Chuck's Blog

    Two visitors--whose names I failed to get--reported the first Golden-cheeked Warbler of the season on the Refuge on Monday morning, March 15.  They saw a male warbler near trail marker 4 on the Cactus Rocks Trail at Warbler Vista.  Later in the afternoon, Elizabeth Lesley and I hiked into our Rodgers Prime Warbler Study Site and found two male warblers.  Whew!  Spring is officially here.




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Below The Line:

     I tend to visualize just one thing when I use the abbreviation "GCWA".  However, away from the juniper-oak woodlands of the Texas Hill Country, the world is not so constrained.  Some time ago, I was doing a search for articles on the Golden-cheeked Warbler and happened to type this standard four-letter abbreviation into a search engine.  That led me on an interesting diversion.  Between Google, Yahoo!, and acronymfinder.com, I learned of the existence of many concepts and organizations I never would have dreamed of.  Not surprisingly, a great many are on the Gulf Coast; among these are:

     Gulf Coast Wakeboard Association [Which owns the domain name "gcwa.com".]
     Gulf Coast Water Authority
     Gulf Coast Woodturner's Association
     Gulf Coast Writers Association
     Gulf Coast Wrestling Alliance

But the collection of associations was farther flung than just those.  Witness:

     Gastonia Community Watch Association [Gaston Co., NC]
     George's Creek Watershed Association [Allegany Co., MD]
     Georgia Cattlewomen's Association
     Georgia County Welfare Association [Covington, GA; owns the domain "www.gcwa.us"]
     Gills Creek Watershed Association [Columbia, SC]
     Greater Charlotte Workroom Association [Charlotte, NC]
     Grey County Woodlot Association [somewhere in Canada]

Even farther afield, I found:

     Gliding Club of Western Australia

and,

     Global Championship Wrestling Alliance

In the realm of science, I found:

     Gilford fine sandy loam, 0 to 1 percent slope [Pulaski Co., IN]

and I have no idea where they came up with "GCWa" for that.  However, my all-time favorite has to be:

     Generalized Closed World Assumption

This has something to do with "Disjunctive Logic Programs and Deductive Databases", to wit:

     "The closed world semantics defined above is the "strongest" negation semantics possible for disjunctive logic programs based on minimal Herbrand models and is known as the generalized closed world assumption (GCWA)."

I'm glad I could clarify that for you.

     Yes, I know, I'm letting my Disney show through*.  But rather than conjuring up a White Rabbit, I'm actually trying to entice home a small bird with bright golden cheeks.  

     As of this afternoon (5 p.m. on March 10) we had not detected a Golden-cheeked Warbler on the Refuge.  I've confirmed through emails and the TexBirds discussion list that the warblers are arriving in the Texas Hill Country.  A birding friend out west of Kerrville heard one outside of his office window on Monday, March 8, at about 3:45 p.m., the first report for Texas this year.  At least one was heard in Uvalde County on the 9th, then today there are reports of Golden-cheeks from both San Antonio (to our south) and Fort Hood (to our north).  Most of these observers remarked that these first dates are "a little later than usual", which opens up an intriguing topic of discussion: Are migratory birds changing their habits and migration patterns with long-term environmental changes?

     Traditionally, March 12-13 had been considered the expected arrival date for Golden-cheeks in the Hill Country, compiled by Warren Pulich from decades of observations up through the mid-1970's.  Since the publication of Pulich's work, more and more observers (the cause?) have been reporting Golden-cheeks progressively earlier and earlier (the outcome?).  Just a few short years ago, I would have recited March 8 as a more likely first date of observation (by someone somewhere on the breeding range).  Most recently, at the risk of speaking for a large group of researchers, we have been only mildly surprised when first reports of the species came on March 4th, 3rd, 2nd, etc.  In 2008, Mark Gray established the first February record of a GCWA in Texas with his observation of one arriving in Austin on February 29--but that's sort of cheating since it was a Leap Year.  Then came Spring (?) 2009 with a report by Heidi Trudell and Matt York of a male GCWA at Meridian State Park on the "ridiculously early" date of February 27.

     It is just so easy and--with apologies to the former Vice President--so convenient to suggest that changing climate patterns on a continental scale may be enticing Golden-cheeks to arrive earlier and earlier.  While that may be the exact, correct answer--if/when we have sufficient data to confirm the pattern--it is crucial to keep in mind that patterns in Nature are never simple.  There is variation upon variation.  Going back to my surfing analogies, the patterns of changing migration dates, when plotted over time, will begin to look like irregular ripples on top of larger swells, which may or may not have an underlying long-term direction of change.  It will look as sloppy as the chart you'd see when plotting long-term rainfall patterns or, gulp, stock market trends.  Here are three charts illustrating real world data.  One might be rainfall, another the stock market, another may be migratory dates--It's not really important.  The nature of *data* is the point I'm making.


     Let me quickly say that I am *not* a skeptic when it comes to climate change.  We are doing bad things to the global climate and we are seeing symptoms of that in a great many natural history disciplines.  Our focal Golden-cheeked Warblers may--just may--be reflecting those directional changes by what we are observing in arrival dates here on the breeding range.  It is a wonderfully complex topic to consider what landscape level cues the Golden-cheeks are reponding to; that would be worthy of a couple of Ph.D. dissertations.  The present blog is just prompted by the curious and perhaps unexpected warbler timetable we are seeing this season.  Last year, they were very early; this year, they are late--by their own standard set in recent years.  But today's "late" was yesterday's "early" in a normal year.  Have I cleared this up sufficiently?

     This topic could not be more timely nor more geographically appropriate:  Secretary of the Interior Ken Salazar will be in Austin on Thursday, March 11 (perhaps the day you are reading this blog) to roll out the latest edition of the "State of the Birds Report", compiled from diverse sources.  This year the report will emphasize the challenge of climate change to the conservation of migratory birds.

     In the meantime, I've got to get some rest.  It will be an early day for me tomorrow--out to the Refuge to try to rope in a Golden-cheeked Warbler to show the Secretary and our other visitors.  No pressure!  [I am happy to take responsibility for my own actions, but when it comes to predicting the weather or the occurrence of migratory songbirds, I relinquish any responsibility for those events!]

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Below The Line:

*   I hope I am clear on the difference between Lewis Carroll and Walt Disney.  From my recent research, I learned that the famous "I'm Late, I'm Late..." ditty popularized in the early Disney feature of Alice in Wonderland is a paraphrase of the same concept uttered--in different words--by the rabbit in Carroll's novel.

     Credit for the White Rabbit thumbnail is as follows: "The White Rabbit, illustration from Alice in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll 1832-98 adapted by Emily Gertrude Thomson, 1889, a painting by John Tenniel."  The beautiful Golden-cheeked Warbler male is one of my favorite John Ingram images--Thanks, John.  The charts are ripped from random sources via Google Images, stripped of identifying legends on purpose.  The pic of Secretary Salazar is, I believe, his official portrait as a member of the U.S. Senate, prior to his appointment as Secretary of the Interior.

     A few weeks ago, a small team consisting of myself, David Maple, Elizabeth Lesley, and Jean Nance hiked to those big junipers I had reported earlier in the Post Oak Creek watershed ("The Wonderland of Post Oak Creek", Feb. 10) to get some good measurements on the trees.  I report the results below, but first I thought it might be instructive to describe how big trees are measured.  The answer: "...with difficulty."

     There are a number of technical points on what constitutes a standard--or official--measurement of a tree.  The best starting point for learning about this is on the Texas Forest Service's website for the Texas Big Tree Registry.  At that site you can learn "How to measure a big tree" and the details of the "Measuring rules".  You can also view or download the "Registry of Champion Trees" and a nomination form, if desired.  Lifted directly from their information, here is an overview of how to measure a big tree:

     The starting point is the "DBH point" which refers to the "diameter at breast height" and is defined as 4.5 ft above the ground level.  Rather than using the diameter of a tree, the size is actually gauged on the circumference of the trunk.  This is "the smallest circumference between the DBH point (4.5 feet) and the ground, but below the lowest fork."  As you can imagine, there are complications for multi-trunked trees, leaning trees, trees on slopes, etc.  The TFS website explains what to do in those circumstances.  For big tree measurements, the TFS uses English units of measure; the circumference is reported in inches.

     The height of a tree, of course, is an integral part of the calculation but this can be the trickiest part to measure, especially in a heavily wooded setting.  I discovered that my "ocular estimates" reported previously ("50+ feet") were too generous.  If you believe all the botany texts, properly measuring the height of a tree would seem to require an advanced degree in mathematics with an emphasis on trigonometry.  Luckily, there are any number of modern forestry tools to accomplish the task of sizing up a tree.  Unfortunately, we had none of those at hand, so we used a modified version of the "stick method".  (Lest your imagination run amok, yes, we did the subsequent calculations on an abacus and dutifully recorded the data on a clay tablet...)  By this, you have some standard reference height positioned at the tree (a person of known height, or a pole of known length).  Then, you back off a substantial distance and use some calibrated "stick" (in our case, a standard 12-inch ruler) to gage the relative height of the tree versus your measurement standard.  Got that?  For instance, while Elizabeth Lesley held up a 3-meter pole at the trunk of one big juniper, I stepped back until I could match the 3-meter pole with the 3-inch mark on my ruler.  The top of the tree happened (by coincidence) to match the length of the ruler exactly--12 inches--so some easy math allowed me to determine that the tree was 12 meters tall.  Converted to English units, that is 39.4 ft, which by the TFS rules is reported as 39 ft tall.

     The last measurement of a tree which goes into the formula for its score is Average Crown Spread.  To measure this, you figure out the "drip line" of the tree, which can be visualized as the shadow of the tree's crown projected vertically onto the ground.  You then measure its widest dimension.  The second measure is the widest width at any point perpendicular to that longest diameter.  The two perpendicular widths don't have to intersect at the trunk of the tree; sometimes they will, sometimes not.  The Average Crown Spread is the average of the two widths.

     For purposes of comparing trees and deciding a champion, the TFS calculates a "Tree Index" by adding together the circumference (inches), the height (feet), and one quarter of the average crown spread (feet), rounded to the nearest whole number.


     So how did our big junipers stack up?  We measured two of the five big trees in the grove.  The tree pictured in my previous blog measured 72 inches in circumference (just shy of 2 ft in diameter), 39 ft tall, and had an average crown spread of 42 ft, giving it a tree index of 72 + 39 + 42/4 = 122.  A second large juniper measured: circumference, 65 inches; height, 41 ft; average crown spread of 38 ft, giving an index of 116.

     The champion Ashe juniper is a bulky monster in New Braunfels which is not much higher (41 ft) nor wider (49 ft) than our trees, but it has a thick truck measuring 139 inches around, giving it an index of 192.


You can find information about champion trees all over the country at American Forestry's National Register of Big Trees.

     Can any of these big juniper trees be aged?  Typically, foresters would estimate the age of a living tree by drilling a very narrow core to the center of the tree (the width of a soda straw), taking that core back to the lab and counting the growth rings under a microscope.  For junipers, this traditional method of counting tree rings is very unreliable.  I saw a vivid illustration of this last week when I was examining some other habitat management we are doing.  On the Refuge's Webster tract, we recently put in a deer-proof fence to enclose a rather large area of Golden-cheeked Warbler habitat in a study being conducted in collaboration with the University of Texas.  A number of various sized junipers had to be felled to put the fence in.  That gave me the opportunity to examine the growth rings on some freshly cut juniper trunks.  Take a look at what I found:




The second major problem with aging such trees is that junipers don't always put on new growth in neat rings evenly distributed around the trunk.  Look carefully at the pattern here, where growth seems to occur irregularly at different places on the tree at different times (years), resulting in a pattern that looks like silt fans at a river delta or wind-blown sand dunes.  This is an intriguing growth strategy and I don't know why it happens.  Once again, imagine trying to core through any one location in this juniper; it would only be by accident that you might pierce through a complete and countable set of growth rings.


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Below the Line:

     The fact that my original estimates of the height of those big junipers were so far off ("50 ft" versus the reality of ~40 ft) shook my confidence to the core.  Over my years in the field I've had much time to hone my estimation skills--based on comparisons to objectively measured heights, lengths, distances, sizes, etc.--and it is something I have had a quiet confidence in.  Or not-so-quiet if you've ever been on a deer count on a Fall evening with me and I boldly announce the temperature after waving my hand in the air for a few seconds.  My hand is rather well-calibrated to air temps (in degrees Fahrenheit).  My estimates of any given measure might be blurted out in English or metric units; it's not that I convert those easily in my head but it comes from whatever I worked with for standard measurement in a given discipline (e.g. measuring the sizes of plant parts in mm and cm versus estimating the size of a bird in inches or the distance of a hike in miles).

     Be sure to watch your feeders and glance around your yard at least once this weekend, then go online and report your findings for the Great Backyard Bird Count, the most casual and relaxing avian monitoring program all year.  This is a mid-winter effort organized by Cornell University’s Laboratory of Ornithology, National Audubon Society, and Bird Studies Canada, and sponsored by Wild Birds Unlimited.  As described on the GBBC website, it is meant to “engage bird watchers of all ages in counting birds to create a real-time snapshot of where the birds are across the continent. Anyone can participate, from beginning bird watchers to experts.”  This effort differs from the recent Christmas Bird Counts in a few important ways:

     (1)  It is local.  As with any birding effort, you can expend any level of energy to accomplish this task, but “backyard” is the operative word, however you define that.  This might literally be your own yard, your favorite city park, a walk on a local nature trail, or a whole day excursion to your favorite wildlife refuge.  That’s your “backyard” for one bird list.
     (2)  Rather than accumulating a grand total of all birds counted all day, the information you report is “the greatest number of individuals of each species seen at any one time”.  For instance, if a flock of 10 waxwings flies over once, then later on you see 30 in a nearby tree, you report 30 waxwings, not the total count.  You might end up reporting the one flock of 10 Turkey Vultures that circled overhead, the one Western Scrub-Jay that came to your feeder, or your high count of 45 Chipping Sparrows all over your yard in mid-morning.
     (3)  It is real-time and online.  When you complete your birding effort, go online and enter your list of birds, then “explore the results” which are coming in from all over the continent.  You can examine species distributions, totals, or the distribution of effort.  You can participate on just one day or more than once, even submitting a new list for each day during this four day event, February 12-15.  You may submit your lists for this weekend until March 1, but the fun of the event is keeping up with it as it is happening.  This may be the perfect boredom reliever for those snow-bound folks on the East Coast!

     Rob Iski and Elizabeth Lesley helped me accumulate a list of 24 bird species for the Refuge on Friday, the first day of the GBBC.  For our purposes, our “backyard” was just the HQ and ops center including the photo blind and Post Oak Creek trail.  Perhaps due to the chilly breeze, birds were not terribly conspicuous this day.  There were no ducks on Post Oak Creek and we didn’t even see a Bewick’s Wren.  I invite you to go to the GBBC results page to find our entire list and further explore what is being seen across the country.

     Those of you who have visited and walked around the Refuge HQ are familiar with Post Oak Creek.  This is the stream that feeds the pond overlooked by the new photo blind.  It runs down through the pecan grove, nurturing that lone Bald Cypress tree*, and thence under RM 1431, emptying into the Cow Creek arm of Lake Travis.  Some number of you have had the opportunity either to join Jean & Seay Nance on one of their back-country hikes during the Songbird Festival or offered your services to help clean up the Bottom's Up Hunt Camp.  You've seen a hint of what Post Oak Creek is like in the back-country.

     I have taken the occasional opportunity--made up a thin excuse--to get away from the office and really go exploring in this watershed.  Every time I wander the obscure trails and overgrown jeep roads which meander through the broken terrain, I find something interesting, experience something new, or see something that reminds me of the wonder of Mother Nature and the grand forces that shape the landscape.  When I am not distracted by the birds or butterflies, every such hike offers up a geology lesson, a botany lesson, a hydrology lesson, or a history lesson, if I am just open to the possibilities.

     Although I have enjoyed escaping to this habitat hideaway in the heat of a dry summer, it is in mid-winter--especially in a wet year like this--that the quietude of the landscape can be most appreciated, disturbed only by a noisy stream dashing over limestone ledges and riffles.  No road noise.  No overt sign of modern civilization.  Nothing but ... nature.  The existence of the old roads or the remnants of the hunt camp, and the near-ubiquitous evidence of past cedar cutting can be jarring in this context, but I take comfort that all that has come to a halt.  An overgrown road, to me, means the land is slowly healing.  A fallen tree is evidence of natural processes at work.  Post Oak Creek and the processes of growth, death, decay, and erosion are gradually erasing most evidence of our species' previous influences here.

     At various times and venues, I've shared images and told stories of some of my discoveries in this wonderland: energy flow through an ecosystem, a porcupine at close quarters in a crevice, a Varied Thrush glimpsed on one CBC and a Hutton's Vireo "documented" on another, a crystal-dappled ledge, the weeping hillside, and "The Rock", among other features.  I reserve the right to withhold some of my memories of this place.  Each of us should have a few of these, a reservoir of unshared moments in some special place, wherever that might be.



     That said, I really wanted to bring to light what I encountered just today: Four of the biggest, most massive, and most perfectly shaped Ashe Junipers I've ever seen!  I had taken a slightly different path at midday today, easing along a scenic ledge and following an animal trail then an old cedar-chopper road down to a terrace flanking Post Oak Creek, nestled near the confluence of a major side canyon.  It was a spot I hadn't previously visited.  As I moved onto the level terrain, the woodlands grew in stature.  There was an abundance of large Spanish Oaks, some healthy and others broken from various traumas of seasons past.  Second-growth juniper--some of it middle-aged--made up the rest of the canopy and there was an annoying abundance of juniper slash scattered on the ground.  But then I noticed one big straight tree trunk, two feet in diameter at the base, launching into the canopy.  In the deep shade, I thought I perceived the bark of a juniper...but, that big?!  I couldn't even see the top of the tree as it emerged well above the surrounding woods.  It emerged!

     I glanced around to get oriented--to verify my location--and there, about 30 yards away, stood another massive juniper, and another, and another.  (There may yet be more, but I was quickly engaged in documenting this find and didn't take the time to explore further.)  I had nothing to measure them with so I set my field notebook at the base of one tree and reached up to hang my binoculars for perspective against the trunk of the giant, only to realize that the lowest available branch jutted out nearly 10 feet above my head.  Each of these monsters is probably 50+ ft in height.  Their age?--Who knows!


     One or another of this set of trees may be the record Ashe Juniper on the Refuge.  Time and more precise forestry measurements will tell.  It was clear from their arrangement--and the thoroughly ravaged juniper woodland around the area, that these particular trees had been conscientiously spared from the saw.  The cedar cutters probably made camp here on this terrace and retained a few big cedars to provide more shade alongside the oaks.  Perhaps these trees were already so big that no useful posts or fence stays could be cut from the trees without a supreme expenditure of time, elbow grease, and fuel.  Perhaps they were heeding "Chuck's Forestry Rule"*.  In any event, for me, discovering a few trees like this is like stumbling upon a lost bison herd or remnant patch of tallgrass prairie.  "Just another day in paradise" ... as the country song says.

* See "Emergency Tree Protection" in my Dec. 8, 2009, entry.

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Below The Line:

    I firmly believe that a great deal of landscape history can be learned from the varying shapes and growth patterns of junipers in a given location.  Consider this:  A single-trunked, straight-trunked juniper of necessity germinated and grew up in a dense woodland matrix.  IF, hypothetically, these giant junipers--which may be 100-200 years old or more--grew up in such a woodland, that tells you something about what this little corner of the Texas landscape was like way back when these were just little seedlings!  Other evidence comes, sadly, in the abundance of massive cut juniper stumps which one sees in many locations in the Post Oak Creek watershed.  The happy news is that there are actually a few little protected niches, on the order of a few acres each, where we find intact old-growth woodlands showing no evidence of cutting or fire.  Those are certainly special places.

     What could be more enjoyable on a cold winter morning than kicking through a grassland recently “decorated” by grazing cattle, or picking your way through prickly-pear when you really want to concentrate on that itty-bitty little brown job that just dove into the bush up ahead, or daintily dancing over a chilly prairie creek to chase a bird that doesn’t know the real meaning of ‘swamp’?  It don’t get any better than this!

     Bill Reiner Jr., Byron Stone, and I each came to appreciate sparrows from slightly different birding pathways but in the end, we all became Emberizid Enthusiasts, Ambassadors of Aimophila, Spizella Specialists, Purveyors of Pipilo, or whatever epithet you might dream up.  Personally, I've always liked a bird ID challenge.  If I lived near the coast, I’d spend more time with confusing immature gulls.  If I lived in the eastern woodlands, I’d strive to pick up the identification subtleties of migrant warblers in dull fall plumage.  But having started my birding career in the dead of winter in the mesquite plains around San Angelo, Texas, if I couldn’t get enthusiastic about studying sparrows, I wouldn’t have had much to look at.  Texas in general, and the eastern edge of the Texas Hill Country in particular, offers a high diversity of these dashing little feathered dinosaurs for our viewing pleasure.  They may not be as gaudy as spring warblers, buntings, or orioles, but they are jazzy in the own subtle ways of plumage and behavior.


    This year’s participants were treated to a beautiful weather day.  A nice chill in the morning was sufferable.  The afternoon was so nice that even the sparrows took some time off, much to our chagrin.  (I thought they were contractually obligated to stay easily visible, but apparently they hadn’t read the fine print.)  Nonetheless, a grand time was had by all, with the intensity and enthusiasm of the morning gradually morphing into an easy camaraderie and chatter about a day well-spent.

    Statistically, the day was hit and miss.  (See a complete bird list "Below The Line".)  We tallied a total of 17 species of “sparrows”, in the familial sense of the word.  We missed five of our “regulars” (Black-throated, White-throated, and Swamp Sparrows, Eastern Towhee, and, of all things, Dark-eyed Junco), but made up a little ground with a Lark Bunting glimpsed and photographed by Byron, and .... drum roll, please .... a new species for the Refuge: Brewer’s Sparrow.  The latter was identified by Bill Reiner and his group on their morning tromp around the Flying X.  [Historic note:  Bill had added the elusive Baird’s Sparrow to the Refuge list with a sighting barely a hundred yards away from the same spot on April 22, 2006.  He has the knack, and the Flying X provides the show.]

     My two tours couldn’t match the diversity of Byron’s or Bill’s but what we lacked from the list, we made up for in quality looks at some specialties like Rufous-crowned Sparrow and Canyon Towhee.  In fact, a pair of Canyon Towhees at Hickory Pass Ranch provided book-ends to our day, popping up to make them the first birds studied in the morning sun and bidding my group fairwell as the sun dropped behind the trees in the late afternoon.  SparrowFest 2010 has come and gone and we all survived.  Below, I forward some of the documentation, kindly provided by Laurie Foss, Fred Zagst, and Charles Mickel.



     As always, special thanks go to Friends of Balcones for organizing and supporting this event so thoroughly.  We are always grateful to our neighbors and private landowners who allow access to their special corners of the canyonlands.  This year that included Joan Mukherjee (Cedar Stump Ranch), Jacquelyn Mouton and David Johnston (Hickory Pass Ranch), David & Cynthia Castleberry (Peaceful Springs Nature Preserve), and Dub & Ruth Lyon.  As well, it wouldn't be SparrowFest without the refueling offered up by Chef Heidi Wittenborn of The Adequate Snack.  Thanks again to Laurie Foss, Charles Mickel, and Fred Zagst for use of their SparrowFest photos.  The Rufous-crowned Sparrow at the top of this blog is by Fred.

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Below the Line:

A small sampling of sparrows in literature (other than field guides):

“I once had a sparrow alight upon my shoulder for a moment while I was hoeing in a village garden, and I felt that I was more distinguished by that circumstance than I should have been by any epaulet I could have worn.”

“Whenever I hear the sparrow chirping, watch the woodpecker chirp, catch a chirping trout, or listen to the sad howl of the chirp rat, I think: Oh boy!  I'm going insane again.”

     Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.
     History is more or less bunk.


     I am an inveterate note taker.  My earliest efforts were probably the scribbled observations collected for my Boy Scout “Nature” merit badge which required me to watch and document the insect activity at a patch of flowers in my front yard for a day.  Unfortunately for the history of science, those notes are no longer extant.  As for the most recent 30 to 40 years of my outdoor career, we’re in pretty good shape.

     Over the past several weeks--in my absence from this blog space--I have spent some time going back through notes covering four decades of my birdwatching observations*.  More properly, I should say I’m “coming forward” through these notes, having started by digging out the first scraps of paper from 1970 and perusing subsequent notebooks, journals, and field checklists chronologically.  Quite naturally, this has been a fun trip down memory lane.  In the past few days, I’ve finally arrived at the period 1988-89 which has some relevance to this Refuge.

     In an entry dated May 1, 1988, entitled “Wandering around”, I described how I went out to check on the spring migration only to find that there were no migrant birds evident in the woods along Walnut Creek on the east side of Austin so “I reversed [my course] and headed NW”.  It was a fateful choice.  For the previous few years, I had been intently studying the distribution of the Black-capped Vireo throughout it’s range.  The species had only been listed as endangered by the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service the previous October.  I had begun to develop some ideas about where vireos might be found and why (think: geology).  My new NW course out of Austin took me along RM 1431 west of Cedar Park and north onto Nameless Road.  This pathway was inspired by some old sightings of Black-capped Vireos near the intersection of 1431 and Nameless Road by Charles Easley of Travis Audubon Society and by my perusal of some area geologic maps.

     By the time I’d made it up to the Travis/Williamson County border on Round Mountain Road I had seen no patches of really good-looking vireo habitat but had encountered a small list of songbirds, one Sharp-shinned Hawk, and a cooperative Western Hognose Snake.  I came over the gradual divide marking the county boundary and onto Williamson Co. Road 282.  I screeched to a halt just a few hundred yards into Williamson County when I saw some oak brush intermingled with junipers.  I jumped out of the car and listened for a moment...and up piped one singing male Black-capped Vireo!  About a half mile up the road, another stop near some scrubby oak brush at the intersection of CR 282 and 281 yielded another singing Black-capped.  The significance of these sightings was two-fold:
(1) These constituted the first records of Black-capped Vireo in (relatively underbirded) Williamson County, and (2) the locations of the brushy habitats which the vireos had chosen corresponded precisely with my theories of which geologic substrates best support vireo habitat.

     I grabbed a quick celebratory snack in Liberty Hill, filled up with gas, and headed back out onto the narrow county roads west of town.  My wandering eventually led me back onto RM 1869 and westward towards Burnet County.  Just as I passed the Burnet County line, a large patch of shin oak brush presented itself on the south side of the road.  Once again screeching to a halt--there was a lot of that going on that day--I stepped out of the car and was greeted by *multiple* singing Black-capped Vireos!  A mile up the road on the same ranch, more shinnery blanketed the landscape.  I’d hit the motherlode.

     At the time, there were just a few isolated records of Black-capped Vireos in the far west edge of Burnet County on the bluffs of Lake Buchanan, but nothing like this.  I reported my findings later to the newly-formed Biological Advisory Team for the Austin Regional Habitat Conservation Plan, and the rest...as they say...is history.  We determined that the large patch of oak shinnery was on a ranch owned by Donald Eckhardt.  The Eckhardt ranch became one of the early additions to the newly-established Balcones Canyonlands NWR in 1992.  That very same patch of shinnery now harbors the Shin Oak Observation Deck where no small number of visiting birders have tallied their “Lifer” Black-capped Vireo, and around which we continue to manage habitat for the Black-capped Vireo.

     The history lesson?  Keep on wandering and take good notes!

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Below The Line:

Here are some even earlier versions of the wisdom on learning from the past:

     Whoso neglects learning in his youth, loses the past and is dead for the future.

     What experience and history teach is this--that people and governments never have learned anything from history, or acted on principles deduced from it.

* My review of birding journals has all been part of a somewhat obsessive and vain effort to see where I stand in the “Texas Century Club”, an inspired project sponsored by the Texas Ornithological Society to challenge birders to tally at least 100 bird species in as many counties as possible.  [My thanks to fellow writer Bill Reiner Jr. for helping me put that last sentence into readable English.  Any errors are, of course, my own.]  So far, having reviewed just the first 20 years of my birding career, I’ve found at least 22 counties where I meet the century standard, and I’m still gleaning.

     I am partial to the color orange.  Given my birthplace (City of Orange, in Orange County, CA) and my choice of colleges in central Texas for a graduate education, I am beset by good feelings when I settle my eye on almost anything in the color spectrum about midway between yellow and red.  A nice sunset, a migrating Monarch, a lively prescribed burn dancing through a prairie--and orange M&Ms--all bring a smile to my face.  (I also grin at the thought of all the other colors of the candy that purportedly "melts in your mouth, not in your hand".)  But as for orange junipers, ... not so much.




     I'm home for the holidays with a long "Do List" of tasks in the yard.  I have to work fast: The cedar pollen is upon us*.  Along with thousands of other central Texans, I suffer from cedar fever from late December to early February.  When I see the young developing pollen cones on the tips of cedar branches in mid-December, I begin to tense up; I know my time out-of-doors is limited.  If I had enough vacation time accrued, I'd probably spend the whole winter in some warmer, cedar-less landscape.

     It is only slight comfort to know that not every cedar tree carries pollen.  Cedars are unisexual, with male and female flowers on separate trees.  The cedars loaded down with the familiar blue berries are the female trees.  The pollen of course comes from male flowers.  Now in early winter, the sexes are easy to distinguish because any mature male cedar old enough to form pollen cones gradually morphs into the dreaded orange hue.

     We all make choices: My wife and I chose to move into a nice home on a wooded lot which included about two dozen mature juniper trees.  In a bit of cruel irony, as many as 11 of the 15 biggest cedar trees immediately around the house (i.e. right outside my windows and doors) are male.  I guess we lost that lottery, for which the odds of "winning" or "losing" should be 50-50.  I've consulted with author and juniper expert Elizabeth McGreevy about this skewed finding and we have no ready explanation.

     Here's a homework assignment:  Right now while the censusing is easy, put on a pollen mask, go out in your yard or on your ranch, and take a census of all your cedar trees (i.e. the older ones) to see what your ratio of male (small orange cones) to females (blue berries OR green without berries or cones).  The bigger the sample the better.  If you own dozens of acres or thousands of trees, a random sample or a linear transect through a typical stand will be sufficient ... unless you are reeeeeally into counting junipers.  Send your juniper census (number of male and female trees; total sample size) to my work email at chuck_sexton AT fws.gov.  At the end of January, I'll compile all the results and report back on this new citizen science effort.

     After several weeks of suffering--from the pollen, not from statistics--I'll look forward to these same trees turning from bright orange to a darker reddish brown.  That marks the time when the male cones have finally dispensed the last of their pollen and the cones are about to fall off the trees.  If I understand the physiology of this tree correctly, in the early part of the pollen season it is a freeze followed by bright blue skies and a warm sun that will cause the male cones to burst and offer up their grief.  Oddly, late in the cycle, it is precisely another freeze (or a good hard rain) and a gusty day which will put the cones on the ground.  Good riddance.

     Just to leave you on an upbeat note, here are some nicer orange things in the natural world:

* * * * *
"Below the Line"

*   It is common knowledge in central Texas that "cedar" and "juniper" refer to the same trees.  While it is true that all of the juniper we see in the Refuge area belongs to one species, Juniperus ashei, I apply my own grammatical twist on this botanical nomenclature:  When I speak of this woody component in good Golden-cheeked Warbler habitat or when I am admiring some old stately survivor of this type, I reverently call them "Ashe junipers", but when I speak of the same species of plant invading prairies and rangeland, I spit out the vernacular "cedars" with the all the disrespect you'd expect from a long-time Texan.

[As usual, the nice bird portraits are from my compadre Greg Lasley; the rest of the images are my own.]

     Monday, Dec. 14, marked the beginning of a three-week period during which "Citizen Science in Action" is in high gear across the continent.  This is the 110th year of the Christmas Bird Count, sponsored by the National Audubon Society.  Tens of thousands of birders fan out to compile a measure of the early-winter status of birds in their favorite neighborhoods, parks, refuges, ranches, lakes, seashores, etc.


     The Refuge's count is made in a 7.5-mile radius circle which encompasses all Refuge tracts and surrounding lands.


Our Friends Laurie Foss and Shelia Hargis graciously took on the task of organizing and compiling this year's count.  I invite you to check on our Balcones CBC web page for more details of the spectacular outcome produced by our 38 participants on that mild Monday!  (Hint: A record 111 species!)

     As with every CBC, several unexpected species were encountered.  Documentation of rarities, either by detailed written descriptions or by photos, is always important in such endeavors.  Shelia and her team identified two Sage Thrashers on Peaceful Springs Nature Preserve, one of the "hot spots" of birding on private lands within the Refuge area.  Karen Kilfeather was there to get super documentation of one of the thrashers (left) and other finds.  Another good discovery was a Green-tailed Towhee, found by Marjorie Dearmont and the Whitewater Springs team.  We have had a few unconfirmed reports of this species previously, but this adds a solid record for the Refuge bird list.  Another new bird for our overall CBC list was a White-eyed Vireo, a species that is common in the spring and summer but a rare winterer in the Austin area.  (Information was flying around so fast and furious at the countdown dinner that I failed to make note of who reported the "WEVI" or where it was.)  A couple of other reports still being evaluated--Ruby-throated Hummingbird and Sprague's Pipit--would represent more new species for our overall CBC list.

     I was assisted by Mike and Pam Goolsby as we covered the HQ area and nearby tracts.  About 10:30 a.m., we started on the now-obligatory hike up the primitive, back-country trail which follows Post Oak Creek upstream.  Birding was very quiet until we finally stirred up one nice mixed flock along the creek not far from Bottom's Up Hunt Camp (...subject of a future blog).  Among the chickadees, titmice, kinglets, and other birds attracted to my screech owl tape, was one Hutton's Vireo.  This is a species of west Texas and the western Edwards Plateau which had only been recorded on the Refuge once before, on the CBC in 2000 by Bill Reiner Jr. and his team.  I recognized the significance of this bird and worked to see (and confirm with Mike and Pam) all the salient field marks.  After a few minutes of study, it dawned on me that I had my new point-and-shoot camera on my hip!  I fired off about 5 frames of the "vireo", four times documenting the perch from which the bird had just departed.  Though not of Audubon magazine cover quality, my one successful yet fuzzy image of the bird can actually be said to document the Hutton's Vireo, distinguishing our bird--with some technical points of plumage, proportions, etc.--from the similar but smaller Ruby-crowned Kinglet.  For comparison, I found a nice photo from west Texas which shows what a Hutton's Vireo is actually supposed to look like:


     We couldn't have had such a successful CBC without the efforts of our 38 counters and especially the cooperation of several private landowners including the Landherrs, Howisons, Canyon Ranch, Hickory Pass Ranch, Peaceful Springs Nature Preserve, Camp Balcones Springs, and our enthusiastic neighbors in "the subdivision formerly known as Whitewater Springs".  MANY THANKS to one and all!