We are gearing up for the second Nature Days event, which will be each weekend in November. There will be lots of opportunities to get volunteer hours and interact with the public.
Treat yourself and visit the Wildscape now, as the fall flowers are almost ready to bloom. Email me at cpc69earth AT gmail.com, and I will meet you there to show you some ways to get hours or to get seeds for yourself.
Now is also a great time to take pictures. The Monarch and Swallowtail butterfiles have arrived.
For those of you who are not (yet) members of a Master Naturalist chapter, I just want to share how much you can learn and how amazing the people you meet can be. Last night was a great example. Our Chapter Meeting speaker was a young PhD candidate named Amanda Beckmann. She studies Rio Grande wild turkeys at Texas A&M. El Camino Real Chapter member and turkey enthusiast Cindy Rek introduced her and shared how she met Amanda thanks to her Master Naturalist connections. Here are my notes from the presentation.
Amanda shows us where her turkey feather samples came from.
Wild turkeys live here in the US and northern Mexico, while Ocellated turkeys live further south in Mexico and in Central America (they look like a mix between a turkey and a peacock). There are five subspecies of wild turkeys. Turkeys were domesticated in North America two separate times, and soon they were being moved outside their natural range.
In the 1920s turkeys were eliminated in most of their natural range and attempts to reintroduce them in the 1940s didn’t work. There was more success using translocation and introductions starting in the 1950s to today. Around 5 million in 2014.
There are now Rio Grande turkeys in the Western US and Hawaii. All kinds of turkeys are moving around, and hybrids are happening. Hunting all five subspecies of turkey is called a Grand Slam. Amanda’s research is to help map the subspecies using genetic data collected by hunters. She is interested in what we can learn about Rio Grande turkeys as opposed to the Eastern.
Notice that she has a cool turkey shirt on!
Baby turkeys are poults. They eat insects (older turkeys eat mostly vegetation). The breeding system of males involves gathering in large numbers called a lek. The Easterns don’t have as much of a lek, due to fewer open areas to group in.
Amanda’s research has looked into the effect of domestication and feral environments versus urban and wild turkeys, in different populations.
She also shared with us this resource for further reading: Illumination in the Flatwoods, which is a book and PBS documentary on poult behavior. The link is to Amazon.com.
After the speaker, we held our usual meeting. I was struck by how much work goes into each meeting (I’m glad I was there to help our substitute sound man and A/V guy in his first solo outing!). The decorations our hospitality team sets out are always so pretty (this week was a beach theme). And it always impresses me how much hard work our members do to get their annual recertification pins! Plus, our hard-working record-keeper, Lisa Milewski manages to keep track of our hours, order pins, and make sure we have a clue as to what we are doing with our volunteer time. She’s always so cheerful, as is our President, Carolyn Henderson, which you can see in the photo. She can herd cats with the best of them!
Eric Neubauer got his pin last month, but had his official photo last night.Gene and Cindy Rek also recertified for 2022 last month.And this month, Connie Anderle got her pin. It’s a lightning whelk!
While I’m gushing, I want to say that there were many kind things said about Donna Lewis, whose blog posts you all enjoy right here. She made the 10,000 volunteer hour milestone recently. That’s an incredible amount of finding monthly speakers, taking care of birds, speaking at events, writing blog posts, and much, much more. It’s great to have her as a friend and mentor in our chapter. We will get a photo of her NEXT month, I hope!
Members and visitors enjoy our meeting. We are lucky to have them all.
We had visitors at our meeting, too. You are welcome to come any time you’re in Cameron on the second Thursday of the month. We’re at the Episcopal Church meeting room with potluck starting at 5:30 and the speaker at 6. Come join us!
I saw something this morning that was very sad and showed just how the weather and our actions as humans can help or harm the other living creatures that share our earth.
I had just gone out (7:00 am) to my garden to fill up all the bird baths and water containers that I have out to help the birds and other creatures find water. I also put out bird seed.
Just as I opened the gate, I looked across the garden to see a Cottontail rabbit standing on its hindlegs to drink from a bird bath that was half empty. Its little ribs were showing the impact of the drought… I was very moved by the sight of it. I was happy that I had many low-level water containers already out in different areas.
This is why we need to put out more water containers for wildlife now. Some of these containers need to go on the ground for the mammals, snakes and others who cannot get up to a bird bath on a pedestal.
I am going to put more out today. I searched for anything I could use. Yes, even a frisbee can hold water.
You do not need to clean the containers every day. Just put fresh water in. You can clean the containers once a week or every few days.
Put the water under the shade if you can. Anything to keep it cooler. This goes for the Hummingbird feeders too.
Does putting water out for animals matter? YES, if you help even one living thing to survive, you have made a difference.
We have to start doing, not just thinking about doing something.
I hear this too often: don’t worry someone will do it… We are the someone. So, make a difference today.
Early this morning (July 21), I was putting out my bird feeders when I heard rustling going on in my pollinator garden. For about a week I have seen evidence of an armadillo doing their thing in the garden. Some of the little critters’ actions are very beneficial to the garden. The soil is aerated, and the grub worms are eaten and removed.
But the other action is not so good. The armadillo is also pulling up some of the remaining plants I have left that the drought has not killed off. So that is not so good.
Anyway, I had not been able to find the perpetrator just yet. So, I looked and there inside the fence was a young armadillo. We will call her Amy. I rush around the fence and open the gate to my garden. I thought I might be able to herd her out the gate to my pasture.
This is not Amy, but it IS a running armadillo! This is by Brandon Adams on iNaturalist, just his second observation!
Also, I might add that our little 13-pound Papillon Mix dog was also outside for his morning constitutional. I kinda forgot about him.
Well, herding an armadillo is not easy. They are fast and do not cooperate with the program. After 20 minutes, I finally got Amy to the gate opening where lo and behold…Cujo was waiting!
The excitement was about to begin. Our little pup decided to chase the armadillo back into the garden and around and around everywhere. The dog is barking, the little Armadillo is hollering and I am shouting to the dog. What a crazy sight it must have been. I wish I had a video of it.
I had to catch our little dog, take him back inside the house and start to herd Amy back towards the garden gate again.
All this took about an hour. What a way to get some exercise. It was not too good for my bad back. BUT, no animal or human was hurt doing the event.
Now, that’s how a Master Naturalist wrangles and saves a cute little Armadillo.
Both parents are still alive and feeding several babies.
It was so hot yesterday that the parents moved the babies out to get cooler air and moved them back into the nest at night.
I have added a cover to keep sun off their nest and remove it at night so nothing jumps on it to crash the nest down. I will start putting out water dishes surrounding my yard for when they fledge.
