Just a quick note to let everyone know that our Endangered Species Program office at the USFWS headquarters has completed the editing and uploading of a special podcast on Balcones Canyonlands NWR.  You can download the podcast on the following page:

Endangered Species Program: Partnership Stories

Also available for viewing on this web page are a dozen photos of the Refuge highlighting our habitats, species, and programs.  Enjoy!

    Mediterranean Geckos have become a fairly common sight around houses and garages in Central Texas.  Although some folks might be creeped out a little by these critters running over the walls or scurrying out of sight near a porch light at night, rest assured--they are completely harmless.

    As well, they are very beneficial and very efficient at gleaning insects that are attracted to your porch light.  In fact, at my home in NW Austin, if I turn on a porch light and hope to photograph any moths that might arrive, I have to be "quicker than a gecko" to get my pics before the moths become a gecko's late night snack (...or is it breakfast for them?).

    Geckos are fun to watch, but frankly, after seeing dozens at my house and seeing them regularly on buildings at the Refuge (e.g. right outside my office), I get rather ho-hum about them.  Just another gecko.  However, our new biologist Jim Mueller (more about him later) brought a gecko to the office in a small critter cage today and it offered us an unusual opportunity to view and photograph a very important but rarely observed part of a gecko: It's toes!  Like most lizards, geckos are very adept at running up and down walls and even running around "upside down" on an overhang or eve.  Surprisingly, they can even walk on smooth glass or plastic.  How do they do that?  With uniquely adapted toe pads.  This involves minute bristles called "setae" and some interesting physics known as "van der Waals forces".  I'll have to defer to the experts on Wikipedia to explain this; I invite you to read the section on "gecko toes" here.


    Here is photographic documentation of their specialized footwear:


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Below the Line:

    You can read more about the Mediterranean Gecko in the following articles:

"Life History of a Successful Colonizer: The Mediterranean Gecko, Hemidactylus turcicus, in Southern Texas." Kyle W. Selcer.  1986.  Copeia 1986(4):956-962.

"Factors Affecting Range Expansion in the Introduced Mediterranean Gecko, Hemidactylus turcicus." Kenneth J. Locey and Paul A. Stone.  2006.  Journal of Herpetology 40(4):526-530.

    Today (Sunday, Sept. 26) we're enjoying one of the first noticeable cool fronts of the Fall season and it feels like hawk migration to me.  One of the most amazing wildlife spectacles of North America is the annual Fall migration of raptors through Texas.  If you ask the average Texan on the street, they'd probably understand that, yes, some hawks show up in the Fall and Winter, but unless you've peered for hours at the puffy white clouds rolling over the Texas Hill Country or plopped yourself down on a bluff overlooking the Nueces River just above Corpus Christi at this time of year, you may have missed this.

     I saw no major movement today but this is a good time to prompt everyone to watch the weather for good migration movements on days like this.  Any time from right now through mid-October is prime time.  When conditions are right, if you see one hawk cruising overhead, a closer examination may actually reveal hundreds or thousands--and they may be just dots against the sky.  I stare up at the sky in hopes of glimpsing these pre-eminent wind sailors.  I get an empathetic rush of adrenaline when watching the graceful critters zip by.  I'm earth-bound and envious: This is one of the most tantalizing displays of the mystery of avian migration.  Last year we were lucky enough to glimpse a major movement on October 2 when 4,000-5,000 hawks sailed over the HQ in a matter of a few minutes.

     Anticipation is everything: Hawkwatching is something of a feast or famine type of activity.  Above all, raptors are smart at conserving energy and utilizing the prevailing wind currents to move from point A to point B.  That means waiting until the strong cool fronts of the Fall to catch a ride.  So on a hot September day when south winds are still bringing moist Gulf air over Central Texas, you can spend a long time looking at the sky and see nothing more than the local vultures moving to and fro.  But when these cool fronts are coming through, hold onto your hat!  Keep in mind also that the rumpled landscape of Balcones Canyonlands provides excellent topography for updrafts on which to "catch a wave".

     Even on a good day with conducive winds such as today, other factors play a part in either concentrating the migrating hawks in certain areas, spreading them out over the landscape, shifting them from this ridge to that ridge, and so forth.  You might watch the sky for a few hours and see hawks dribbling by in ones and twos, then all of a sudden a mass of Broad-winged Hawks or Swainson's Hawks will stream overhead, perhaps  "kettling" up in a classic vortex when they find a good thermal or updraft, or streaming by high on set wings.

     As many as 10 to 12 species of hawks might be seen on a good day here in the eastern Edwards Plateau.  Sizeable numbers of the following species can be expected:  Broad-winged Hawk, Swainson's Hawk, Sharp-shinned Hawk, Cooper's Hawk, and American Kestrel.  Smaller numbers of just about everything else will spice up such a day, including Red-tailed and Red-shouldered Hawks, Ospreys, Northern Harriers, Merlins, and Peregrine Falcons*.  Hawkwatching and hawk identification are the subject of a number of field guides and special publications.  A handy chart for identifying the common species can be downloaded from the Hawk Migration Association of North America's webpage here.  I suggest checking out the following useful websites which have great information on these topics:

     Texas Hawk Watches

     Birds of North America Account of Swainson's Hawk Migration

     Hawk Migration Association of North America

     Hawkwatch International

     Smith Point Hawk Watch and Gulf Coast Bird Observatory

     For this Refuge, Doeskin Ranch provides an excellent setting to scan the adjacent ridgelines and broad expanse of sky overhead.   Some day, I'd hope we'll have the opportunity to develop and open a hawkwatching facility up on a high point of the Flying X tract, but that's a long way off.  In the meantime, almost any high hill in Central Texas with an unobstructed view to the north and northwest will allow you a chance to intersect this amazing feathered energy flow.

Happy Hawkwatching!

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Below The Line:

    * Don't get fooled by all the rest of our feathered friends which might be moving on the same winds:  Silent dark V's of cormorants are a regular sight on such days.  If a "V" is honking, you might have geese (one of 3 or 4 possible species).  If they have long legs and necks and are "tootling" [yes, I made up that word], then you're probably underneath a flight of Sandhill Cranes.  If they are huge and white with black in the wings and are swirling gracefully in a big kettle, then your probably looking at American White Pelicans.  And if they have long legs and necks and are black and white and are "tootling"...CALL ME IMMEDIATELY!!  (This is more likely in the latter part of the Fall migration but we have had three confirmed sightings of Whooping Cranes over the Refuge in the past 10 years!)

 

 

     "Red Katydid" might sound like an entomological oxymoron but it’s a real critter…and that’s a bit easier to say than the Central Texas Leaf Katydid or Truncated True Katydid or Paracyrtophyllus robustus, all of which refer to the same thing.

 

    Moreover, they’ve made regional news recently because of an outbreak of the species west of San Antonio in Medina County and nearby areas.  I hasten to add that this is not an invasive species from some distant continent.  In fact it is a native species--actually an endemic Texas species like twist-leaf yucca or the Golden-cheeked Warbler--and this is a natural occurrence.  Every few years or so, local populations of this katydid build up to what might be considered nuisance levels.  This is not an uncommon phenomenon when certain insect populations are recovering in good years after a stretch of drought.

     From a dietary standpoint, they tend to be oak eaters (even though the one in Lee Elliott's photo to the right is on a juniper).  During such outbreaks, they can defoliate acres of trees.  However troublesome that may sound initially, it is apparently a very transient phenomenon since the katydids die off nearly as quickly as they arose and then the oak trees heave a big sigh of releaf…ooooh, sorry about that…I mean a big sigh of relief, and then put on a fresh crop of foliage.

 

 

 

    When I first heard about the Medina outbreak a few weeks ago, I emailed a request to staff and the various field researchers working on the Refuge to let me know of any sightings of this species in our area, thinking we could serve as an early warning for an outbreak that might occur here.  Within hours, researcher David Morgan sent me a picture of a nice pink katydid and said, “They’re all over the trees at the Flying X and on the Rodgers tract.”  So much for early warning.  Happily, they have not defoliated us quite yet.  [Update: July 8, 2010.  Thanks to everyone for notifying me that you are seeing these katydids.  I have all the reports I need; no more messages or forwarded pictures are needed!]

 

 

 

 

    The most intriguing thing about this particular katydid is that it occurs in basically two color forms:

In a regular year in normal numbers, these ‘dids are green like so many of their Tettigoniidae brethren*.  (That’s the family of true katydids--I just felt like showing off.)  However, when populations build up to these outbreak levels, the predominant color morph is pink or red:

I haven’t delved into the scientific literature to learn why or how this happens, but like so many other growth issues, it probably has something to do with hormones and diet.  I’m just guessing.

     You can learn a lot more about this katydid on one of Mike Quinn’s excellent invertebrate web pages here.  A recent news article on the event in the southern Edwards Plateau can be found in the June 7^th issue of the AgriLife News from the Texas AgriLife Extension Service.

     These pretty blue flowers belie a sinister potential: This is blueweed or Viper’s bugloss (Echium vulgare). a noxious weed in the Borage family, found in pastures and hayfields in the East and Midwest.  It may pose an incipient threat to farming and ranching in Central Texas.

     With the exception of one native wildflower, blueweed is not easy to confuse with anything else:

  

Non-native, Invasive Blueweed or Viper's Bugloss:  Eliminate "WIth Extreme Prejudice"!

     The annual or biennial blueweed plants grow to about 1 to 3 ft tall and are bristly all over like a bull nettle.  Caution:  Don’t try to pick or handle this plant without leather gloves!  The leaves are simple, narrow, and oblong to lance-shaped (compare with native "Blue curls", below).  Blueweed blooms from April to September with masses of sky blue flowers about a half-inch across which are arrayed in coiled or curled spikes on the leafy upper stem.  You can see more images of blueweed on the Wikimedia Commons here.  Probably the only native species with which it could be confused is Blue curls (Phacelia congesta):

  

Native Blue curls:  DON'T PICK THIS!

     Note the complex lobed and toothed leaves of Blue curls as well as the flat-topped arrangement of the coils of lavender flowers on a bare stalk.  Blue curls is typically found at the shady edge of dense woods, often in sandier sites or creek banks.  By contrast, in our area blueweed has shown up as an invader of highly disturbed sites such as caliche fill, gravel parking lots, and roadsides.  Thus far, it doesn't seem to compete well in a healthy native grassland.  Let's hope it remains confined by our tough native flora.

     Blueweed and I have a history.  In early June 1997, Eddie Hertz and I were looking for remnant prairie plants along the railroad right-of-way on Texas 29 between Liberty Hill and Burnet when we spotted a couple of clumps of blue flowers that neither of us recognized.  That was about 5 miles west of Bertram on the north side of the road.  We stopped and picked a specimen for the Refuge collection.  When we got back to the office and identified the plant, red flags went up.  Our standard reference work at that time, the Manual of the Vascular Plants of Texas by Correll and Johnston had this ominous description:

     “Native of Europe, long ago introduced into the e. U.S. and now a serious pest in

the Northeast and Middle Atlantic States, west to South Dakota, Kansas,

and reported (but not seen by us) from Texas.”

     Eddie and I returned to the spot and ripped up both of the two plants on the roadside, bagged them carefully for the trash, and scanned the area for other plants.  We saw none.  We notified several botanists and herbaria at the time of our discovery.  We checked that spot on TX 29 for the next few seasons and saw no more blueweed.

     Fast foreward to May 2010.  Someone spotted a pretty blue flower in the yard of the new Victory Baptist Church on Texas 29….about 5 miles west of Bertram....and brought it to the attention of Sammye and Mike Childers.  They did some research, identified the plant, and red flags went up once again.  Unfortunately, a couple of acres of the church property had the pretty blue flowers all over them.  Clearly, Eddie and I had overlooked some plants which were probably across a fence on private property back in 1997.  In recent weeks, volunteer efforts have been organized to put a dent in the population of blueweed on the church property.  The species doesn’t seem to have spread far in 13 years, but it’s already making conservation groups and the county extension agent a bit nervous.  There are plans to start an herbicide treatment soon and future volunteer control efforts will probably be needed.  I suggest keeping in touch with the Highland Lakes Chapters of the Texas Master Naturalists and the Native Plant Society of Texas for further information.

     IMPORTANT NOTICE:  If you think you’ve seen this flower on a roadside, ranch, or any other place, please notify the AgriLife Extension Agent for your county.  Here are the local contacts for the Refuge area:

          Burnet County Extension Office

          512-756-7463

          Burnet-TX@tamu.edu

          Travis County Extension Office

          512-854-9600

          Travis-TX@tamu.edu

          Williamson County Extension Office

          512-943-3300

          Williams@ag.tamu.edu

Obviously, if you observe this species on any Refuge tract or in our immediate area, please notify me ASAP.

     On Friday, May 21, I took a break from work and from the Texas Hill Country and went wandering south of Austin to explore the birdlife in the area around Seguin and Guadalupe County.  I should mention--and this will come as something of a shock to some of you--that I don't often go birdwatching during my time off.  I watch birds...and everything else in the natural world...in my free time, but I had mostly gotten out of the habit of chasing birds.

     But this Spring has been an exception to my sedentary ways of recent years.  I have been inspired by the "Texas Century Club" effort of the Texas Ornithological Society to see at least 100 species of birds in each Texas county.  I'm not aiming at all 254 Texas counties, but I thought I'd see if I could meet that mark in each of the 15 counties which make up the bulk of the "Austin Area Checklist Circle"--the area within a 60-mile radius of the Texas Capitol building.  Perambulation in moderation, so to speak.  But that's still a huge area to explore--about 11,309 square miles if you do the math.

     For Guadalupe County, I could find mention of only 53 species of birds I had seen in past excursions.  I had passed through the county en route to other destinations innumerable times, especially along Texas 123 racing towards the Texas Coastal Bend and its abundant birdlife.  But Seguin and environs had rarely enticed me to stop and explore.  So that Friday, I was going to make amends for past transgressions--literally--and see what avian offerings the area had.

     I had done my homework: I studied county road maps and Google Earth, chatted with local birders, and scoured previous postings on TexBirds to see what might await.  I had a plan...  Maybe that was the problem: I had a "plan".  [Insert your favorite cliché here.]

Max Starke Park in Seguin, one of my birding destinations.

     I got a very early start, arriving in the eastern corner of the county pre-dawn, early enough to hear a Common Nighthawk in its last foraging bout over an open pasture and to flush a Chuck-will's-widow off a paved county road--the last pavement I would see for several hours.  Along FM 1150, then onto Nixon Road, then off the pavement onto Dix Road and then to Nash Creek Road which is a major connecting route to, ... well, to the other end of FM 1150.  I stopped several times to listen to the dawn chorus.  By 6:30 a.m., even before the sun came up, I had tallied 20 species or so.  Northern Cardinal, Bewick's Wren, Mourning Dove, Painted Bunting, Ash-throated Flycatcher ... Wait a minute!  That's not an Ash-throat singing, it's a Brown-crested Flycatcher, its South Texas cousin and one of the rarest breeding birds on this southern fringe of the Austin checklist circle.  Woo-hoo!  That got a big asterisk in my field journal.

    Then somewhere between that Brown-crested Flycatcher and an anonymous farm gate about 2 miles down the road, I lost that field journal.  I apparently made a note about another dawn singer, set the journal on the hood or bumper of my truck, got distracted by another bird or some darned wild thing on the roadside, and then jumped in the truck and drove away.   Since I was scribbling notes in the journal at almost every listening stop, it was only a few minutes later that I realized I was missing the journal.  I backtracked on the road and couldn't find it.  I spent the next 3 hours walking that two-mile stretch of road and never found it.  A yellow-green journal in a sea of yellow-green foliage.  I was envisioning a cow in an adjacent pasture stomping my journal deep into the mud, or a county mower shredding it like so much other mulch on the roadside.

     Well, to make a long story just somewhat shorter, a passerby--a local resident on Nash Creek Road--retrieved my journal and mailed it back to me just a few days later.  It was probably just a bit of odd timing; he'd found the journal in the middle of the road but hadn't realized that the journal's owner was that out-of-place stranger a short ways down the road, raising his binoculars and staring off into the distance.  No harm, no foul.  Just great consternation on my part for several days.

     I mention all this just to get around to the topic at hand:  What would have been lost had that journal never turned up?  It was the latest of 63 volumes of my field notes, but it was less than half filled with my scribbles.  I had just started the volume on April 1 and had already photocopied all the Refuge field notes for April.  I hadn't copied my own personal birdwatching notes for other April days, nor had any of May's notes been duplicated.  Would that Brown-crested Flycatcher on Nash Creek Road have disappeared into anonymity?  Of course not.  It is more a measure of my unhealthy reliance on my journal-crutch.  Precisely 27 pages of my life's work, spanning just over 21 days, would have been lost.  And for that, I wasted three perfectly good hours on an early morning birding jaunt, and several days of mourning.

     For the record, here are some of the earth-shaking, history-making data for May that might never have seen the light of day, some of which were fortunately documented by photographs:

--  May 2:  I jotted down a second-hand report from David Maple that he'd seen a male Lark Bunting in breeding plumage near the Barho tract, a rare spring sighting.

--  May 3:  I briefly resighted a Lazuli Bunting that Rob Iski had found on April 29 on the Post Oak Creek Trail; first I'd ever seen on the Refuge.

--  May 3:  A male Bell's Vireo was singing on territory near the photo blind, the fifth species of breeding vireo on the Refuge this year (along with Black-capped, White-eyed, Red-eyed, and Yellow-throated).

--  May 7:  I found a new karst feature, a hole in the ground, on the Rodgers tract and named it the "Grape Joint".  At Doeskin Ranch in the afternoon, I discovered that I had missed the blooming of our Shooting Star flowers along the Rimrock Trail; make a note to look for them in mid-April.

--  May 9:  SCA Student Elizabeth Lesley found her dog playing with a dog-slobber-covered Coral Snake in her yard.

--  May 10:  On the Martin tract, an Eastern Hognose Snake feigned death for me like only a hognose snake can.

--  May 14:  Visited a large private ranch in n.w. Burnet County where conservation banking is being proposed.  On the distinctive Paleozoic limestones in that region, it's difficult to figure out the dynamics of the warbler and vireo habitat, but our colleagues in the regulatory side of FWS want some answers.

--  May 16:  Helped with a breeding bird survey on the Bamberger Ranch and spent the rest of the day birding in Blanco County to pad my county list there.  Best bird of the day:  Cactus Wren near the community of Sandy.

--  May 17:  Lots of painted lichen moths and bird-dropping mimic moths at the porch light at the office in the morning.

  

  

Three or four (or five or six?) moth species,

all with the same survival strategy.

--  May 20:  Photographed a huge female Dobsonfly at our office door.

--  May 21:  Guadalupe County birding trip:  ***Brown-crested Flycatcher (2+ singing in dawn chorus)...

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Below The Line:

     Oh, How did my "Century Club" effort on the quiet roads of Guadalupe County turn out?  I almost met my goal: By the end of the day, I had added 40 new species to my county list, ending the (frustrating) day at 93 species.  I missed Blue Jay, Orchard Oriole, and Indigo Bunting, leaving something for a future visit.

     In the wee hours of April 29, in the full-moon-lit night sky, a Northern Mockingbird decided at 3 a.m. to give a concert outside the window of the cabin on the Refuge where I was staying.  That’s not an uncommon event, well known to (sleepy and annoyed) Texans through the ages.  But do that around a Texas birder who primarily tallies species by ear, and you have an interesting dynamic: a pop quiz of bird sounds.  I am regularly amused and impressed when a mockingbird faithfully reproduces the territorial calls of some of our other local birds.  The titmouse, cardinal, bobwhite, blue jay, and chuck-will's-widow are always on the playlist.

     But every few years, I hear a mockingbird that clearly took lessons from a set of neighbors that bear a geographic imprint from a distant land.  With nothing better to do at 3 a.m., I took pen and paper, sat out on the porch, and began to tally the species I could recognize from this particular individual.  In rough order of the abundance of repeated calls or song phrases, here is some of what my ear detected from this mocker in a ten-minute sample (...and these weren’t rough approximations of the sounds; these were faithful, head-turning, CD-quality utterances of diagnostic sounds of these other critters):

     Black-crested Titmouse, 18 calls

     Ash-throated Flycatcher (2 different phrases), 15 calls

     * Great Kiskadee, 13+ calls

     * Green Jay, 12 calls

     * Long-billed Thrasher, 10 calls

     Northern Bobwhite (covey call), 10 calls

     Blue-gray Gnatcatcher, 10 calls

     * Audubon’s Oriole, 6 distinctive low whistles

     * Cactus Wren, 5 or more calls

     Greater Yellowlegs, 5 calls

     Western Kingbird/Scissortail, 5 calls (dawn calls)

     House Wren, 5 calls

     Ladder-backed Woodpecker, 4+ calls

     Barn Swallow, 4 calls

     Bewick’s Wren, 4 calls

     * Curve-billed Thrasher, 4 whistles

     American Kestrel, 4 calls

     Blue Jay/Red-shouldered Hawk, 4 calls

     * Couch’s Kingbird, 3 calls

     * Northern Beardless Tyrannulet (?), 2 calls

     Rock Wren (?), at least 2 calls

     A large portion of the sounds of any mockingbird are generic or unattributable to one bird species, and the concert goes by so fast that I’m sure I overlooked or misclassified some sounds, especially in my groggy 3 a.m. state of mind.  Notwithstanding these sources of potential error, there is just no way that this particular bird would have been exposed to this combined set of distinctive sounds outside of deep South Texas, especially the subtropical species marked by an asterisk (*).  Some of these birds range uncommonly as far north as San Antonio, but assuming that there might be some gross correlation of the frequency in the mockingbird’s repertoire with the commonness of the species around the songster, we’re talking about an origin in the Lower Rio Grande Valley at the closest (e.g. from the environs of a place such as Santa Ana NWR or Laguna Atascosa NWR).

     Mockingbirds are not generally regarded as a migratory species, but the young of all species relocate to begin lives of their own.  Those post-fledging dispersal distances for most birds may range from a few hundred yards to a few dozen miles, but there will always be the occasional traveler who decides to pack his bags and look for greener pastures, woodland, or forest, much farther afield.

     Here from Greg Lasley's Nature Photography website are some cropped images of a mockingbird surrounded by the probable South Texas neighbors from whom it apparently learned a portion of its repertoire.  Hover your cursor over each image to see the species name.

  

  

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Below The Line:

     Now imagine you are charged with doing a bird census in a patch of South Texas brush where you will tally all species in the dawn chorus by the songs you hear around you…and the Northern Mockingbird is the most common and noisiest species within earshot.  I’ve been in this setting; it can be a complete frustration and a completely laughable task.  On a route through acacia-mesquite shrublands somewhere south of Uvalde many years ago, I routinely had results at each of several stops such as: “Mockingbird, 6+; Killdeer (?), Green Jay (?), Couch's Kingbird (1 or 3?), thrasher sp. (?), …”

     Another source of confusion on a South Texas breeding bird census comes from the roughly similar songs of the Northern Cardinal and its close relative, the Pyrrhuloxia, both of which can be abundant.  I was forced to make up a new “species” on my tally sheet--Cardiloxia--for songs I could not distinguish.