Turks Caps Still Blooming (at least pre-freeze this week)

Sue Ann (Suna) Kendall1 Comment

By Carolyn Henderson

Turks Caps are easy to grow from the little red apple-looking seed pods they put out in late fall. I have verified that through an experiment I decided to undertake last December 2022. 

I harvested the seed pods from a very large, pink Turks Cap at the El Camino Real Master Naturalist Wildscape at the Bird and Bee Farm on FM 334 with the hope of growing some in my yard. Turks Caps naturally have a vivid red flower. These had been modified to bloom a light pink. The one at the wildscapesits right next to an even bigger Red Turks Cap.

I googled how to process the seed pods. It was recommended to put them in the refrigerator whole until late February or early March. In late February of 2023, I then did as recommended and removed the seeds from the red pod. Each pod produced quite a few seeds. I planted 16 of them in seed starter packs. I should add that I also took a baby plant from the Pink Turks Cap and put it in a pot at the same time I took the seed pods. I planted one full pod in the flower bed where I intended to put all of them. It is a heavily shaded bed which Turks Caps are known to like. The potted one was getting 6 hours of sun a day.

All of them grew. The potted one grew very tall since it had a head start, I think, and bloomed a lot. Butterflies and bees are very fond of the blooms. I moved the starter plants to a flower bed in my front yard in late March. The full pod plant grew at a faster pace than the seeded plants, but all of them did grow. They grew the most in the shadiest part of the bed. 

The whole pod plant bloomed first of the ones in the bed. About half of the others bloomed in the fall. The blooms were all pink – at first. To my surprise, I went to water them one day, and one in the shadiest part of the bed was also blooming red at the same time it was blooming pink. The potted plant had pink blooms throughout the season. The others native gene pool came through. It would appear that they can be planted in any manner I tried.

All of them were still alive up to the freeze. I fully expect them to come back in the spring – even a small one my son weedeated down because he thought it was a weed. It re-sprouted quickly. What I really want to see is what color they bloom.

Getting the Purple Martin Apartment House Ready to Open

Sue Ann (Suna) Kendall5 Comments

by Donna Lewis

Hello all my Martin Friends in Central Texas.

I last showed you how I got my gourd rack ready for the return of the Martins.

Now let’s look at readying the apartment house for the Martins.

It has been cleaned, emptied of all nesting materials and covered last August when the Martins left this area. Then the house was lowered down and secured till the next season which usually starts in Central  Texas in late January and on.

At my site, February 14th is the normal time for my friends to return.

Once again, the first scouts are normally males looking to get a nest they like. They will then start singing trying to attract females to the site. It is a beautiful song.

Right now I uncovered the house. I inspected it to make sure no wasps, spiders or anything else had taken up residence since I last closed the house.

I then slide in the nest box that I have put fresh dry pine needles in all of the 26 compartments. I also have an early arrival door that goes over the openings. It has only the door for the birds to enter. When the summer heat has arrived and there are babies in the house, I switch the doors to ones that are made with more ventilation.

It can be extremely hot inside the houses. That is why I have aluminum houses painted white to reflect the heat as much as possible. So now, I recover the house and keep it as low as it will go.

When I hear the Martins arriving, I remove the cover and roll it up. Then I only open a few holes at a time. That will keep some of the House Sparrows from taking over. It is absolutely a requirement to keep them out. They can ruin an entire colony by killing the Martins.

So right now is the time to get new or existing ready to open at a moment’s notice. It’s kinda like a fire drill. So naturally, the weather is going to be cold, windy and rainy. That is why you want to do what you can while your hands are warm.

So my timeshare is OPEN, come on in!  I just love the Martins and all birds.

I am part of all that I have met.

Alfred, Lord Tennyson

Spider Hunting on Alligator Creek

Sue Ann (Suna) Kendall4 Comments

by Eric Neubauer

Sorry to miss the last meeting, but it was prime (for January) wolf spider weather in the early evening and I had unfinished business down near Alligator Creek.

Two images are attached. Both are adult males and would be considered large wolf spiders with a body length approaching a half inch. One is Tigrosa georgicola, a common species around here. I’ve seen them near the creek several times.

The other [P111694] has been baffling me after I found the first one on New Year’s Eve. Field identification guidance is fairly well developed for the larger wolf spiders, but there were reasons for eliminating all of them. I’ve found three now, so the first wasn’t an oddity.

Originally, I thought it might be Alopecosa, which only has a few images on the internet. At present I’m thinking it might be a morph of the other species I found there, Tigrosa georgicola. If I was still taking typical wolf spider photos, that is dorsal views only that weren’t highly detailed, it would have ended up as “something in the Schizocosa ocreata species group” and that would be the end of it.

As it is now, I can’t get beyond subfamily Lycosinae but am favoring a rare morph of an existing Tigrosa species or much less likely an undescribed Tigrosa species. Considering all three were found in the same area, they could all be siblings. Their mother would be proud.

I suppose there could be another option: a hybrid of Tigrosa georgicola and Schizocosa perplexa but I’d think the two are too unrelated to produce offspring.

Extra Help for Birds in Winter

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by Donna Lewis

So, we have some very cold weather upon us.

Some of you who are originally from the North may think it’s not cold. But those of us born in Central Texas think even barely freezing is terrible. I am one of those people.

I can hardly bear it to go below 50 degrees. I hate it. It makes me crazy to worry about our wildlife friends.

But, they are adapted more than we think.

The birds have a harder time finding food when it’s cold. That is because the insects they like are not moving around.

One way we can help during this time is to put out suet for them. You can make your own or purchase it. I found that making it is messy. So, I bought some. Now is the time to put it out.

It needs to go in suet holders and placed near feeders. You can make your own holders and make them suit your location. A suet holder can be as simple as a small cage made from hardware cloth.  Anything that a bird can cling to. Many species will come to a suet feeder. Even woodpeckers like them.

The suet provides needed energy to help the birds keep warm.

Right now, I am waiting for a new product to arrive that keeps hummingbird feeders from freezing. As soon as I receive it, I will put that info out for everyone.

So don’t forget our feathered friends…

“I cannot do all the good that the world needs, but the world needs all the good that I can do.

Jana Stanfield

A Local Bird Project

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By Sue Ann Kendall

Since we’re not getting many submissions lately, I’ll go ahead and write up some of my little naturalist projects. Too bad I don’t get volunteer hours for this kind of stuff, but I enjoy it anyway, because it gets me out in nature and my data is useful to someone.

Where I listen to birds.

What I’ve been doing involves using my eyes and ears to track the bird species in an area of northern Milam County about a half mile in diameter around my property. It contains pastures, woodlands, ponds, and a creek.

Mmm, fish

I’m keeping a record of what birds I observe with my eyes (I do try to get photo confirmation on iNaturalist for unfamiliar birds, but I trust myself to identify the two vultures I see as well as crested caracaras. For listening, I use Merlin Bird ID, which is really quite accurate (only twice has it found birds that shouldn’t be here, and who knows, the wind could have brought them in).

It’s a mockingbird, not a loggerhead shrike.

I use Merlin for between half an hour and an hour a day, and I have three places I usually listen. Mostly I listen between 8 and 10am, depending on my schedule, though I occasionally listen around dusk so I can get owls (barred and great horned so far).

I have a bird journal that my spouse made for me. I record weather notes as well as how many birds I hear each day. I also note birds I get to observe up close or with my binoculars, and any new arrivals.

Where the research part comes in is that I have started a spreadsheet that lists each species I observe each month. I’m looking forward to spring migration to see what passes through as well as to record when winter residents leave and summer ones arrive. I miss the painted buntings and their friends, though the twelve kinds of sparrows here do keep me on my toes. Yes, twelve.

Current birds observed

By the end of the year, I’ll have a good idea of the patterns here in this small area. My hope is to keep observing for a few more years, so I can see how climate or big weather events affect this area.

I’m a black vulture.

I’m going to put in another plug for the Merlin Bird ID app on my phone. All the observations go into the eBird database, since it’s from Cornell Ornithology Labs. You can contribute photos as well as record sounds of birds. I say sounds, because it identifies mourning dove wings correctly!

Sound ID told me this one’s a ladderback woodpecker.

I’ve learned so many bird calls that enrich my life. I drove my spouse crazy yesterday identifying all the birds on the Nature PBS show yesterday. There was one persistent Phoebe. I now know Carolina Chickadees have many more songs and calls than I’d realized and that we’ve had a few Black-capped Chickadees drop by.

Some of our sparrows. Mostly white-capped, some house sparrows, maybe a Harris’s sparrow in there.

The part I find funny about this app is that it refuses to identify chickens, Guinea fowl, and turkeys, at least at the Wildscape. The last one confused me, because they are native. but maybe it “knew” these were at a facility for raising turkeys.