keely – Page 35 – State of Wilderness

Brazos Bend, Again

Sunday afternoon was drizzly and a bit cold, but here we were, in the truck headed south to Brazos Bend State Park anyway. We were on a mission to retrieve J’s lost binoculars lens cover, and he agreed to indulge my desire to get a few caches and look for a few birds.

We settled on the Old and New Horseshoe Lake part, because that was a trail in which we could accomplish both missions. Last time we were here, we were not near the water, so I wanted to see what the water birds were doing.

Old Horseshoe Lake is pretty much dried up right now, but there was a lot of action going on at New, as well as the larger Elm Lake to the left of the trail. We meant to be moving right along, but got distracted by a hawk flying over and then parking himself on a branch across New Horseshoe. We watched as a gator trailed an American Coot across the water. It seemed like the gator was serious, but at one point he slowed down, and the coot stopped and moved back towards him, like, “whatcha doing now?” It makes me wonder if the gators eat the coots or not, although it seems like it would be a good food source for them. There were a LOT of coots in this lake.

There were also White Ibises feeding across the lake, as well as an egret here and there. Common Moorhen also cruised the water. Our new find of the day was a pair of Blue-winged Teals who moved in and around the coots, feeding at the edge of the lake. We watched the hawk for a while, identified as a Red-shouldered, and then moved off to get those caches.

The caches were great – ammo cans just a bit off the trail, not too hard to get to or find but enough of a challenge to keep us interested. The rangers or volunteers of some sort were driving around the trail on a golf cart, stopping now and then to pick things up, and it was the only thing that interfered with the song and sound of birds. I could hear them, but I couldn’t always see them. If I am going to take this bird thing serious, I really need to learn their songs and calls to be able to identify what is out there on hearing alone.

Our best bird find along the walk was finding a pair of Yellow-bellied Sapsuckers. That was fun. Later, we saw a red-bellied woodpecker. We also saw and probably heard cardinals and the yellow rumped warbler. We saw another hawk, or maybe the same hawk, calling and then perching on a dead tree out on the field to the right as we made our way back. It was a red-shouldered as well, so might have been the same one.

As we passed the New Horseshoe Lake one last time, we found another bird in the lake that got us in a heated discussion trying to identify. It was a goofy looking bird – big and tall, with mostly grey-ish feathers with black markings and a white head. His feathers on his chest stuck out on all kinds of directions, and he looked like an old retired bird, long past the point of caring about what he looked like. After much discussion, combing the bird book, and looking at pictures online, we finally decided he was a Great Blue Heron, although his blue was now a bit faded.

I think we have 87 active caches left in this park that we haven’t found yet, so I am sure we will be back to find them, and more birds, soon.

Species total for year: 44

Spring Creek Greenway: Peckingpaugh Preserve

Yesterday, we were out checking out some places we plan on utilizing to prepare for this year’s Texas Challenge, and we decided on a whim to stop on at the new Nature Center off Riley Fuzzel Road in Spring. This Center is part of the Spring Creek Greenway system, a project managed by the Bayou Land Conservancy. The Spring Creek Greenway will eventually connect thirty three miles, encompassing 12,000 acres, offering protection for this valuable riparian habitat along the edges of Spring Creek. This will make it the largest continuous forested urban corridor in the U.S. The Greenway is 75% complete, and will eventually connect Burroughs Park in Tomball to Jesse Jones Park near Kingwood. The map here suggests it will actually then curve north and go all the way to what looks like New Caney (this discrepancy is the difference between what area will be part of the parks managed by the precincts, and what will be protected preserve land set aside by the Bayou Land Conservancy).

This particular Nature Center that we went to is about halfway, I would say, along that route. The $2.2 million facility was built with funds obtained from the sale of a community center and a grant from Texas Parks and Wildlife. Inside the Center, a volunteer told us about the literature that was available in the front part, which included what we came in here looking for – a map of the trail system. Then she told us about the exhibits they had in the Discovery Center, and my youngest child managed to get in on a short tour/education being given to some other children by another volunteer about the snakes being housed there. They told us that there had just been an Angler Education course, and there were still some animal exhibits on ice that they could show the kids, so we all ended up outside marveling over a small shark and sting ray. Another volunteer held them up and showed us some of the interesting features, then let the children touch them. Also, they had a bin of squid, shrimp, oysters, and other small aquatic creatures that the kids could touch.

After this, we took a short walk around the lake off to the side of the Nature Center. We looked for birds to identify and for a couple of geocaches. If we had time, we could have spent all day out here doing that, but we were on a limited time frame. Looking out on the lake initially, we spied a Great White Heron and Snowy Egret hanging out. A man we ran into at the park at the other end of the lake told us they had been hanging out there together for a couple of months. He also said that a bald eagle has been spotted flying over the lake. He sure seemed to know a lot about the day to day life here in this little corner of the park. I think he was a grandfather who lived nearby and took his grand kids to play here regularly, as he was with some little ones who played with ours as we looked for a nearby geocache.

On the way back to the parking lot, we saw a lot of bird activity. I thought we were seeing a new bird for us, until we looked it up later and realized what we were seeing was the female Eastern Bluebird. We also saw males. I saw two woodpeckers flying about trees together that I am fairly certain were ladderbacks. We also saw Yellow Rumped Warblers and what I think was a mix of Savannah and Chipping Sparrows. Kill Deer peeped as they flew across the lake in a trio. I am sure there were many new birds to us, but we aren’t that good at this yet.

I did identify some species near my house this week, most notably the European Starling. The grackels are out in FULL force, and I noticed when looking at them that the Boat Tailed and Great Tailed are mixed in with the Common. Rock pigeons fly up under the overpass at 99 and the Westpark, as well as other places in town. So with the Ladder-backed Woodpeckers, that brings the year total now to 42.

My younger son and I were most impressed with the Nature Center, although I think the others enjoyed it too. There is so much to see here, and I want to host a geocaching event here to experience it. I am considering hosting events at all the parks that are completed throughout the Greenway system on a rotating basis this next couple of years, so that my caching friends can go out and experience these places too (many of them already have, but not all of them have seen all the locations). This makes me feel excited about the future. I can’t wait to find more caches and more birds!

For more information on the center, see here:http://www.springcreekgreenway.org/naturecenter.htm

George Bush Park Hikes: Series #2

On a crisp winter morning, I met up with a friend from geocaching to head out to George Bush Park. We were specifically after a series of caches off the Noble Road, an old farm road from the turn of the century that was later converted to a three mile stretch of trail. This trail runs from Highway 6 to the hike and bike road leading to the Equestrian parking lot at the end of South Barker Cypress. It was the latter parking area that we parked at around seven thirty this morning.

I carried a lightweight pack and binoculars, but I realized pretty quickly that I was going to have to choose between hiking and caching, and watching birds. Last weekend J and I did a little of both, but we were only after two caches; today, my friend and I were trying to get 15-20 and we had a limited time frame, because I was headed to the Wildlife Center midday for a volunteer training.

The Wildlife Center’s motto is “A place to grow, a place to heal, a place to be wild”, and this is what I thought about this morning during our hike: not about the Center, but about this park. This 7,800 park is reported to be home to about 10,000-15,000 feral hogs, signs of which were apparent to us this morning. We saw several piles of what I believe to be scat from these guys, some quite fresh. We had some discussion on whether it was actually their scat, because there was hair in some of the piles. I was aware that pigs are omnivorous, but not sure if they actually consumed small mammals (I learned later that they will, on occasion). There was also the tell tale evidence of the rooting for food that these creatures do.

There were also other sets of tracks along the path, telling the oldest story of all: the relationship between predator and prey. I didn’t get a picture unfortunately, in the interest of expediency and regret it now. I am fairly certain what I was seeing were the tracks of a raccoon, who was being tailed by a coyote. I am not sure if both made it out alive.

Later, as we got past the curves and headed into the part of the trail that heads straight to Highway 6, we had our first and only encounter with actual wildlife. A doe was grazing as we came around the curve, then lifted her head and watched us for a minute before darting off into the thicket to the right. A few minutes later, an adolescent deer, most likely her fawn, came trotting out of the woods on the left. It was confused for a bit, and I think even mistook us for its mom, because it began running towards us. Then it stopped, and ran back, then towards us, back again, then from side to side along the path until it finally figured out how to also dart off into the right side of the thicket. We hoped he got reunited with his mom.

We also saw a lot of birds out here, but I was unable to identify all of them. We saw and heard crows, robins, cardinals, and sparrows. I was able to identify the Savannah and Chipping Sparrows. With that Chipping and some House Sparrows I was able to identify at J’s family’s house, that brings the bird species total to 39 now (maybe more, need to check my notes).

A place to grow and a place to be wild, that is what this park is; a sanctuary for wildlife in the middle of urban sprawl. We heard the gunshots from the range all morning and wondered if the animals who live here just get desensitized to the sound. Perhaps they never know what guns mean, seeing as that one recreational activity not allowed here is hunting; good news for the feral hogs, not so good news for the homeowners around the park that have yards torn up by these wild things.

Despite the lack of hunting, the deer still have a healthy fear of people. I was a little concerned by the young one running up so close to us before he found his way out into the forest, but the mom was quick to bolt, reminding me of this line from an Indigo Girls song, “they’re coming for us/cameras or guns/we don’t know which/but we got to run”….we just wanted to take her picture, poor thing.

Even though George Bush Park sometimes gets cursed under our breaths for its thorns and rough forest patches, it is still a wonderful thing to have so much land available here where the wild things can live without restraint, and where we can go looking for them by hoof, foot or bike.

What Does the Vulture Say

We were having a talk about vultures at lunch, my kids and I. The older one made a statement like, “no one wants to see vultures,” and the little one wanted to know why. It was postulated that seeing a high number of vultures could be an indication that something is wrong with the environment.

As it turns out, it might be the other way around, for it is the decline of vultures in other areas that may actually demonstrate a natural imbalance. While it is true that in North America, we have made the world a better place for vultures (by the increase in roadkill and decrease in vulture persecution by farmers), this is not a boon seen across the board. In fact, in India, the vulture population decreased by 99% by 2008, leaving very little of these large, although unsightly, incredibly useful birds.

Of all the reasons why these large carrion eaters have been reducing in such significant numbers in India, the biggest reason is the use of Diclofenac, which is a painkiller administered to cattle. The cattle carcasses were a large part of the diet of vultures in that area, and the painkiller was poisoning the birds. The birds do not have a critical enzyme needed to break down the medication and die within three days of renal failure after consuming this meat. The use of this drug was banned in 2006, and numbers show a slight increase between 2011 and 2012, so that is good news. DDT has also played a role, as this pesticide was dumped in high quantities in a national park in order to quell malaria rates. High levels of DDT were being found in the flesh of cows, left for vultures to feed on due to Hindu practices regarding the revered cud chewers.

However, it is not just India that has seen a significant decrease in vulture population. Nepal shares many of the same reasons for decline of the vulture population within its borders as India. Africa has also seen its fair share of vulture decline, also due in some part to the use of Diclofenac, but also due to the use of a pesticide called Furadan that farmers lace carcasses with to reduce herd loss from carnivores. Since each carcass can feed up to 150 vultures, this leaves a huge unintended consequence of the dying off of these useful birds. Some of the deaths are also attributed to the use of vultures by shamans in mystical ceremonies that commonly involve the use of this animals brain in ceremonies. It is believe that the vulture brain (either through smoking, eating, or smearing on the body) imbues on the recipient powers of clairvoyance or increased intelligence. The black market sale of these birds leads to the disappearance of roughly 59,000 birds a year.

In the US, we have also had our losses over the years. During 1946-1970, vulture numbers dropped off, like the other large birds of prey, due to the widespread use of DDT. This pesticide was discovered to thin the shells of these big birds, decreasing the ability of the offspring to survive. However, since the use of this has been banned, the numbers have rebounded, and it seems like here in Texas, you can’t hardly look at the sky without seeing one floating about.

I think it is interesting to note that before 1920, the ubiquitous Black Vulture was not common to Texas. It was not until a change in agricultural practices that they became permanent residents. The truth is also that the vulture population follows the white deer population. Since Texas has the largest population of white tailed deer of all the states, it makes sense that we would also see high numbers of vultures here.

So in our case, seeing the vultures IS something we want to see, because it indicates the health of the system, not the other way around, like we speculated at lunch. It means our wildlife is flourishing, and that pesticides (at leas those that affect the birds) are not leaking into the environment at such levels that they are having an impact on population levels, that our farmers aren’t leaving laced carcasses meant to discourage large predators, and that we don’t eat their brains.

It could just be, though, that no one wants to see the vultures because they are just not attractive birds. Their heads are bare to keep them clean when eating carcasses, but it makes them look funny. They don’t have flashy colors to their feathers, and their eating habits make us feel disgusted. However, they perform a useful task in cleaning up the environment of the collective dead things. Without them, the risk of disease spread goes up.

If you don’t believe me on this, ask India. They now have issues with increasing feral dog populations and water contamination from their lack of vultures.

I myself find the vultures boring and commonplace, but after today’s research (what better way to spend a non-snow snow day), I understand why there are so many of them, and it makes me feel comforted.