July 2019 – Nature Along the El Camino Real

Eastern Screech Owl Encounter

July 24, 2019July 24, 2019 Sue Ann (Suna) Kendall3 Comments

by Ann Collins

Editor’s note: We’ll be sharing a few stories from Ann’s nature observation notebooks over the coming weeks. We hope you enjoy them!

Driving home from a meeting the other night, almost to the house, just about at the chicken house, a small bird fluttered to the ground.

What the heck, I thought, is that?

It landed softly on the road and just sat there looking straight into the car lights. The little bird was a soft grayish-brown and looked fluffy. It was six to eight inches tall, according to my estimate.

By then I had identified him a an Eastern screech owl. I’ve seen them here before and heard them even more often, but I’d never had such a good look.

We sat, mesmerized, looking at each other for a bit. Then he fluttered up and flew into the woods across from the chickens. He didn’t seem to be a strong flyer.

I hope he stays around. I’m not trying to raise purple martins or anything else, so everyone is welcome to hang out here. I don’t know if he is a nest robber or a predator of smaller birds. Whatever. I’ll just let nature take its course and be happy with that!

July Wildscape Project Update

July 19, 2019 Sue Ann (Suna) Kendall4 Comments

by Catherine Johnson

The Wildscape garden project is doing great, despite the recent heat. It is nice to be able to irrigate every inch the way we have it set up. We hope you enjoy the photos of some of the flowers in bloom now.

Butterflies and hummingbirds have found the flowers and are arriving in good numbers.

We’re happy to report that more items have been donated to the garden, including some solar water fountains that will provide a soothing sound and the moving water source many insects and birds enjoy.

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Purple Martins: A Field Trip

July 13, 2019 Sue Ann (Suna) Kendall2 Comments

by Sue Ann Kendall

Thanks to some impressive detective work, a group of folks from the El Camino Real Master Naturalist group, along with some Master Gardeners and friends, got to visit what may be the largest privately-owned collection of purple martin houses in the US.

Who, What, Where?

For years, people had been telling our resident purple martin expert, Donna Lewis, that there was “a guy in Milam County” with a whole lot of purple martin houses. She never could find out where the “guy” was, until the intrepid Cathy Johnson got wind of where he might be. So, they called him up and visited the place recently. It’s probably the highlight of Donna’s birding career.

Donna and Cathy just had to show all these purple martin houses and the mega-house to the rest of us.

Well, of course, they knew we’d all want to visit, too, so they arranged for us to visit the beautiful ranch property of Mike McCormick, a ways outside of Buckholts in Milam County.

Field Trip!

We headed out this morning and were treated to a drive through some of the most beautiful countryside in this area. Cathy and I were in the lead car, and were really relieved to find the place, since Apple Maps had no idea where it was.

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Bats at the July Chapter Meeting

July 12, 2019July 13, 2019 Sue Ann (Suna) Kendall1 Comment

We got to enjoy some really great information on bats around the world from Cindy Bolch at our July Chapter Meeting in Milano. She brought lots of interesting handouts and gave us a really good overview of why bats are our friends.

A few highlights that I learned:

There are mega-bats and micro-bats.

The mega-bats are all found in Asia and use sight and smell to find food. Flying foxes are a primary example. They are just about as adorable as an animal can be (that was an opinion), and they have many specific adaptations to prey (fish, birds, etc.) or terrain.

Micro-bats are the ones here in the Americas and elsewhere. They primarily eat nectar, fruit, or insects and find their food through echolocation.

There are six types of bats found in Texas, though most of us are primarily familiar with the Mexican free-tailed bats that spend summers in this part of Texas eating lots and lots of insects. They spend days in caves (or under bridges as in Austin, Round Rock, and even Milano) and fly out at night to eat. Most of the ones we see here are females with pups.

The wings of bats have “fingers” spread out in them, making them very flexible and maneuverable. Bird “fingers” are all fused at the tops of their wings. Most bats mainly use their toes to hang on where they perch, but like I said earlier, some have long claws to catch prey, and a few, like vampire bats, can actually walk.

Also at the meeting, Linda Jo Conn received her 2500 hour pin.

Even if you already knew a lot of bat information, you couldn’t help but be amazed by the variety of bats in the first video Cindy showed, and you couldn’t help but be charmed by the sweet baby bats in the second video. They look like flying dogs. Aww.

I know I’ll be telling lots of people the tidbits I picked up at the presentation!