I visited this nature sanctuary location for the second time today. We wanted to go check on a geocache we hid in there together about sixteen months ago. When we hid our cache, it was the only one in this little wooded oasis of 17.5 acres in West Houston, in the Memorial area. Now there are three more, and we found those other three today while out there.
We also brought our new field guide for birds, and tried to identify the ones we saw. Even though our field manual (National Wildlife Federation’s “Field Guide to Birds of North America”, 2008 version) is broken up into bird family sections and has great pictures, it is hard to use it to identify on the fly. I was trying to flip through quickly to find the one we had in the sights with the binoculars.
We spent about an hour or two walking around out there, looking down for caches and up for birds. On the way out, we picked up some literature at the cabin, some that had upcoming events on it and one that listed the common birds found at the park. This last one helped confirm some of our sightings.
Species seen at park today: Blue Jay, Northern Cardinal, Tufted Titmouse, Carolina Chickadee. Possibly Inca or Mourning Doves, since that is what the sheet lists as residents of the sanctuary, although both J and I feel, after comparing our field guide pictures to what we saw, that the doves we saw by our geocache were Eurasian Collared Doves.
The trail that leads to our particular cache was actually closed, although the trails leading to the other three are actively open. This trail, and pretty much the whole back part of the park, is closed mainly due to dead trees from this year’s drought.
This history of this little nature sanctuary is interesting. The property was purchased in 1926 by Edith Moore and her husband. They hand built the cabin and structures on the property, and raised pigs there. When Edith, now a widow, was close to the end of her life in 1974, she did not want the family farm to be swallowed by the city, as everything else around had been. So she willed the property to the Aubodon Society, with the promise that they would retain the original structures and allow nature to live freely there.
More information on the Houston Aubodon, special programs, and the sanctuary can be found here: http://www.houstonaudubon.org
Last week at work, I saw an unusual bird hanging out in the mid-foliage range in our little mini-forest that borders one side of the property. It was striking in appearance, and of course I wanted to solve the mystery of what it was, since birds have been on my brain lately. Without a field manual, I was reduced to googling bird websites and images until I found a bird that looked like what I saw.
The image that matched the most was for a prothonotary warbler. However, the websites I was reading about this bird on suggests that our area is not within the typical range for this one. So I started to think I was chasing another “zebra” and investigating other similar looking warblers.
However, I did learn something interesting about this bird while I was snooping around online. This little bird was central in a House of Un-American Activities trial as evidence of Alger Hiss being a spy. Also, it helped a certain junior senator named Richard Nixon climb his way up the political ladder.
Apparently what needed to happen in the trial to help convict Alger Hiss was to link him to a man named Whittaker Chambers. Nixon and his team were trying to prove a link between Hiss and the Communist Party. Chambers had fingered Hiss as a spy for the Communist Party, but Hiss denied any involvement and any knowledge of Chambers. Finally, after some days of back and forth involving cars and pseudonyms and whatnot, it was Hiss’s quick admission of his seeing the prothonotary warbler, and Chambers telling Nixon about the sighting the day before, that helped link them together.
After a second day review of birding websites, I found one that had an interactive map for different species with sightings colored in in various parts of the world. For this species, there was a clear band of sightings going from Sugarland to Pasadena, of which my work is right in the middle, so I think after all, I too might have had an unusual sighting of this bird.
Maybe I shouldn’t run off and tell everyone about it, though. After all, that evidence could be used against me in a court of law. 😉
This past weekend, we went camping at Lake Texana State Park and had a great time. This park is about two hours southwest of Houston, off of Hwy 59 in Granado.
We wouldn’t normally go camping back to back weekends, but this trip was a special one. We had committed ourselves to helping with the boy scout troop of a co-worker of mine, members of which were working on their geocaching merit badge. Some of the boys had not heard much about geocaching, and some needed help with certain items on the the requirement list.
Example of Lake Texana Geocaches
Our family of four helped out by giving an hour long introduction to geocaching, as well as loading the troop’s donated GPS units with the 17 caches in the park we wanted to find. After the talk and explanation of how to use the units was over, we headed out on a hike with this troop to find some of the ones we loaded for them together, so we could give them helpful hints along the way.
There were about eleven boys in the troop, plus three adult leaders, myself and J, my two boys, and three of our dogs along for the trek. We started on the Bobcat Tracks trail near the park headquarters, and headed north. Eventually, we came to a turnoff for the Alligator Cove trail heading southeast, then hooked up with the southern end of the Texana Trail. Caches we found along the way included: Bobcat Track, Matthew 7:7, Corner Post, Gimpy’s Cache, Big Man Pig Man, TxGCC11 Texana, Ha Ha Charade You Are, Head Down a Pig Bin, and R U A Texa”CAN”. It was a lot of fun watching new people get all enthusiastic about the game.
Before the last cache, my co-worker had to turn the younger boys further on down the path to complete a five mile hike requirement. My little boy and some of the dogs were worn out, and so we stopped here for the day, after 2.5 miles and about two hours worth of hiking around.
After this, we went back to the campsite. The boys and I wandered down to the waters edge and looked at animal tracks, trying to figure out the stories of the wildlife who passed this way. On our walks to the bathroom, we got to see some of this wildlife for ourselves: a few armadillos and white tailed deer.
The lake had shrank considerably since last time J was here (this was our first time here). He asked a ranger, who said the lake was at 30% capacity, following this year’s drought. Normally, the waters would have been up to the platform edging of our campsite, but now we had more than 500 feet of marshgrass and sand to explore. A short time later, we grilled hamburgers, played Uno, and roasted marshmellows over the flames of the camp stove J gave me for Christmas (burn ban was in effect, so sadly, no campfire) for our s’mores. After a couple of s’mores and Sasquatch sighting stories, the boys were ready to lay down in their tent for the night, and I in ours. A barred owl or two called in the night as we nestled in our sleeping bags for the night.
The morning arrived wet with dew and mist. Birds came fluttering around the campsite, making little bird tweets, calls, and coos. We cooked a warm breakfast of bacon, spam, , warmed tortillas and eggs while a brave cardinal fluttered close by, watching. A Carolina Wren sang a morning song for us in the brush. J spied a Forster’s Tern dive into the waters for a fish and awed.
My favorite part of the weekend, the part I keep replaying in my head, happened after breakfast. The boys and I went down to one of the fishing piers, hoping we could drop a line in there (no such luck), and as we started to walk up the pier, a huge bird, which had been perched on the pier railing, took off and flew right past us, then swooped down into the marsh grass below for a kill. It was a beautiful specimen of a red shouldered hawk, a dark red along the body, with sharp black and white striped wings.
We had seen a great number of hawks on the way in to the camp, and we are still not sure what kind they were. Road hawks, maybe, red tails or coopers hawks possibly, and one we stopped to take a long look at I am almost certain was a ferruginous hawk, but this was the most amazing of all of them. My only regret is that J didn’t get to see it, as he is the one who would appreciate it even more than I did. I was being annoyed for petty reasons and had not invited him, necessarily, to join the boys and I down at the pier. Because of my petty selfishness, he missed out on an experience that certainly would have burned in his memory the way it has in mine, and for that I am sorry.
I was also sorry that we didn’t bring rain gear with us when we went on another geocaching hike a short time later. We found a few more caches, but more than half a mile from the trailhead, it began pouring down rain. Our idea of letting the tents dry out in the morning sun proved to be futile, as we ended up having to pack wet gear in a hurry to get home.
What I am not sorry about, though, is insisting we go on this campout, even though it meant missing an annual geocaching party that J and I have not missed in the several years we have been caching. I am also not sorry we went to this park – for Lake Texana is full of natural wonder, birding pleasures, awesome geocaches, and now, fond memories.
Today we went hiking at W.G. Jones Forest Recreation Area. This park is located off 1488, just east of I-45, north of the The Woodlands, Texas. It offers 1722 acres of multi-use trails for hiking, biking, or horseback riding.
Today we were on foot, with our GPS in hand, looking for geocaches. In the past year, about fifty new caches have been hidden out this way, mostly in this series of caches hidden by LogDawgs named for presidents. We found five of these today, and a couple of others in the park that were not part of the series, one of which has been on my “radar” for a long time.
This last one I mention, “Woodpeckers Retreat”, was a tough one to get to, but not a tough one to find. It required about 350 ft of “bushwacking” – the term for going off the trail and having to force your own way through to an area past overgrowth. On our way back to the trail after finding this cache, J was a little ahead of me and I was trying to keep an eye on his moving figure in the woods ahead of me when something large and brown flew past me. I watched it briefly, then caught up with him, where he was standing with his binoculars out, trying to get a good look. We didn’t get a picture, and it is hard to say for sure because we never got a good look at its face, but I think at this point (after wasting an hour or more googling owls tonight) that it was an Eastern Screech Owl.
This weekend, the weather in Texas finally turned from the scorching hot drought conditions to something akin to fall, with cooler temps and a nice good wind, brought in from Tropical Storm Lee. Unfortunately, when you combine the drought conditions with a strong wind, you get wildfires. And Texas has gone wildfire-crazy this weekend. We are ON FIRE down here! The eastern side of the state has been hit hard. The past two days, firefighters have been battling blazes in Bastrop, where a 16 mile long fire is sweeping in a southernly direction from the state parks down. Little fires have been cropping up in Magnolia, just east of where we were today, and there was a controlled burn going on north of us, in the Lake Conroe area. This forest we were in today, in fact, had several controlled burns recently. We saw the evidence of that. Mostly, though, we felt the evidence of all these fires, past and current. The air was warm and a little hard to breathe in, feeling heavy in our chests.
Today we were getting our “nature therapy”. I’ve been reading this book, Last Child in the Woods, about the importance of nature in the lives of children, and in all of humanity, really. I spent a little time discussing that book today, and the restorative effects of a walk in the woods. I am preaching to the choir, though; my partner here is the one who states on his Facebook page that “Nature is my Church”. I thought about that a little, today, too; how when I go to church, I feel like my soul is wiped clean, but when I spend time in nature, it is like my mind is wiped clean. Maybe that is what he means – that feeling – or maybe it is the feeling of awe at the complexity of God’s creations.
Today, the wind was spectacular. It was whipping the tops of the trees around, creating this glorious, relaxing music that needs no musical accompaniment or vocal melody. When I was looking at our mystery bird through the binoculars, I was watching it whip this big tree around in the background, green leaves flying in a complicated dance. I never can record it to share it with others, but here is a picture of the scenery, so imagine for yourself the sound, feel, and sight of the wind making these trees dance.
Yay for the smell and feel of fall in the air. Boo for wildfires and drought. The pond at the front of the park, where I usually see people fishing, is all dried up and cracked. But the weather is turning crisper, and hopefully we will see some rain down here soon, and camping season is coming right around the corner, and I am very excited for the chance to go on long hikes, bike rides, caching adventures, and camp out weekends with my wonderful partner and young sons.
there.
Species seen at park today: Blue Jay, Northern Cardinal, Tufted Titmouse, Carolina Chickadee. Possibly Inca or Mourning Doves, since that is what the sheet lists as residents of the sanctuary, although both J and I feel, after comparing our field guide pictures to what we saw, that the doves we saw by our geocache were Eurasian Collared Doves.
1926 by Edith Moore and her husband. They hand built the cabin and structures on the property, and raised pigs there. When Edith, now a widow, was close to the end of her life in 1974, she did not want the family farm to be swallowed by the city, as everything else around had been. So she willed the property to the Aubodon Society, with the promise that they would retain the original structures and allow nature to live freely there.
