird bath or garden pond is a good way to attract birds to your yard in the summer (when feeders aren’t as tempting with all the tasty grasshoppers and other insects to eat). We have everything from cardinals to Painted Buntings to cuckoos stop in our yard for a drink.

We recently put in a new garden pond in the woods. It’s got a happy little leopard frog that is sitting on a log there every time we visit. You can distinguish these from one of our other common frogs, the cricket frog, by the two thin white lines on the back (one on each side).

The pond was also colonized within days by numerous small water striders (and a few big ones). The very first resident was a water beetle. Although they live only in the water, they are strong fliers and can disperse to new aquatic habitats easily.

Another visitor to the new pond was a box turtle. It was swimming across the pond. As we approached it sank to the bottom (so apparently they can control their depth somewhat). We rescued it and set it on dry land and it walked off. We added another log so that any future thirsty box turtles can climb back out on their own.

If you find a box turtle, you identify individuals by the patterns on their shells. This turtle was one that we first spotted last fall. You can also distinguish male and female box turtles by the color of their eyes. Males have red eyes, and females have brown eyes.

Despite the heat, there are still plenty of fascinating finds in nature. Keep your eyes peeled, because you never know what you will find.

The next monthly field trips on the Lyndon B. Johnson National Grasslands will be Aug. 1 and Sept. 5. We will depart at 9 a.m. from the Forest Service District Office in Decatur. For more information, Mary Curry (see below) or the Forest Service District Office at (940) 627-5475.

Claire and Mary Curry are nature enthusiasts based in Greenwood. If you would like to contact them, email them at larksparrow@eeclaire.com.

Caterpillars are the young, or larval, forms of Lepidoptera (this is the order of insects that contains butterflies, skippers and moths). This group of insects has a “complete” or holometabolous life cycle. Here, the adult lays an egg, which hatches into a larval insect. The larval insect develops through several molts and eventually goes into a pupal stage. In a butterfly or moth, we call it a chrysalis or cocoon.

Inside the pupa, the insect undergoes metamorphosis into the adult form. That is how we get from the “worm-like” caterpillar to the flight of an adult butterfly! This also means that if you find a small butterfly of a species that is usually larger, it’s not a baby. It’s just a small adult. Perhaps the caterpillar didn’t eat as much food as some of its cousins.

The other form of insect metamorphosis is called “incomplete” or hemimetabolous. There, the insect just keeps molting until it reaches the adult, winged form (not all adults will have wings, but anything with fully developed wings is a mature adult). Insects with that type of metamorphosis include grasshoppers (you can see tiny grasshoppers with little stubs of wing pads), true bugs (this includes critters like stink bugs, squash bugs and cicadas) and dragonflies and damselflies (the young forms live underwater and crawl out into the air for the final molt into the flighted adults).

So we have all these caterpillars. What do they eat? It depends. Some are very picky and will only eat plants of one species (and most are going to eat plants). Hackberry trees seem a very popular host plant this year. They are covered with caterpillars ranging from the specialized Hackberry Emperor to a species like the Question Mark that eats several tree species (hackberries and elms mainly).

Other species will eat a wide range of foods, such as the Salt Marsh Caterpillar (Estigmene acrea). The Salt Marsh Caterpillar, a member of the tiger moth family (Arctiidae), is common here despite our distinct lack of salt marshes.

There are a few caterpillars with very unique diets: some moths in the Arctiidae (tiger moths) eat lichens. We’re still looking for those, although I’ve seen the black-and-yellow and black-and-red adults of several species of lichen moths. The young of the Harvester butterfly (found east of here) eat larval aphids. They are the only exclusively predatory caterpillar in North America (some other species will cannibalize their relatives).

Many caterpillars are “hairy” like the Salt Marsh Caterpillar. In the same group are the famous wooly bear caterpillars. On these, the hairs, which are called setae (plural) or seta (singular) in insects, are harmless. Other hairy caterpillars such as the “asp” (which develops into a moth in the family Megalopygidae, the flannel moths) have terrible stings hidden under their hairs. So, identify your fuzzy friend before touching it!

Other caterpillars have more amusing defenses that are incapable of harming humans. Some jump off their host plant as you approach. At first it seems like you are just disturbing the bushes or trees, but then you realize that many have a good grip and manage to cling even on our windy Texas days.

Swallowtail butterfly caterpillars (Papilionidae) have a unique organ near their heads called an osmeterium. They evert the osmeterium, releasing a foul-smelling chemical to frighten off potential predators. The accompanying photo shows this organ on a Black Swallowtail. It is the orange fork at the caterpillar’s head.

Several of the swallowtails also have large eyespots near the head in hopes of fooling predators into thinking they are small snakes. Other caterpillars will shake their heads violently from side to side when disturbed.

It’s a jungle out there for these cats, so they need all the defenses they can get. Hungry birds, from cuckoos to chickadees, have been having a field day this year feeding their young big caterpillars. I watched a titmouse earlier this spring eating a big hornworm (similar to the tomato hornworm but likely a different species; other members of the family Sphingidae feed on plants ranging from trees to vines to forbs).

The bird must have really needed energy after caring for the brood of five fledglings following her and the male around, begging constantly, as she spent a good five minutes thrashing the hornworm on a branch and pulling out bits of it to eat. Once it was down to the manageable size of about a half-an-inch long, she fed the remainder to the nearest fledgling.

There are now several great resources available for identifying caterpillars. A good starting place with a few species is the “Peterson First Guide to Caterpillars of North America” by Amy Bartlett Wright and Roger Tory Peterson. It has nice illustrations of both the caterpillars and of the adult Lepidoptera that it will become. It covers many common species.

A newer book with a lot more variety is David L. Wagner’s “Caterpillars of Eastern North America” (it is also the source of much of my information on caterpillar species and their host plants). He also has a new book out more detail on Owlet Moth Caterpillars of Eastern North America. The owlet moths (Noctuidae) are one of the more diverse families of moths, so it covers an additional range of caterpillars for identification.

Keep your eyes peeled this summer as you explore the fields and woods. You never know what amazing caterpillars you may find!

The next monthly field trips on the Lyndon B. Johnson National Grasslands will be July 11 (moved from the first Wednesday due to the Fourth of July holiday) and Aug. 1. We will depart at 9 a.m. from the Forest Service District Office in Decatur. For information, contact Mary Curry (see below) or the Forest Service District Office, (940) 627-5475.

Claire and Mary Curry are nature enthusiasts based in Greenwood. If you would like to contact them, email them at larksparrow@eeclaire.com.

I started from Oklahoma and drove south through a misty, rainy morning. It was supposed to get clear as I went south, and sure enough around Wichita Falls it stopped raining. Good thing, since that was my first planned stop. At Lucy Park in Wichita Falls, there were still several winter birds around such as Yellow-rumped Warbler and Ruby-crowned Kinglet. Cedar Waxwings are winter birds too but are more visible in the spring as they gather to nibble on budding leaves.

We also saw several resident birds, including Carolina Chickadees, Great-tailed Grackles, Blue Jays, Northern Mockingbirds, Carolina Wrens and American Robins. A Great Blue Heron flew over. The wind was chilly and the air was damp, but the sun started to peek out in the wet, green spring as we left. Just as we were about to leave we found a pair of titmice.

Next we drove out of Wichita Falls to Lake Arrowhead State Park. We arrived in late afternoon and set up our tents to the sound of Common Grackles singing in the trees. A few birds hopped around in the bushes around the campsite. We eventually saw that they were White-crowned Sparrows. Several doves flew out of the mesquites and hackberries around the campsite or were singing in the background. We identified both Mourning and White-winged Doves. Lots of meadowlarks were singing out in a field down by the lake. All of them were the bubbling song of Western Meadowlarks.

After setting up camp, we drove to a nature trail in the park. We didn’t see or hear that many birds. The highlights were a Ladder-backed Woodpecker, a Bewick’s Wren and cardinals. We also continued to hear Western Meadowlarks singing. There were lots of butterflies in the fresh green grass among the flowers (including toadflax, spring beauty and stork’s bill), though, in the newly sunny afternoon. Orange Sulphurs were the most common. We saw the spring-only Falcate Orangetip, too. It is in the same family as the sulphurs but are bright white. Males have orange-tipped wings. Females are all-white, similar to the more common Checkered Whites and Cabbage Whites that fly all summer. Other butterflies out were Variegated Fritillaries, Common Buckeyes and Dainty Sulphurs. We saw our first Monarch of the season, too.

In the late evening after sitting around the campfire, we heard two owls – Great Horned Owl and Eastern Screech-Owl. Otherwise it was quiet, and we rested for another day of looking at nature.

The next day we walked down to the lake. The Common Grackles were still a-singin’ and so were some Red-winged Blackbirds. We also heard cardinals, Bewick’s Wrens and saw a pair of House Finches. There is a prairie dog town near the lake and picnic area, and we saw several near their holes.

We drove over to Lake Arrowhead dam and walked up and down the road. Several Savannah Sparrows flew into the mesquite trees along the road. We saw a Red-tailed Hawk and multiple turkey vultures flying over. Out on the lake swam some American Coots, and Cliff Swallows flew over us. We heard another Ladder-backed Woodpecker and also a Greater Yellowlegs (a shorebird with a distinctive call of “tew-tew-tew.”) Back by the car we saw a flycatcher in a tree. It looked like an Eastern Phoebe, sort of, but something seemed off. We watched as it flew out for its fly-catching business and landed in a few different spots. We finally realized it was a Say’s Phoebe! This is a more western species that is rare in North Central Texas. It has a salmon-pink wash on the belly and a different call (“teeee-ew”) from our regular phoebe (whose song is “FREE-bee” and call is a high “cheep.”)

We drove west, stopping at one of the (many) forks of the Brazos River in the afternoon to see what we would hear or see. Mostly it was the usual suspects: an Eastern Phoebe, Bewick’s Wren, cardinals, House Sparrows and Cliff Swallows. A roadrunner called in the distance. We walked on the shoulder over the bridge and saw a Belted Kingfisher fly over. I heard a titmouse singing, and we finally saw them (again on the way back to the car.) It was a pair of Black-crested Titmice, with the male singing as he followed the foraging female around.

In late afternoon, the sun right on the horizon and blinding us, we arrived at Copper Breaks State Park outside Quanah. We heard wild turkeys gobbling as we set up camp. As it got dark, we were excited to see a tiny owl fly into a tree and then heard it sing – an Eastern Screech-Owl up close! Then we heard something even more exciting for us – Common Poorwill. There were at least two calling back and forth. This is a southwestern species that is related to our common Chuck-will’s-Widow. It has a plaintive two-note call of (no surprise): “poor will.”

On our last morning out we explored Copper Breaks. We heard a mystery bird singing along the road that sounded so familiar. We never did see it but thought it sounded sparrow-like. Eventually we listened to some tapes and realized it was a Spotted Towhee (which is really just a big, colorful sparrow.) No wonder it sounded familiar! We just don’t hear them sing very often. Usually we hear the distinctive, whining “greee?” calls of this common winter resident.

We walked down to the lake and saw a small raft of ducks that included Gadwalls and American Wigeons. We saw one lone Eared Grebe, too, and a pair of Bufflehead. There was a Greater Yellowlegs and a Killdeer along the shore, and we heard a Belted Kingfisher. From the lake, we hiked along one of the cliffs. The sandy and rocky break had layers of coppery blue-green in it. We didn’t see many birds there, but the one we saw was cool. A Rock Wren was singing from a cedar above the rocks! Once again, a titmouse was one of the last birds we saw. It was a Black-crested (the more southwestern of the two titmouse species) singing near the campground.

Whether you are exploring at home or on the road (or on the way back to the car), spring is a great season to find new birds and butterflies and other critters and plants. Keep your eyes peeled for the surprises nature has in store!

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The next monthly field trips on the Lyndon B. Johnson National Grasslands will be June 6 and July 11 (note the date; it is the second Wednesday due to the first Wednesday being Fourth of July). We will depart at 9 a.m. from the Forest Service District Office in Decatur. For more information, please contact Mary Curry (see below) or the Forest Service District Office, (940) 627-5475.

Claire and Mary Curry are nature enthusiasts based in Greenwood. If you would like to contact them, please email them at larksparrow@eeclaire.com.

Our first stop was near the visitor center. There was a mowed trail around a pond leading to a boardwalk. We saw several Boat-tailed Grackles almost immediately.

These are similar to our common Great-tailed Grackles, but they only occur along the Gulf and Atlantic coasts in marshy habitat, while Great-tailed Grackles occur inland north to Kansas.

On the Gulf coast, they can be separated by the Boat-tailed Grackle’s dark eyes (Great-taileds have yellow eyes). Confusingly, Atlantic coast Boat-tailed Grackles have yellow eyes, but Great-taileds are unlikely in that part of their range.

Their song is also different from our grackles, but the males still puff up to impress the females just like our grackles do. We ended up seeing quite a few of these along the marshy ditches.

Since a lot of the refuge is marshes and ponds, we also saw many other water birds. Red-winged Blackbirds are related to grackles, and also like marshy habitats; they were everywhere. We walked back toward the visitor center along a levee and saw several groups of ducks on the water. Some flew and others were landing.

Most of the ducks were Gadwalls and Northern Shovelers, two species that are common here in Wise County as well. A few were dark-bodied and pale-headed. We didn’t get a good look, but suspected them to be Mottled Ducks.

Both the male and female of this species look very similar to female Mallards. Mottled Ducks live mainly on the Gulf Coast and in Florida, although according to the Texas Ornithological Society’s Handbook of Texas Birds, they now occur uncommonly in northeastern Texas up into Oklahoma and Kansas.

We also started to see a lot of wading birds. Snowy Egrets, Great Egrets and even a few bright pink Roseate Spoonbills flew over. As we drove to another area by the boat ramp, we saw more egrets, some Barn Swallows flying and a Loggerhead Shrike perched on a power line.

Around lunch time we drove to Frozen Point. Along the way many cormorants were sitting on branches in the water. There were more ducks, including now some Blue-winged Teal and much better views of the Mottled Ducks.

A Reddish Egret was foraging farther out in the marsh. This is another coastal specialty. It is known for its active feeding behavior that looks almost like dancing, and sure enough, that’s what our egret was doing.

As we progressed along the roads we found more and more mosquitoes, but fortunately not many were biting. At one stop, with clouds of mosquitoes floating around us, we found several shorebirds.

The most striking were the Black-necked Stilts. These are stylish, leggy sandpipers that have an extremely thin, pointed beak, black-and-white patterned plumage and long, thin legs that are bright pink.

Near the stilts we saw several yellowlegs. A few were Greater Yellowlegs, which have long yellow (surprise.) legs, a long gray beak and streaky gray-brown plumage. The others were Lesser Yellowlegs, which as their name suggests are smaller than the Greaters. Their beaks are also proportionally shorter; you can identify them that way when no Greater Yellowlegs are cooperating for a size comparison.

At Frozen Point we were along the bay. Where we continued to see egrets, ducks and shorebirds (including the ever-present Killdeer), but started to find a few different species.

Willets are a chunky, large sandpiper. Several were on the ground near the edge of the bay, but a few others were hanging out on wooden fence posts. They stared at us watchfully, and some took off crying “will-will-et.” (their name comes from this loud call). They also had contrasting wing patterns of pale and dark.

A few Laughing Gulls were also lounging on the fence posts; others flew overhead calling. They, too, are named their call, which is indeed a loud laughing sound.

We finished off the day at the Skillern Tract of Anahuac. Lots of ducks, including Green-winged Teal and more Mottled Ducks, and more wading birds populated the flooded fields here.

Both White Ibis and dark ibis (either Glossy or White-faced, but they are very hard to identify, especially from a distance) were foraging in the fields.

At one point we stopped for another new duck: a whole flock of Fulvous Whistling-Ducks. They are a tawny brown color with matte-black beaks and long necks.

At the end of the road we walked a short trail out into the marsh. Out over the marsh we saw a bunch of Roseate Spoonbills roosting in dead trees and flying out to the marsh to forage.

Several Tree Swallows, migrating north, flew over. In the clumps of cattails we started to count Black-crowned Night-Herons and ended up finding at least 40.

From the parking lot, we prepared to head home. We heard a strange, hollow laughing call and walked back down the trail to find it. What on earth could this mysterious sound be? We scanned the cattail clumps. There was a coot; over that way a Pied-billed Grebe. Neither seemed a good candidate from our field guides.

There were a few Common Moorhens, which are related to coots and quite similar but for their red-and-yellow beaks and yellow legs, puttering around in the cattails too. Eventually we heard the call right from where a moorhen had just landed and that sealed the deal.

Our mystery call identified, it was time to find dinner and head home.

Keep your eyes (and ears) peeled wherever you find yourself this spring. You never know what marvelous surprises you will find.

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The next monthly field trips on the Lyndon B. Johnson National Grasslands will be May 2 and June 6. We will depart at 9 a.m. from the Forest Service District Office in Decatur. For more information, contact Mary Curry (see below) or the Forest Service, (940) 627-5475.

Claire and Mary Curry are nature enthusiasts based in Greenwood. If you would like to contact them, email them at larksparrow@eeclaire.com.

Snowy Owls are big white owls that normally live in the high Arctic, cruising south to the northern United States and southern Canada at most in regular years. There have been several owls seen in Oklahoma this year, and even one in Texas at Lake Ray Hubbard. Those that have moved so far south are thought to be stressed and low on food, so they are often out during the day looking for food instead of hunting only at night as they normally do. Adult male Snowy Owls are almost pure white, while immatures (both male and female) and females have more dark blackish-brown bars all over their wings, back and belly.

Snowy Owls are not the only birds to make these irregular movements. Other species are also driven by fluctuations in food availability. Finches are particularly known for this. Even one of our common species, the Pine Siskin, has these movements (called “irruptions”). Some years you’ll see Pine Siskins are almost as abundant as goldfinches and other years there are few (I haven’t seen but one or two this year, for example).

Purple Finches also come and go. Some years we see flocks of the streaky brown females and the raspberry-purple males; other years there are none at all. They are often confused with our common and regular House Finches, which are a different shade of red in the males. Female House finches lack the white stripes of female Purple Finches on the face. Purple Finches have been declining in recent years.

Red Crossbills, another seed-eating wanderer, are rare here. We’ve seen them just a few times over the past decade, although in several cases the sighting was of a flock. Many forms of crossbills exist, each with a different-sized bill to eat different sizes of conifer seeds. Crossbills, as their name implies, have the tips of the bill crossed over to aid in opening conifers’ cones. They are so dependent on cone crops that they can nest at almost any time of year when they find a good food supply.

Common Redpolls and their pale northern cousin, the Hoary Redpoll (so named for its paler coloring), also wander. Wise County had the eight-state record in 2007. These tiny birds are streaked like a Pine Siskin but on a background of whitish gray with a strawberry pink wash over the face, a little black cap on the front of the head (like a male goldfinch) and a yellow beak. Hoary Redpolls have never been seen in Texas.

Evening Grosbeaks, large black-and-yellow seed-eaters, are also known for its irregular movements but usually do not occur this far south. Before the late 1800s, they were rare in the eastern United States but are thought to have spread their breeding range east with planting of certain trees that they like, such as box elder. They also like to eat seeds from ash, maple and locust according to “Lives of North American Birds” by Kenn Kaufman.

Other songbirds will irrupt, too. Red-breasted Nuthatches are particularly known for this. We had one Red-breasted Nuthatch at a feeder in our woods, and it stayed much of the winter. Other birders in the north-central Texas area saw more individuals that same winter.

Mountain Bluebirds are irruptive but tend to go eastward. They breed over much of the western United States and winter south into Mexico and east into western Texas and Oklahoma. I first saw them several years ago in their breeding range in Wyoming, but the most I have seen since then were flocks of 50 to 100 in southwestern Oklahoma, feeding on juniper berries in a wildlife management area just east of the Texas Panhandle.

The Cornell Laboratory of Ornithology has a website talking about some of these irruptive species: http://www.birds.cornell.edu/AllAboutBirds/studying/migration/irruption. You’ll notice a trend that with both the seed-eaters and other birds, such as the owls, that food availability is the key to their movements. They all depend on food supplies that are irregular. Other migrants, such as warblers and buntings in the summer, are making a precisely timed trek toward resources that are generally dependable within certain limits (although of course there are sometimes bad years). You can view maps of all these species on www.ebird.org. There you can also report your sightings and contribute to our knowledge of the distribution and movements of these bird species.

Keep your eyes peeled at your bird feeders and beyond for winter irruptive species. You never know what you will see. Whether your sightings are common or rare, nature never ceases to surprise!

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The next monthly field trips on the Lyndon B. Johnson National Grasslands will be Wednesday, April 4 and Wednesday, May 2. We will depart at 9 a.m. from the Forest Service District Office in Decatur. For more information, contact Mary Curry or the Forest Service District Office at (940) 627-5475.

So we didn’t really start to see more birds until we got to a more brushy area.

There Mom spotted a mockingbird on top of a live oak. Down in the cedars and brush below, several juncos were flying away as we got closer. Then there was a bigger bird – I got a quick glimpse of a towhee. I assume it was a Spotted Towhee, our common species, but it didn’t call and I didn’t see it well enough to be sure.

The other option is the Eastern Towhee, a very similar species that lacks white spotting on its back. The two were formerly considered a single species and sometimes interbreed.

Down across a ravine we heard a Red-bellied Woodpecker. We kept walking downhill along the main ravine to our left until we got to an area with a new ravine starting on our right. Here I heard a Hairy Woodpecker’s high “peek!” call in the distance. A chickadee called.

Mom spotted a Black Vulture as we followed an old fence line through the woods back up the hill. A cardinal called. Usually there are lots of cardinals out, but this seemed to be a quiet morning for them.

I heard thin, wavering “seep” notes which were likely to be White-throated Sparrows, but never saw them. Many songbirds give these “seep” notes.

A few species you can tell apart with practice because of little differences. The White-throated Sparrows waver in their drawn-out “seep” notes. Golden-crowned Kinglets repeat “see-see-see.” The related chickadees and titmice are also distinctive with “sip” notes from other species, but I can’t distinguish the “sip” notes between the two species.

As we walked up into the woods, we found a burned-out tree trunk with a hole in it so that you could look into the trunk and see the world on the other side. We kept going and noticed the many small green plants growing on the ground. Our local ecosystem is adapted to fire, and the plants do recover.

Here the only odd thing that happened was that very little rain had fallen during the growing season after the fire, so the Little Bluestem on the hillside and open areas hadn’t grown back to its usual height.

As we looped back up the slope we came to the edge of the ravine that had previously been on our left. We followed a game trail down into the ravine. Before we went in, we saw two hawks, a male Northern Harrier flying low in the open areas and an American Kestrel flying over.

This ravine always has water in it from numerous seeps in the ravine’s sandstone walls and floor. Despite the chilly day, with the sunshine it was warm enough for a dragonfly to be flying. I didn’t see it well enough to determine what kind it was, but I would guess it was a Variegated Meadowhawk. That brown, red, yellow, and white-patterned species is the one I usually see on warm winter days.

The shelter of the ravine from the wind made it warm enough for a few butterflies to be out, too. We saw three Common Buckeyes chasing each other and two Dainy Sulphurs, which are fun because they tip their wings to the sunlight. They flitter and flutter around, land and then suddenly TIP! at a slight angle to put their wings at a broadside to the sun for more warmth.

A year or two ago, the tiny seep-fed creek meandered around the broad floor of the ravine. Now we found that in the wooded area, the creek was now sunk down about a foot. We’ve had a few heavy rains now, so it may have washed out. Parts may have also just sunk, because we saw a section that looked like it was a narrow tunnel (about a foot wide and five or six feet long) that we hadn’t noticed on our previous visits.

Other parts of the ravine had definitely changed with erosion since our previous visit. For example, one section of the floor had been broadened with washed in materials.

We finally climbed up out of the canyon to head back to the car. As we left, near the top edge of the ravine were more seeps. The moisture from one seep made the layers of orange, yellow, white, gray and lavender in the sand really stand out.

Keep your eyes peeled as you explore our winter landscape. From birds to butterflies to interesting geology, you never know what you will find!

The next monthly field trips on the Lyndon B. Johnson National Grasslands will be Feb. 1 and March 7. We will depart at 9 a.m. from the Forest Service District Office in Decatur. For more information, contact Mary Curry or the forest service at (940) 627-5475.

These are birds that are rare because of the season. They nest and winter in different places, so their appearance out-of-season is an anomaly. It would be very unusual to see an American Goldfinch here in July, while in Oklahoma they sometimes nest so it wouldn’t be so noteworthy. Likewise, orioles are common migrants, but an Orchard Oriole in November here would be extremely unusual.

Other birds are rare because of geography. Pileated Woodpeckers are unusual in our region because they are at the edge of their range, but there are a few sites (like Rucker’s Pond and Black Creek Lake in the national grasslands) where they are regular because there is appropriate habitat there. Other birds aren’t even on the edge of their range here and therefore, are more rare.

The difference, then, between the sparrow and the hawk is a bit of both geography and season. Both species winter somewhere else, but the Swainson’s Hawks winter in the South American pampas. The sparrow merely winters farther south in Texas. In fact, some locations in central Texas have them year-round. So to find a Grasshopper Sparrow here in the winter seems like it would be much less of a stretch than finding a Swainson’s Hawk. Not surprisingly, Swainson’s Hawk is rare in winter even in South Texas, while we often see one or two Grasshopper Sparrows every winter.

This difference in degree of rarity is also due to the fact that some birds wander more than others. Red Crossbills show up every few years despite living in the mountain west and north eating pinecones because they wander with the highly variable pinecone crop. Because they are already prone to wander, we get more of them than, say, Cactus Wrens, which are residents in the desert southwest.

Finally, there are rare birds that are rare in the world at large but may be common locally. This would be a species such as the Texas endemic Golden-cheeked Warbler. Within appropriate habitat in the Hill Country, it can seem quite abundant, but that is the only place in the world that they nest. Birds like this are often threatened or endangered because their habitats are so localized and may also coincide with conflicting human usages.

Why do birds occur in these patterns? Where birds regularly occur is partially due to their preferences in food and habitat. For birds that have specific requirements and adaptations to those habitats or for gathering those foods, they must live where a particular resource is found. Woodpeckers live where there are trees in which to excavate nests and search for wood-dwelling insects. Ospreys live by water where they can catch fish.

For nesting, the Golden-cheeked Warbler requires strips of bark from mature Ashe Juniper trees and so only lives where Ashe Junipers of appropriate age are growing (hey, some critters are pickier than others, and they can’t just change on a dime!).

Even if the habitat is appropriate for a particular species, it may not occur there. This tends to be evident at large scales, like the differences in species found on different continents and islands. For example, House Sparrows are obviously doing quite well in urban and suburban North America, but they had to be brought here by humans to get their start.

Hawaii is full of introduced species that are thriving but that would have never found their way to the remote islands without human intervention. Hummingbirds only occur in North and South America despite loads of probably fantastic habitat across the tropics in the rest of the world! These differences between where a bird could occur and where it actually does occur are due to accidents of history – where the birds’ relatives originated and how good those birds are at dispersing across uninhabitable regions (like an ocean or even just inhospitable habitat).

So, while as the saying goes that birds have wings and anything is possible, some possibilities are more likely than others. It doesn’t depend just on the fact that all birds have wings. Some are more likely to use them, some are more proficient at using them when they do and some just live so far away that they won’t get here unless humans tote them around.

The study of where birds live (and all critters and plants, really) is fascinating because it combines their biology and their history. Plus, it does narrow the choices a bit when you are trying to identify that unknown bird in your yard or on your pond. Common birds are common and rare birds are rare but all for different reasons. Keep your eyes peeled for all our delightful birds of all abundances!

The next monthly field trip on the Lyndon B. Johnson National Grasslands will be Wednesday, Jan. 4. We will depart at 9 a.m. from the Forest Service District Office in Decatur. For more information, contact Mary Curry (see below) or the Forest Service District Office at (940) 627-5475.

Claire and Mary Curry are nature enthusiasts based in Greenwood. If you would like to contact them, please email them at larksparrow@eeclaire.com.

First, a bird bath is welcome in both summer and winter. Thawing it out when it ices by pouring hot water in the bath will allow birds to get a drink when everything else is frozen. Running water in the form of a garden pond waterfall will also allow birds to drink when puddles are frozen.

Putting out food is another easy thing to do. The bird seed aisle even in the grocery store can be a bit overwhelming, though – mixes for finches, mixes with fruit bits, mixes with corn, mixes with sunflower seeds giant and small. What to pick? The best seed for your money, that all the birds like, is black-oil sunflower seed.

Why black-oil sunflower seed? Giant sunflower seeds (the big striped ones that look like the kind sold as human snacks) are too big for the smaller native sparrows and goldfinches, although cardinals will eat them. Millet and milo will feed mainly House Sparrows and doves. But those birds will eat sunflower seeds, too, making the super-cheap millet and milo more of a filler than anything else unless you regularly have bobwhites coming to your yard.

There are tons of options for suet, too. Suet is fat in various forms. The suet cakes sold in stores have additives to keep them from dripping everywhere. You can also ask for pellets of suet from the butcher counter. Not as many birds eat that here. When we fed these, we got lots of crows coming to take the pellets from the ground and from the mesh cage where we hung it. They were very entertaining as they tried to hover and grab as many chunks as possible.

Depending on the weather, though, woodpeckers and other birds would also take a bite. Up north, people get nuthatches and ravens making off with the suet. Suet sounds terrible to eat, but wild birds need all the energy they can get, especially as the weather gets colder. For tiny birds and during harsh conditions, energy to keep warm through the night can be critical.

You can make your own suet mix with lard, peanut butter and corn meal. I start with equal amounts of each and mix until the consistency is not so grainy with cornmeal that it falls apart, but also not so much peanut butter and lard that it is hard to handle.

I then stuff this mixture into a log with holes drilled into it. You can also smear it onto a pine cone or rough bark, or put a chunk of it in a mesh cage. I’ve had everything from woodpeckers to sparrows to meadowlarks to cardinals to warblers to goldfinches eat this. You can add hulled sunflowers (sunflower hearts), already-shelled nuts and raisins, too.

Peanuts are another good bird food. Jays will fly off with peanuts in the shell (squirrels like them, too). Shelled peanuts in a mesh feeder will get all sorts of birds picking off bits – chickadees and titmice, sparrows and goldfinches, and even wrens. They are a bit more pricey than black-oil sunflower seeds but won’t leave behind piles of sunflower shells either.

Finally, the best thing you can do for the birds in your yard is make sure the habitat is welcoming. Grackles may like a broad expanse of lawn (and I am a fan of grackles, unpopular as they are), but typical yard birds like cardinals and finches prefer to have at least some cover.

Leave seed heads on the flowers in your garden if you can – sparrows and finches will eat them over the winter. If you live out in the country, your yard birds will tend toward meadowlarks and Savannah Sparrows with an open yard, but even they will appreciate tall native bunch grasses such as Little Bluestem (in place of bushes) for cover.

As you watch your yard birds this fall and winter, keep your eyes peeled on the feeders and in the bushes for your favorite birds. You never know what you may see!

The next monthly field trips on the Lyndon B. Johnson National Grasslands will be Nov. 2 and Dec. 7. We will depart at 9 a.m. from the Forest Service District Office in Decatur. For more information, contact Mary Curry (see below) or the Forest Service District Office, (940) 627-5475.

With the dry summer there are not a lot of dragonflies around this year, but some of the regulars are hanging on. Twelve-spotted Skimmers are big, showy dragonflies that spend a lot of time patrolling over water. They have alternating black and frosty white spots on their wings. Some saddlebags (Red and Black) are out, too. Black Saddlebags have a black patch on the hind wing near the body, while the patch is dark red or brown on Red Saddlebags. The most abundant species I have seen is the Variegated Meadowhawk, a variable species whose coloration mixes reds, browns and yellows with white spots and stripes.

A few struggling fall flowers are blooming. Goldenrod should be covering the fields this time of year, but I’m enjoying the few we have. They are great attractors of butterflies, bees and beetles. Goldenrod has a reputation as an allergy-causing plant, but this is undeserved as their pollen is not airborne. However, they bloom at the same time as the less-showy ragweed.

Eryngo is another flower blooming right now. It looks like a prickly, purple pineapple. Gayfeathers, long, purple stalks that Monarchs and other butterflies love, should bloom soon but seems a bit late this year. False gaura is another fall bloomer that has tall, spindly branching stalks decorated with lovely white and pink flowers. Greeneyes, a yellowish flower with a green center (the “greeneyes”), has been eking by with a few flowers all summer and still continues. Several species of asters, tiny daisy-like flowers, are coming out now as well.

Monarch butterflies are on the move; I see a few each day now. Their favorite flowers include goldenrod and gayfeather. Likely because of the drought, it has overall been a poor year for butterflies. I’ve just seen a few sulphurs (a family of mostly yellow and white butterflies), even though Dainty Sulphurs and the big lemon-yellow Cloudless Sulphurs are typically among our most common species. Likewise for the Common Wood-Nymph (a big floppy brown species), there’s only been a few out when they are normally bouncing everywhere in wooded areas.

Hummingbirds are still around right now. This is the time of year to watch for rare wanderers such as Rufous Hummingbirds. We haven’t seen any this year, but it can happen. In the past, we’ve seen them right after cold fronts from late July to September. Some even winter on the Gulf Coast.

If you cruise by fields with short grass, you might find a flock of Swainson’s Hawks on the ground. These hawks are rare in the summer in Wise County, although as you go farther west and north they breed in open prairies. However, they are quite common in big flocks during spring and fall migration. They are heading south for the pampas of South America. You will often see them sitting in plowed fields or in areas of short grass, searching for grasshoppers to eat.

If you have the time to check the lakes and ponds, there are still shorebirds passing through. I’ve seen small flocks of Least Sandpipers hanging out with the resident Killdeer. American White Pelicans migrate through here in the spring and fall. Pelicans fly over in big loose flocks, rather like Sandhill Cranes, but they will also glide and soar. Look for their black wingtips and white bodies. Usually you can also see their big yellowish beaks instead of the long necks of Sandhill Cranes (which are gray anyway) or Snow Geese (which can be white with black wingtips, but do not soar).

Many birds molt this time of year. Molting is necessary for birds to replace worn feathers with new ones that will appropriately insulate the bird from heat and cold and rain and snow, but they sure do look pathetic sometimes. Cardinals will often lose all their head feathers at once, exposing dark skin. Grackles turn from “great-tailed” to “no-tailed.”

Whether you spot a flock of migrating pelicans or a resident cardinal going bald, keep your eyes peeled for the signs of the changing seasons. You never know what fascinating sights you will see!

The next monthly field trip on the Lyndon B. Johnson National Grasslands will be Nov. 2. We will depart at 9 a.m. sharp from the Forest Service District Office in Decatur. For more information, please contact Mary Curry (see below) or the Forest Service District Office at (940) 627-5475.

Claire and Mary Curry are nature enthusiasts based in Greenwood. If you would like to contact them, please email larksparrow@eeclaire.com.

I’m going to go over shorebirds, which are usually our earliest southbound birds. The drought has exposed the shorelines of lakes and ponds throughout the area. Open mudflats are great habitat for migrating shorebirds that like to feed in this habitat. It is often hard to see the tiny sandpipers far out on heat-distorted mudflats, but it’s worth a try.

Some bigger species are easily identifiable. American Avocets are big, distinctive sandpipers with a rusty orange, black and white body. The long neck and head are the same pale rust color as on the body. Their long, thin beaks are bent upward!

Another skinny shorebird is the Black-necked Stilt. It is black-and-white patterned with a thin beak, but unlike the avocet, the stilt’s beak is straight. They also have very long pink or red legs, hence the name stilt.

Dowitchers and Wilson’s Snipe (shown in older books as the Common Snipe) are somewhat smaller than stilts and avocets but have more typical patterning of streaks and brown coloration. There are two species of dowitcher, called Long-billed and Short-billed, but they are extremely similar despite the implied difference in their names. All three species have very long, straight bills, which they insert into the mud to search for food. Dowitchers often forage in a sewing-machine-like fashion, while snipe forage more deliberately.

Dowitchers in breeding plumage have rich, reddish-brown colors on their plumage. In winter plumage, they are a duller gray-brown with a pale “eyebrow.” Snipe (which are real, by the way, just very hard to see) have a boldly striped back and a striped, elongated face leading into the long beak. They also have a rufous tail that is most easily visible in flight. Snipe also spend the winter here.

Another brown- and gray-streaked shorebird is the Greater Yellowlegs. Like the snipe, we can see them here both in migration and winter. It has long, yellow legs and a beak that is shorter than the dowitchers’ or snipe’s beak, but still longer than its head. It has a loud, ringing call of “klee klee klee,” often given when flushed from the shore. The Lesser Yellowlegs is similar in plumage but it is slightly smaller and has a proportionately shorter bill that is only a little longer than its head. Its call is also quieter and usually is one or two notes instead of three or more.

The Pectoral Sandpiper is somewhat like a yellowlegs in its brownish streaked plumage and yellow legs, but it is stockier and smaller than either species. Its breast streaking ends sharply at the edge of its white belly, instead of grading into it as in the yellowlegs. I have seen these in flooded grassy ponds and fields, so checking along weedy areas in mudflats might be your best bet of seeing them.

Finally, we get to the smallest of our sandpipers – the “peeps.” Our common peeps are White-rumped Sandpiper, Baird’s Sandpiper, Western Sandpiper, Semipalmated Sandpiper and Least Sandpiper. All occur during migration and the Least Sandpiper is also common during the winter. It is distinguishable from the other peeps by its yellow legs. Sometimes they get a bit muddy, but the color is there. The other species are distinguishable by various features of wing length, streaking pattern on the back and beak shape.

Be careful in this heat as you look for our fall migrant shorebirds. Keep your eyes peeled at the lakes and ponds for these charming, yet camouflaged birds, as they blend into the mudflats. You never know what you will find!

The next monthly field trip on the Lyndon B. Johnson National Grasslands is Wednesday, Oct. 5. We will depart at 9 a.m. from the Forest Service District Office in Decatur. For more information, contact Mary Curry (see below) or the Forest Service District Office, (940) 627-5475.

Let’s start with birds. My favorite field guide is the “Sibley Guide to Birds” by David Sibley. It also comes in eastern and western smaller editions. If you have a smartphone, you can get versions of it that have the benefit of providing bird songs and calls as a reference, too.

The Sibley guide uses paintings. If you prefer photographs, the “Kaufman Field Guide to Birds of North America” is a great guide. It also has the benefit of showing multiple views of some species. You’ll often find a bird in odd lighting or at different angles, so more than one picture is very useful.

“The Sibley Guide to Trees” has the same quality artwork as his bird guide.

What about flowers? It’s so dry, there’s only a few to work on, but hopefully next year we’ll get more rain. “Wildflowers of the Texas Hill Country,” by Marshall Enquist, is about many of our common flowers despite covering a different region.

“Wildflowers of Texas” by Geyata Ajilvsgi has both great photos and fascinating information on what the various plants have been used for by humans.

If you find a caterpillar on one of your plants, what is it?

“Caterpillars of Eastern North America” by David L. Wagner will help you find out with photos and lists of hostplants. Another good book is the “Peterson First Guide to Caterpillars” by Amy Bartlett Wright.

For the adults, “Butterflies of North America” by Jim P. Brock and Kenn Kaufman and “A Field Guide to Moths of Eastern North America” by Charles V. Covell Jr. cover all the North American butterflies and many common moths.

A new, and rather pricey, guide is Powell and Opler’s “Moths of Western North America.” It’s beautiful and includes many “micromoths” that are beautiful, tiny, hard to identify and rarely included in other books.

You can find many fascinating moths to identify by checking around your porch light or outside your lit windows in the evening, or just by not dismissing the non-butterflies on your walks outside in the day as they flush from the grass.

How about some fun reading material?

“The Nesting Season” by Bernd Heinrich is a recent book about the nests, eggs and breeding behavior of many birds, from geese to songbirds.

If you want to pretend you’re in a snowy north land, his “Winter World” from a few years back is also a great read. It discusses how birds, mammals, and insects can survive extreme temperatures with adaptations such as insulating fur and feathers, warm nests and dens, and physiology suited to the cold.

“The Singing Life of Birds” by Donald Kroodsma is another delightful read. It talks about why different populations of the same birds sing different songs (have you ever noticed the “accent” that cardinals have the farther you get from home?), how some birds learn their songs while others can sing perfect songs even if they’ve never heard another member of their species, and “extreme songs,” from extremely complex to extremely simple.

It even includes a CD that allows you to easily listen to several of the species discussed in the book.

While some birds are still singing and nesting, others are beginning to migrate south from regions farther north. I heard an Upland Sandpiper, one of our regular spring and fall migrants, just recently.

“How Birds Migrate” by Paul Kerlinger talks about both why and how birds head south. It covers everything from flight mechanics to geographical patterns. Other topics include where they stop to fuel up with food, how high and fast they fly and whether they fly by day or night. (It varies among different birds, but the variety is astounding.)

Kerlinger covers examples with particular species, too, including many that we have here in Wise County and talks about how scientists have discovered what we know about bird migration.

“Living on the Wind” by Scott Weidensaul is another great book on migration that covers many of the subjects in a more personal way, with the author describing the people and places he visits as he researches the book.

Whether you’re inside reading or outside finding critters to look up in the field guides, it’s a great time of year to learn more about our natural world. Keep your eyes peeled and your mind open. You never know what wonders you’ll learn about!

The next monthly field trips on the Lyndon B. Johnson National Grasslands will be Aug. 3 and Sept. 7. We will depart at 9 a.m. from the Forest Service district office in Decatur. Call Mary Curry (see below) or the Forest Service at (940) 627-5475.

Rat snakes are one of the most common snakes that we see in Wise County. There are actually two species of rat snakes, the Texas Rat Snake (Elaphe obsoleta lindheimerii) and the Great Plains Rat Snake (Elaphe guttata emoryi). As their name implies, rat snakes are great predators on rodents. They are constrictors, so they kill their prey by suffocating them with their muscular coils and then swallow them whole. Rat snakes are very common predators of bird nests as well.

Many of these snakes try to scare off humans, who they consider potential predators, by coiling and shaking their tails in dry grass. It makes a noise like a rattlesnake. Even the tiny snakes will sometimes try these ploys.

We recently saw a tiny Texas Brown Snake (Storeria dekayi texana). Despite barely hitting 8 inches in length (and being non-venomous to boot), the fearsome little beast made an S shape with its body and struck at our hiking boots. Then it froze and tried to blend in with the dirt. It was so still that a tiny young grasshopper sat on its head.

After we had taken its picture and were distracted by Summer Tanagers and other birds in the trees, it slithered away oh so slowly. Its movement was barely perceptible until it arrived at the edge of the grass, at which point it darted to safety from our cameras.

Water snakes, such as the Yellow-bellied Water Snake (Nerodia erythrogaster flavigaster), often do a great cottonmouth (Agkistrodon piscivorus) imitation. Several massive water snakes lived in our yard several summers ago. In the dim morning light, one coiled and puffed when cornered and was quite irritated to be swept with a broom out of the garage.

Although the water snakes will bite if handled (and are said to have a “lacerating bite”), they are non-venomous. They do not have the vertically slit pupils of a cottonmouth. Although I have never seen a cottonmouth, the cottonmouth is said to swim with its body floating near the top of the water even when stopped, while water snakes’ bodies fall below the water’s surface when they pause.

The water snakes in our yard did so well that we saw several baby water snakes, which had colorful rufous and black patches on their backs. They will eat frogs, other amphibians and small fish. Young will also eat aquatic invertebrates.

Ribbon Snakes (Thamnophis proximus) are very similar to the striped Texas Garter Snakes (Thamnophis sirtalis annectans). Both of these species like to hunt for frogs, small toads, minnows and earthworms along the water’s edge. They can also swim, as can other snakes (even rat snakes will swim).

Heading up to dry ground, racers and coachwhips are very agile, fast snakes that will climb trees to eat bird eggs or race across open ground in pursuit of a lizard snack. I recently saw one zipping after a lizard. Happily for the lizard and unhappily for the snake, the lizard won that race. They will eat almost any small vertebrates (even other snakes), though, so hopefully the snake found something else to eat. They are often out in the heat of the day.

A good reference for our local snakes is “A Field Guide to Texas Snakes” (second edition) by Alan Tennant. I also like to visit local herpetology websites to learn about the distributions of our snakes and lizards, particularly “Amphibians and Reptiles of the Dallas and Fort Worth Metroplex” by Terry Hibbitts, http://www.kingsnake.com/dfw/. This website also covers frogs and toads. The Noble Foundation has a useful website for identifying venomous snakes: http://www.noble.org/ag/wildlife/snakes/index.html.

Keep your eyes peeled for our reptilian friends! They all have valuable places in our ecosystem, eating and being eaten. Watch where you step and enjoy watching them when you see them! You never know what fascinating snakes you may see.

The next monthly field trips on the Lyndon B. Johnson National Grasslands will be July 6 and Aug. 3. We will depart at 9 a.m. from the Forest Service District Office in Decatur. For more information, contact Mary Curry (see below) or the Forest Service District Office at (940) 627-5475.

Claire and Mary Curry are nature enthusiasts based in Greenwood. If you would like to contact them, email them at larksparrow@eeclaire.com.

After a dinner of canned chicken noodle soup, I heard the soft “sip” call of a Black-crested Titmouse behind my picnic table. I’m studying titmice, and so have banded several birds in this park (Abilene State Park) including one near my campsite. I rummaged in the car to find my binoculars (discarded for dinner because I am a lazy bird-”watcher” who usually just bird-”listens” when possible).

I found the titmouse in a small live oak in the dense woods near the picnic table and was thrilled to see it was my banded bird (most of the others are a half a mile away). It was my bird! I saw orange and black plastic bands on one leg and the aluminum Fish and Wildlife Service band on the other. I’ve put the color bands in unique combinations on the titmice’s legs so I know who’s who and know for certain when I’m observing the same bird.

I followed Orange-Black for almost a half hour. Who knew a bird, with its tiny but powerful wings, could move so slowly? The little bird hopped, and hopped, and occasionally gave calm “sip” call notes. I wondered if it’s talking to itself or another silent bird nearby. Once a distant titmouse made a scolding call and Orange-Black responded with a few short scolds of “rrank rrank.”

Other birds sometimes pulled my attention from the slowly moving titmouse. Dots in the hazy blue sky suddenly focused into a whirling flock of Mississippi Kites. A Turkey Vulture zipped by on invisible air currents. A bizarre crow-like coughing sound turned out to be a raven (they occur regularly in the southwest part of Texas, unlike at home) cruising over the forest.

Suddenly I realized that I need to keep track of where my marked bird is going, so I head back to the car to grab my GPS. I figured that since it’s moving so slowly and keeps talking once in a while, I can find it again if I want to. Sure enough I went back through gaps in the underbrush and I found Orange-Black again after a brief wait. The air was still and cool (and now as I write this the mosquitoes have come out!), so I saw the little hops of the titmouse foraging.

Hop, hop, hop. Then it hung upside down from a branch, and smacked its beak several times after eating some tidbit. It peered up and down and sideways, cocked its head, and inspected all surfaces of the branches and leaves it was hopping over. “Pi-tuck-tuck-tuck.” That call was a Summer Tanager in the background. Other birds grabbed my attention again. Cardinals sang in the distance. At one point I was staring at the titmouse and jumped when two cardinals, a male and a female, came careening through the forest and almost hit me. I’m not sure who was more surprised, them or me.

I heard a slightly different “sip” note and noted a new tiny bird in the trees. A slender Nashville Warbler, a spring migrant, was foraging through on a different path than the titmouse. It also examined every leaf and branch with its bright dark eyes, but in a less acrobatic fashion than my titmouse.

OW! I was trying to keep following the titmouse but my openings in the briars kept requiring more and more acrobatics to get through. Sometimes I failed in those acrobatics and my skin was pierced by a thorn. The titmouse had only foraged through a few trees in almost 30 minutes, so I knew that if it went further I would lose it because of the briars. Then the titmouse neighbor to the south began singing. I waited to see if my bird, Orange-Black, would sing. Sure enough, it listened, and after a few minutes responded with a song! They sang back and forth a few times, but both stopped. More vigorous singing can wait until the morning. I’ll be up hopefully before they are and can listen to them maintain the invisible boundaries between their territories.

Sitting outside all day and working on my bird study forces me to slow down and look at every little thing in life, whether it’s following a tiny bird through big trees or marveling (and shying away from) the seemingly infinite variety of harmless jumping spiders on my picnic tables.

Even the briars that I stumble through are fascinating as they intertwine up trees and shelter cardinal nests. Whether you are at home or away, keep your eyes peeled for the little details in our world. You will always find wonders to delight you!

The next monthly field trips on the Lyndon B. Johnson National Grasslands will be June 1 and July 6. We will depart at 9 a.m. from the forest service district office in Decatur. Call Mary Curry (see below) or the forest service at (940) 627-5475.

Claire and Mary Curry are nature enthusiasts based in Greenwood. Email them at larksparrow@eeclaire.com.

Birds and Beyond

Why do you find some plants and animals in one place and not another, while others seem to be everywhere? It depends on the needs and competitors of the creature or plant in question.

Let’s start with a bird that seems like it is everywhere: the Common Grackle. They hang out in parking lots looking for french fries! Surely they can tolerate anything. They do have preferences, though.

If you live in a more rural area and don’t have the extensive green lawns and food-filled parking lots, grackles are actually quite an unusual sight. I was excited to find one in “the wild” once, singing over a marshy lake edge. Its iridescent purple and bronze plumage was quite beautiful.

If they weren’t so common I suspect people would be searching for them eagerly!

All species have preferences based on their needs, but how picky they are varies. Ducks need water, but diving ducks (like Buffleheads and scaup) want deeper water, while dabbling ducks like Mallards, pintails and Gadwalls will hang out in shallow areas where they can dip their heads down to forage in the mud.

Red-tailed Hawks like to have trees or power poles from which they can watch for prey, while Red-shouldered Hawks prefer to hunt in more wooded areas.

Even plants need certain nutrients and have particular moisture requirements, so certain species will be found on certain soil types, be that clay, sand or loam.

The endangered Golden-cheeked Warbler requires mature ashe juniper forests because it will only use strips of its bark in its nest. Woodpeckers need dead trees to excavate nest cavities.

Sometimes the habitat preference can change depending on the season, perhaps because they need one habitat for nesting but are less picky in the non-breeding season.

Sometimes competitors can restrict where an animal or plant will live. Young oak trees can grow in the shade and will sprout up under a canopy of hackberries, but young hackberries can’t stand shade. Thus new hackberries will die once the oak forest becomes established.

Competition can be a problem with introduced species. For example, European Starlings nest in cavities like woodpeckers but use holes that are already excavated. This results in some woodpeckers losing their homes to birds that they are not adapted to compete with.

It can be a fun bird-watching (or anything-watching) experience to track where you see different species and how it varies by the seasons and years. A good example is Golden-crowned Kinglets.

Those tiny birds are usually not very common; we tend to see them in areas with larger trees, like in wooded ravines. This year they are very common and almost in all forested areas. Field Sparrows are fairly common all winter in any brushy habitat, but then in the summer they disappear to only a few places.

As far as I can tell, chickadees and cardinals are in the same areas year round.

The abundance of hawks seems to vary with the rodent population.

Often times we will notice the presence or absence of particular birds but have a hard time figuring out why they are gone. This is influenced heavily by factors at the population level, not just a local effect, which is why it is so hard to say why a particular bird is not around much some years.

One would need to look at environmental influences across the whole range to figure out if a species is in trouble or just locally gone for the short term. This is what many bird-monitoring programs do. These include Project FeederWatch (http:/www.birds.cornell.edu/pfw/), Breeding Bird Survey, Christmas Bird Count and eBird (www.ebird.org).

Both FeederWatch and eBird are particularly accessible because they occur over the whole winter and year round, respectively, and offer us a chance to contribute our observations to studies of bird populations.

Whether you are counting birds, feeding birds or casually observing them on your way home, keep your eyes peeled for the associations between your favorite critters and where they live. You never know what you will learn about the interactions that shape nature!

The most low-tech way is just to scatter seed on the ground. To get a larger variety of seed-eaters, put the seed on a raised platform (some birds will be shy about sitting on the ground). Another popular feeder is a tube with perches for several birds to feed at the same time.

What seeds are best to feed? The greatest variety of birds will come to black-oil sunflower seed. Everything from big-beaked cardinals to tiny goldfinches will eat it. Woodpeckers will crack them open. Titmice will stash them in hiding places for later use.

You can get a little bag from the grocery store or 50-pound bags if you are using a lot of it. The mixed-seed bags advertised for birds are usually not so effective with a lot of millet and milo that often only a few species such as doves and house sparrows like.

Cracked corn could get some turkeys if you are in the right habitat. Striped sunflower (which you can grow in your garden) is a bit big for most species, but cardinals can handle it. I’ve seen safflower seed recommended for cardinals as well, but I’ve not used it much nor seen many birds eat it.

Of course, not all birds eat seeds. Suet can get some insect-eating birds to visit your yard. It is a mixture of fat and other foods that birds love, even those that are coming for the seeds. It seems weird to want to eat a bunch of fat, but birds are looking for high-energy foods to help them keep warm during the winter and fuel their daily activities.

You can buy suet cakes that fit conveniently into wire cages (which can be bought usually near the other seed-dispensing feeders) or you can make your own.

Making your own is a bit messy but probably cheaper. We use a mix of equal parts lard, peanut butter and corn meal (then keep adding corn meal until there is enough to make it clump together without becoming crumbly). You can then add your own “bird treats” to this basic mixture, such as raisins and pre-shelled sunflower seeds.

We stuff this in holes drilled in a small log that we hang. Everything eats it, from woodpeckers to kinglets to sparrows to winter warblers (such as those rare pine and orange-crowned warblers) to meadowlarks (if you are in the right habitat).

Keep in mind that your bird-feeding is not going to get your local birds dependent on your handouts to survive. There will be many more birds than you can detect visiting the feeder over the day. When people have banded birds at feeders (so they are individually identifiable), they are usually surprised to find out their “regular chickadee” and “regular flock of finches” are actually quite a few chickadees and finches!

The only time when feeding may make a difference between life and death for local birds is during an episode of severe winter weather, such as a layer of ice or sleet covering their normal food sources. Even then, bird populations have survived for generations on what nature alone provides.

As you stock those bird feeders this winter and enjoy the feeding flocks, keep your eyes peeled for unusual visitors, your old familiar favorites and the unique behaviors that even our most common of species exhibit. All of our birds are amazing, and you never know what wonders you may observe!

The next monthly field trips to the Lyndon B. Johnson National Grasslands will be Feb. 2 and March 2. We will depart at 9 a.m. from the Forest Service District Office in Decatur. Contact Mary Curry (see below) or the Forest Service District Office, (940) 627-5475.

DNA is the information that encodes life. It is made of four molecules called nucleotides that occur in many combinations to specify different proteins, which make up the bodies of all organisms.

DNA is interesting to more than just molecular biologists. For scientists studying populations of critters or plants, we can also use it to look at how the organisms are related to one another and even get clues as to how they are interacting.

How does this work?

The genetic code, four different chemicals called nucleotides, is the same in all organisms. The genome (all the genes) of say, a chickadee, contains different areas. Some are genes that code for proteins, the building blocks of all organisms’ bodies.

Genes also have regions that regulate when they are used (because other molecules can bind to them and stop or start the reading of the DNA).

Then there are areas that have no apparent use. Some are old genes (no longer used) that have been copied due to errors in replicating the DNA (so only the new copy is used), some are viruses that have inserted their own DNA in the chickadee’s DNA, and some are just repeating sequences that have no known function.

Changes can occur in the nucleotides making up the sequence when the DNA is copied imperfectly when the chickadee reproduces. The areas that are not currently in use can change a lot faster over the generations than genes that code for important proteins. It won’t hurt the baby chickadee if these variable DNA sequences change a little bit more. If a useful gene changes, it might randomly change to something harmful, something neutral, or something better. Most often it will be neutral or harmful.

If it changes to something harmful, that chickadee’s genes either won’t get passed on to the next generation or it won’t pass on as many as its more successful cousins. So, those genes tend to stay the same.

So what can we use those quickly-changing areas of the DNA to tell about birds and other critters or even plants? If you have two birds, you can compare how related they are. Because DNA is made of two strands, sometimes each strand has its own variant of the DNA sequence.

So, if you look at the baby chickadees in a nest, you can see one variant from one parent and one variant from the other parent.

If you end up with a baby chickadee that has a variant not found in either parent, then you know that it has a father that is not the father feeding it. Scientists have used this to discover that many species of birds that we once thought were models of familial harmony actually have additional partners on the side.

You can also compare these variants between populations of birds (or whatever other critter you are interested in). If you compare the same area of DNA, sometimes different species will have different variants that are unique to their species or population. Then you can do several really neat things.

First, if two species are very similar, you can tell if an individual is a hybrid between the two (i.e., it has one parent from each species) or just individual variation within a species. One strand of DNA will have one group’s variant while the other strand has the other’s variant if it is a hybrid.

You can also have an unknown bird (or a feather with a bit of blood still in the tip – the DNA can be extracted from that) and compare it to DNA from known bird specimens and identify what species it is. Scientists have also used this to find that populations of some birds are distinct from one another even though their plumages are almost identical.

Once a sufficient DNA difference is found (remember, there are small variations in any population, even between parent birds and their young), scientists can look for other differences in song and behavior to determine if it should be classified as a different species.

This has happened many times now with birds, other animals and plants too.

Isn’t it amazing what insights we can get about the birds that we love to watch, by examining the molecular information within them? It’s made life very exciting for scientists who study populations and species of all organisms, from birds to frogs to bugs to flowers to trees.

It adds a new dimension to our knowledge and understanding of the natural world by giving us insight into creatures’ relationships to one another.

Even if you are still a bit fuzzy on the details, the take-home message is that the living things in our world are intriguingly complex. As you are enjoying the birds at your feeders, the trees in the forest and the grass on the ground, think about what amazing wonders, both big and small, that we share the world with!

The next monthly field trips to the Lyndon B. Johnson National Grasslands are Jan. 5 and Feb. 2. We will depart at 9 a.m. from the Forest Service district office in Decatur. For more information, contact Mary Curry or the Forest Service at (940) 627-5475.

Claire and Mary Curry are nature enthusiasts based in Greenwood. If you would like to contact them, e-mail them at larksparrow@eeclaire.com.

This philosophical chestnut has stumped people for time immemorial. It has always seemed like a funny question to me. However, it makes me think of a different question, one that actually has an answer (although it was only discovered in the early and middle parts of the 20th century). How do we get from the egg to the chicken? In other words, how do chickens make more chickens?

The stuff of life is our genetic information. Today I’ll talk about DNA, which contains those genetic directions to make that chicken, hawk, or plant or anything living.

DNA stands for deoxyribonucleic acid. It is a long molecule made up of small units strung together in chains. Two chains of DNA twist around in what is called a double helix. Each unit in the chain is called a nucleotide. There are four types of nucleotides; each has different chemical properties. This allows them to pair with each other across the double helix, binding the two strands of DNA together like a coiling rope. These four nucleotides make up the whole genetic code.

Larger, more complicated molecular “machinery” attaches itself to the DNA and copies it into another chain of molecules. This transcription of the genetic code is made of ribonucleic acid, called RNA. More cellular machinery matches up chemicals called amino acids to every three nucleotides of the RNA translation.

Different combinations of three nucleotides (like a four-letter alphabet combining to make all combinations of three-letter words) code for different amino acids. These amino acids are linked together in chains called proteins. These protein chains fold up based on whether they are attracted to water. This is like oil and water – they don’t mix. So the chains fold up so that the “oily” parts stay on the inside of the folded protein.

These proteins are the hard workers of our chicken’s body. The muscle for its wings? Protein. The hemoglobin in its blood that carries oxygen to the brain? Protein.

Because there are more than 20 amino acids coded-for by just those four nucleotides in their combinations of three, and because proteins can be very long, you get essentially an infinite variety of proteins to make up the parts of the body, everything from the tiny “molecular machinery” to the muscles and the brain and the organs.

Different sections of DNA code for different proteins and these regions are called genes.

Every cell in our proverbial chicken’s body has a copy of this DNA. When these chickens get ready to lay those philosophical eggs, the DNA from each parent will each make up half of the egg’s DNA. This is where the double-stranded helix comes in. The two strands of DNA are un-wound with a protein rather like a zipper. This is why the chicken resulting from that egg will often end up being “in-between” its parents. It gets some DNA from both Mom and Dad.

Sometimes the offspring doesn’t look “in between,” though. Traits don’t always show up in the offspring (despite being visible in both parents) because of how the genes are read; sometimes one strand’s copy of the gene is dominant over the other.

So, why should we care about DNA? Because all organisms share the same basic machinery, this is what allows scientists to use mice, fruit flies and other critters to study diseases that humans get, too. For scientists studying populations of critters or plants, we can also use it to look at how the organisms are related to one another and even get clues as to how they are interacting. This is because of the genetic code, those four different nucleotides.

There are areas in the DNA that aren’t used any more, but were old genes or just appear to be random without currently known functions. These gradually change over time between generations because DNA has to be copied when cells are dividing to make new cells.

The cellular machinery involved is not perfectly accurate, so mutations in the DNA occur. These are inherited by the offspring, who may accumulate a few more mutations, and so on. Over many generations, there can be a lot of difference between their ancestors’ sequence of DNA. This lets us use the amount and type of differences to look at relatedness between organisms. I’ll talk more next month about how this works and what you can tell about a critter by looking at its DNA.

The next time you see any living thing, think about what amazing microscopic processes are going on. Even when we shed a skin cell, the little proteins have to go to work, reading out that DNA sequence. When our proverbial chicken lays its egg, it is combining two different strands of DNA that will be read by cellular machinery to eventually form a whole new chicken. Our world is full of beautiful intricacies great and small.

The next monthly field trips on the Lyndon B. Johnson National Grasslands will be Dec. 1 and Jan. 5. We will depart at 9 a.m. from the Forest Service District Office in Decatur. For more information, contact Mary Curry (see below) or the forest service at (940) 627-5475.

Claire and Mary Curry are nature enthusiasts based in Greenwood. If you would like to contact them, please e-mail them at larksparrow@eeclaire.com.

This time we’ll cover a last assortment of common trees: Eastern red cedar (Juniperus virginiana), black walnut (Juglans nigra), pecan (Carya illinoinensis), American elm (Ulmus americana), slippery elm (Ulmus rubra), cedar elm (Ulmus crassifolia), and gum bumelia (Sideroxylon lanuginosum).

Eastern red cedar is a very familiar tree with several surprising aspects to its life. It is native, but often invasive due to fire suppression. The blue “berries” that we often see Cedar Waxwings, American Robins, and Yellow-rumped Warblers eating are actually the female cones. Pollen from the male trees causes a good portion of us to be miserable with allergies every year. In late winter and early spring, you can bump a branch and see the clouds of pollen fly up.

Let’s go nuts now! Black walnut and pecan are both in the walnut family (Juglandaceae). They have similar large compound leaves (many small leaves on a stem). In the spring, both have long shaggy catkins made of the tiny green flowers. This time of year, the pecan has its familiar, long oval nuts, while walnuts have round nuts.

We have several species of elms, both native and introduced. I’m just going to talk about a few of the most common native species. All have oval leaves with a pointed tip and a toothed edge.

American elm can be distinguished by its bark. If you pull off a small piece, you can see a pattern of dark and pale layers. Slippery elm is also known for its bark; it is somewhat slimy inside. You don’t want to go digging into the tree’s inner bark, though, so just note that it lacks American’s outer layers.

Finally, the cedar elm has lots of very small leaves (usually about 1-2 inches long) and flat “wings” on its smaller branches. Some will grow near cedars, giving us the common name.

I’ve saved gum bumelia for last. I’m rather fond of this somewhat obscure tree. It has leaves superficially similar to a live oak’s (round and shiny) but it is deciduous, losing them in the winter. Some years we have a bane of caterpillars eating out the leaves and leaving behind a webby mess.

Other members of this family (Sapotaceae) live in the tropics, and indeed the gum bumelia (or “chittumwood”) is found at its farthest north in Missouri.

As fall continues to bring us cooler weather, the trees will begin to turn colors and lose their leaves. Enjoy the fall colors and admire their stately shapes, intricate branches and varied leaves. Keep your eyes peeled for autumn surprises!

The next monthly field trips on the Lyndon B. Johnson National Grasslands will be Nov. 3 and Dec. 1. We will depart at 9 a.m. from the Forest Service District Office in Decatur.

For more information, contact Mary Curry (see below) or the Forest Service District Office, (940) 627-5475.

Claire and Mary Curry are nature enthusiasts based in Greenwood. Contact them at larksparrow@eeclaire.com.

I’ll start with the prickly ones, just for fun. Honey Mesquite (Prosopis glandulosa), or just plain ol’ mesquite as we usually call it, is a member of the legume family (Fabaceae). Essentially, it’s a bean. The family likeness is evident in the compound leaves and its long seed pod. It’s usually a small tree or even a shrub, but a few can get quite large, with several broad trunks. It can be invasive because cattle enjoy eating the sugary seed pods and because there were formerly more fires that burned down the smaller trees.

Honeylocust (Gleditsia triacanthos) is another legume tree, but its thorns are huge. I once stepped on a fallen honeylocust branch and its thorn went straight through the bottom of my tennis shoe into my foot. Ouch. Some thorns also have smaller thorns branching off of them. The compound leaves are a darker green than those of the pale mesquite and the seed pods are dark brown and flat. Clusters of this tree makes great cover for wildlife, but you don’t want to have to walk through there.

Compared to the thorny mesquite and Honeylocust, willows and cottonwoods are pretty benign. They are closely related to the aspens of the northern United States. The Eastern Cottonwood (Populus deltoides) has somewhat triangular or tear-drop shaped leaves. The bark on mature trees is deeply furrowed. In late spring and early summer, the trees release fluff that carries the tiny seeds. There can be so much fluff it looks like it’s snowing sometimes. They prefer riparian zones (areas along rivers) and moist habitats, and require disturbance (such as caused by floods) to allow the seeds to get a good start.

Black willows (Salix nigra) also grow in wet areas, but are shrub-like and not usually nearly so tall or stately as cottonwoods. Willows have long, narrow leaves with fine “teeth” along the edges. Willow, along with cottonwoods, is one of the host plants for the Red-spotted Purple butterfly, a mimic of the Pipevine Swallowtail (it has iridescent blue on the hindwings above, but it lacks the swallow-tails).

Let’s end with a native fruit tree, the persimmon. The Common Persimmon (Diospyros virginiana) is a small tree with oval leaves that are pointed at the tip. The bark is broken into rectangular areas, rather like the skin of an alligator. The persimmon fruits are green and sour before ripening, but turn orange and sweet in fall.

I’m having fun learning about the trees, so I’ll go on to some more next month. I’ve been reading about their habits and identification in “The Sibley Guide to Trees” by David Allen Sibley, just published last year. Keep your eyes peeled this fall – you never know what neat trees you might run into.

The next monthly field trips on the Lyndon B. Johnson National Grasslands will be Oct. 6 and Nov. 3. We will depart at 9 a.m. from the Forest Service District Office in Decatur. For more information, please contact Mary Curry (see below) or the Forest Service District Office, (940) 627-5475.

Claire and Mary Curry are nature enthusiasts based in Greenwood. If you would like to contact them, e-mail them at larksparrow@eeclaire.com.