Volunteers of the El Camino Real Master Naturalists and the Little River Basin Master Gardeners met together Tuesday to collaborate and fill the card catalog drawers of the Sow & Grow: Milam Seed Library (located in the Cameron Public Library).
Hard working seed sorters
We meet monthly to provide Milam County residents with free access to native seeds. We also stock a free-standing seed library at the Milam Wildscape. We will be expanding and adding a second seed library at the Lucy Hill Patterson Memorial Library (Rockdale) later this month. This allows Millam County residents the opportunity to support pollinators and create their own natural habitat at home.
With fall approaching, it’s a great time to get your seeds in the ground to produce beautiful blooms in the spring. Just like nature does it, flowers drop their seeds onto the ground at the end of their blooming season. The seeds rest in the soil all winter and use a natural chilling process called cold stratification so the seeds sprout easily once spring arrives and the soil warms up. That’s how we get beautiful wildflowers in the spring!
Come get your seeds today! Planting native maximizes wildlife benefit, conserves water, and creates essential pollinator habitat directly sustaining the food supply and our quality of life.
Cameron Public Library hours are Monday – Thursday, 10 am – 5 pm.
The Texas Master Naturalist, El Camino Real Chapter invites all local lovers of the diverse and fascinating landscape of Texas to join us beginning in January for our next training class.
We have been gathering a selection of Texas plant, animal, water, and land experts to guide students through an in-depth introduction to our surroundings, with a special focus on Milam County and its immediate surroundings. Plus there will be field trips for immersive learning. You’ll never look at the land around you the same way again!
Learn about native plants and insects
As an accredited Texas Master Naturalist, you’ll get to attend monthly meetings, engage in fulfilling community outreach, and work on projects that benefit life around Milam County. Plus there’s a yearly annual meeting for more learning and networking opportunities among Texas Parks and Wildlife staff, AgriLife Extension staff, and nature lovers from all over Texas.
Participate in community projects
To learn more about the training and get on the list for more information, contact Alan Rudd at aerudd@yahoo.com or 979-220-3328.
It was a peaceful Sunday morning and I’m watering my plants to beat the summer heat when something unusual caught my eye. I wasn’t sure what it was from a distance….just a brown mass on some weeds. But on careful inspection, I got a couple of close up pictures and discovered it was a Rabid Wolf Spider, with her newly hatched babies covering her back!
Contrary to the name, the Rabid Wolf Spider does not have rabies and it is not dangerous to humans ….. as Eric Neubauer, our member and Wolf Spider expert, has already educated our Chapter. It is famous for exceptional maternal care. The photos I captured show hundreds of newly hatched babies (spiderlings) that the mother is carrying and protecting. They ride there for a few weeks until they are ready to live on their on.
I sent my picture to a few friends. One said, “OMGOODNESS! Do not send that picture to people who don’t like spiders. That’s like a nightmare!” But you, my Master Naturalist friends, are not terrified and I’m sure you’ll find this observance quite interesting.
Today was a happy day for this blog. We have a new member of the blogging crew. Let’s welcome Terri Brickey to the team! She’s an experienced blogger who just needed a refresher course in how WordPress has changed since she last worked on her own blog. Now when I’m unavailable, we have a helper! And she’s going to contribute more blogs of her own nature observations. We had a fun afternoon looking at the nature where I live and planning future activities.
Terri is also a fan of iNaturalist observations
In nature news, I saw a spider today. It was one of the largest bold jumping spiders (Phidippus audax) I ever saw! Look at those charming green eyes!
a cutie pie
These spiders are often kept as pets, but I enjoy them in the wild. They have nested in our mailbox many times. They’re solitary and carnivorous. Their ability to move quickly and see extremely well makes them quite successful native species. They have iridescent chelicerae, which is one reason I enjoy them so much.
Earlier this week, I worked on adding up how many bird species I observed at our Milam County property, the Hermits’ Rest last month. I keep notebooks that record the species I see and/or hear with help from Merlin Bird ID every day I’m at home. I was happy to have seen 126 different species as the migration season drew to a close. I was wondering if there was a seasonal pattern, because I intuited that the spring and autumn migration seasons would bring in more species.
Speaking of birds, I’m not sure if this sparrow nest addendum was on purpose.
I don’t remember exactly what I did, but somehow Excel asked me if I wanted an analysis of the data. Well, yes, I did, because data analysis using spreadsheets is not one of my skill sets. I had all kinds of questions that I’d like answered, like what were the most common species, which species have been here every month, etc.
Like, am I a bird?
Suddenly, BOOM. a new tab opened on the spreadsheet. It had all the answers. Something had analyzed my spreadsheet. Oh no, I found a use for AI! Damn! I couldn’t not look at the results. I really wanted to know.
Right on top, there was a summary of my ranch bird data:
The sheet is a month-by-species presence matrix: an X means a bird was recorded in that month. Coverage spans Dec-23 through May-26, with 2,804 total monthly presence marks. May-25 is the richest month (129 species); Jul-24 is the quietest (60 species). 18 species appear in every month, suggesting reliable year-round residents. 30 species appear in only one month, highlighting possible migrants, one-off observations, or rare sightings.
That’s all the stuff I wanted to know! To top it all off, there were tables and charts! Look at this.
I was wrong about the seasons. Winter, with all those sparrows, has the second most sightings, after what I expected…that spring gets the most.
This one is probably my favorite. I wonder, though, how we got so many species last June, when the previous June, July, and August were so low (and this June is starting off pretty slow). What I really think is that I need another couple of years of data to see these patterns better. Here’s another graph:
These are the 18 birds we see every month, with two that occur almost every month. I am not at all surprised at the species I see here. I wasn’t sure that Eastern Bluebirds were here every month. I don’t see them every day, but I guess they are here. Okay, one final fascinating thing.
These are supposedly the birds we’ve only seen once. That’s pretty interesting, but look! There are weird spellings on the birds, which I assure you are spelled correctly on the original spreadsheet. I probably shouldn’t have asked for a red border. I wonder what a Swalver is? And I think those last two are both Virginia Rails. But it appears only once on my list. I went too far and AI mauled my data.
What are my conclusions? In summary, AI is helpful upon occasion, but AI also is inclined to do weird stuff to the data. You have to keep your eyes open. Here’s the actual data of birds that were only seen or heard by Merlin Bird ID once. (This does not include a couple of obvious errors where the location got messed up or some other Merlin glitch happened; you’ve got to keep an eye on Merlin, too.)
American Golden-plover
American Tree Sparrow
Barn Owl
Bay-breasted Warbler
Black Capped Chickadee
Black Tern
Black-and-white Warbler
Black-necked Stilt
Boat-tailed Grackle
Canada Warbler
Caspian Tern
Chestnut-collared Longspur
Chuck-Will’s Widow
Common Raven
Crested Lark
Greater White-fronted Goose
Hooded Warbler
Indian Peafowl
Lark Bunting
Olive-sided Flycatcher
Pyrrhuloxia
Rough-winged Swallow
Semi-palmated Plover
Semi-palmated Sandpiper
Spotless Starling
Thick-billed Longspur
Tricolored Heron
Virginia Rail
Western Wood Pewee
Yellow-green Vireo
Dang, I’m ambivalent. But now I have some helpful insights about my bird data. I am pleased about that and look forward to continuing with monthly analysis and getting more information.
I was not quite so pleased when I sleepily ventured onto the screened porch to guzzle some coffee before my 8 am standup (once again it went 30 minutes over). I went to set my coffee down and spotted a snakeskin on the arm of my chair. You know I’ve lived here a while, because all I did was ask Lee if he put it there. Nope. I set the skin on my big turtle shell where it looks quite decorative.
It wasn’t a big one.
I guess the rat snake left the way it came in when it realized there were no birds or rodents to snack on. Ah, it’s always something!
Nature Along the El Camino Real 