field trip – Page 2 – Nature Along the El Camino Real

Field Trip Fun at Mother Neff State Park

April 17, 2023April 17, 2023 Sue Ann (Suna) KendallLeave a comment

By Sue Ann Kendall

Saturday was an absolutely glorious day for a field trip and guided walk through Mother Neff State Park. It’s the closest state park to Milam County, so it wasn’t a bad drive at all for the carpoolers and separate drivers. Plus, we got to see lots and lots of wildflowers along the way!

We were very impressed with the new park headquarters that was built after the original one was flooded badly (some of the park is still inaccessible). There are very impressive native plantings all around it.

Once we were all gathered and checked in, the group motored over to the trail head and enjoyed a walk through wooded areas, led by a knowledgeable park intern who’s majoring in leisure or something like that.

The hike took us to a cave, a cool picnic table in the middle of nowhere built by the Civilian Conservation Corps, a large cave that was used for years by indigenous residents, and a CCC tower that would give great views if the trees hadn’t grown up to block most of it. There was a lot of going up and down involved, so the hike was better for folks with good legs.

Two of our members were not very good participants in the hike, however. Linda Jo Conn and I were too enthralled by all the interesting plants and insects we saw that we could share on iNaturalist. This park is part of the Texas Master Naturalist GTWT Adopt-a-Loop trail project, so we wanted to add observations to that. Also, well, we are just that way. As Linda Jo states, we proceed at the pace of botany.

We found some very interesting plants and were impressed by the variety we saw. I wish we’d been there when the yellow passionflower was blooming. But I was impressed that I remembered what the leaves looked like and found it. We had a blast!

Everyone was pretty tired after we got back, but since I was driving, I forced my passengers to wait while we parked in the trail head for the walk through the meadow that my husband and I had walked last December.

I wanted to see things that weren’t woodland plants, like Lindheimer paintbrush

We didn’t want to make them sit forever, so Linda Jo and I didn’t walk on the actual trail. We got all distracted by a sunny area surrounded by Ashe junipers. It looked like dismal scrub. But NO! It was filled with interesting and rare plants!

And pretty plants, like cobaea beard tongue

I was particularly excited to find a star milk vine. What beautiful, tiny flowers it has. The one Linda Jo was most excited about was a golden-eyed phlox, which is endemic to Texas. The other chapter members said they could hear us whooping when we found yet another interesting plant in the “bare” area.

We ended the expedition with a nice lunch on Lake Belton. We’re very lucky to have such a fun group to do our activities with and the perfect day to do it.

PS: Sorry for the lack of Latin names for plants. I had to hurry to finish this. Then a squirrel blew out our electricity and my Internet router.

Having a Wild Time at All Things Wild

April 4, 2023 Sue Ann (Suna) Kendall1 Comment

by Carolyn Henderson

Eight members and a few friends of the El Camino Real chapter of Texas Master Naturalist toured the All Things Wild Rehabilitation Center near Georgetown, Texas, Saturday morning, April 1. The tour was led by Roger Rucker, Vice President and Director of Education for All Things Wild. It is an amazing degree of service the organization performs for injured and orphaned wild animals and birds in the area. The trip there was an awe-inspiring show of wildflowers.

They take in injured animals and rehabilitate them with the intention of releasing them back to their natural habitat. Occasionally, the injury prohibits the animal from being able to survive in the wild. In those cases, the animal or bird becomes a permanent resident of the facility.

Volunteers and staff also care for and raise orphaned baby animals and birds to adulthood. Once they are of an age to support themselves in the wild, the team releases them as close to where they were found as possible.

All Things Wild is currently housing many squirrels, several opossums, large turtles, some raptors, many baby rabbits – both cottontails and jack rabbits, a nearly featherless vulture, an owl in ambassador training, a Blue Jay, a skunk, and a very large, wing-less white Pelican. They range from newborns to recovering adults.

If an animal or bird cannot be released to the wild, they are made ambassadors for the education programs the staff and volunteers perform. They are trained to be people-friendly then taken to schools or other locations to be used in education programs around the area.

Up until a few years ago, volunteers worked from their homes fostering the animals. With donations from supporters, they have built a large building to house the ill, perform surgery, and manage the organization. They have outside habitats for those getting closer to being released. Just recently, they received some buildings to add to their range. They are building an office and an education room that will seat up to 60 students.

They operate on donations. They can use money or items they are frequently in need of at the place. If you’d like to know more, check out the web site at Wildlife Rehabilitation & Education – All Things Wild Rehabilitation.

Here and There

March 22, 2023 Sue Ann (Suna) KendallLeave a comment

by Catherine Johnson

The last few months have been busy with ice storms, native plant nursery tours and work at our chapter’s Milam Wildscape.

The tour guides Mandy and Brandon taught us about wholesale plant operations and we were able to view many beautiful Texas native plants. The interest in using natives in landscaping is increasing and both businesses are expanding.

Volunteers at our Wildscape have been working to prepare for upcoming educational programs and tours. Hope to see you there.

Thank you to Gary Johnson for driving us to Native Texas Nursery and to Patricia Coombs for taking pictures at Joss Nursery.

Field Trip to Native Texas Nursery

January 28, 2023 Sue Ann (Suna) KendallLeave a comment

by Debbi Harris

Last week, members of our Chapter went on a field trip to the Native Texas Nursery in Manor. The trip was organized by Catherine Johnson, who uses them as a source for many of the plants in our Wildcape. The nursery has 40 acres of outdoor plantings and greenhouses, called casas by the team.

We had a great tour guide, Mandy Pixler, and learned a lot about how native plants are propagated from her.

More information on the trip is found in the captions on the photos below!

It was very rainy and cold, but we stuck with it

The area where they mix up bins of soil was very interesting. Here is where they put the soil into different sizes of pots.

Learning about Biodiversity

September 16, 2022 Sue Ann (Suna) KendallLeave a comment

by Sue Ann Kendall

This is what I intended to post last month and forgot to. Seeing the spoonbills on my property yesterday made me realize I’d forgotten to share this with our Chapter and friends. I hope you enjoy these belated observations.

On August 18, I enjoyed a visit to the Texas A&M Biodiversity Research and Teaching Collections. Pamela Neeley and I drove over and met up with Linda Jo Conn and her granddaughter, who’s high school age, and enjoyed it as much as we did, I think. We were sad that more of our group couldn’t join us.

Our guides were curators Heather Prestridge, an ichthyologist, and Gary Voelker, an ornithologist. They were informal with our small group, informative, and entertaining as well. I had a blast learning about how many specimens they have, how long the collection has been growing (since the 1930s), and how they preserve the animals for research.

Specimen jars. Stop here if you don’t want to see preserved animals and such.

The collections of herps (snakes, lizards, frogs, etc.) are immense. It’s cool to see where they all come from. There is much from Texas but also around the world. They are preserved in formaldehyde.

The fish were fascinating as well. My favorite was the box fish. There were just so many to categorize. Wow. There’s a lot of work for their grad students and volunteers! The other thing they do with the specimens is take tissue samples and freeze them (really cold) for future research on DNA and the like. What a resource this is!

Of course the birds fascinated me. I was probably really annoying with all my questions but wow, there were things here I’d never seen before, like the Hoatzin. What the heck. This bird’s young have claws on their wings!! It’s also called a stink bird, because it digests food in its crop, which is smelly. It’s a really different bird!

Dr. Voelker was great at sharing information about the birds. We saw the largest and smallest owls and an awesome variety of kingfishers, some that were an indescribable blue. Africa has some darn colorful birds.