Passport to Texas

This is Passport to Texas

Being invited to participate in a snipe hunt fills young hearts with anticipation and anxiety. In my youth, snipe hunts were cloaked in mystery; and that’s what made them so exciting and terrifying.

Taken at night to a wooded area, and outfitted with a burlap bag…a flashlight with weak batteries…and a whistle to call for help… initiates would enter a wooded area alone in search of dreaded snipes. And how would they recognize them? They were informed they would know them when they saw them.

Well, before long, panicked whistles and screams from deep within the woods pierced the silence, as vivid imaginations got the best of the young snipe hunters. Eventually everyone, including the hunter, had a good laugh.

Today we know snipe are small, long billed, brownish shorebirds in the sandpiper family. Their habitat includes freshwater marshes, ponds and flooded fields. They breed across much of North America, but like to spend their winters in the southern states, including Texas.

Snipe are game birds here, and the season to hunt snipe ends on February 13th. So if you want to go snipe hunting, and not be left holding the bag, time is running out.

That’s our show… made possible by the Sport Fish and Wildlife Restoration Program…working to increase fishing, hunting, shooting and boating opportunities in Texas.

For Texas Parks and Wildlife…I’m Cecilia Nasti.

 

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This is Passport to Texas

Birding is a year-round activity in Texas that’s growing in popularity among all age groups. The wide variety of species found here keeps it interesting.

Texas is Mecca for birders around the world because we are on the migration flyway for the entire Western hemisphere.

Valerie Staats is a birder and past Executive Director of the Travis Audubon Society. She says birds have very simple needs.

Birds need food, shelter, water, and a place to raise their young.

Ms. Staats offers simple ways to entice a wide range of bird life into your backyard and neighborhood.

In the ideal world if you want to bring birds to your backyard, you’re going to have several feeders offering different types of food. Have water available- if anything, that’s more important than food. The water alone will bring a lot of birds to the backyard. One thing that people often forget is that the birds need a shelter, and by that I don’t mean a home per se, but a way to be protected from their predators while they’re enjoying what you’re offering in the backyard.

Interested in birding? Of course you are! Find everything you need to start birding on the Texas Parks & Wildlife website.

That’s our show for today…thank you for joining us… our show is engineered by Joel Block at the Production Block Studios in Austin.

 

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This is Passport to Texas

At a Corpus Christi housing project, the imagination of a young boy takes wing. See his story on the Texas Parks and Wildlife Television series. Writer producer, Ron Kabele.

This is about a 14 year old boy who lives in a housing project, his name is Joe. I heard about Joe from Ken Rice, a coastal biologist, and he said this kid loves to look at birds, and he looks at the birds at the housing project.

One day I was walking and I looked back here and there were just birds flying inside the couch and they’ll go behind it for some shade. And they got some of this wood for their nest…some of this, too…but I think they’ll put this around their nest, inside, makes it softer.

Even though Joe has fished all of his life, he’d never seen the rookery islands. So, one of the things that Ken Rice does is he takes people out on these environmental type classes. And Joe and some of his friends from Glen Moss Village went out.

Whoa. Dude, the birds over there. Look! There’s a pink one.

An exposure like this isn’t enough to turn into wanting to become a biologist, but, when they see a bird, they understand maybe how the bird is a part of nature, and how they are a part of the environment, too.

Thanks Ron.

That’s our show… For Texas Parks and Wildlife…I’m Cecilia Nasti.

 

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This is Passport to Texas

This week the Texas Parks and Wildlife television series shares a hopeful story on the bald eagle, [SFX: bald eagle call] a bird that Producer, Abe Moore, says was once in trouble.

Really in trouble. And it came off the endangered species list in 2007. As far as the eagles that live in Texas year-round, we have like, 200 nesting pairs. We were down to four back in the seventies; four nesting pairs. We visit with a landowner down near Victoria that has an eagle nest on his property, and he gets to see them raise their eaglets every year.

They’re a wild bird that is doing its thing right out there in the open—right up there in that tree. It’s nice to be able to keep that kind of thing going.

We also visit with some professional photographers that follow a nest that’s a little more out in the open. Out near Llano, right along highway 29, there’s a nest that the eagles have been using since 2004.

There we go. (clicks) Oh, there goes the baby with it’s wings again. Beautiful. (clicks) That’s good. (clicks) There you go, baby. (clicks).

So, it’s just an amazing bird. And we also, in the story, look at the future of eagles in Texas, and kind of some of the struggles its going through.

Thanks, Abe.

That’s our show… we receive support for the series from the Wildlife restoration program…For Texas Parks and Wildlife…I’m Cecilia Nasti.

 

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Passport to Texas from Texas Parks and Wildlife

The red-cockaded woodpecker is an endangered species found in the East Texas Piney Woods region.

Ricky Maxey, a wildlife diversity biologist for TPWD, says the red-cockaded woodpecker is unique because it’s the only woodpecker that makes its home in live pine trees.

It is a keystone representative of the upland pine savannah, so it’s a really fascinating specialized bird.

Because of demands for timber and an increasing urban landscape, there are fewer mature pine savannah forests. And it’s because the woodpeckers are so specialized that they can’t adapt to the changing habitat.

It does not adapt to loss of its habitat because it occupies a very specialized niche. That’s one of the primary reasons why this bird became rare to the point that it had to be listed under the endangered species act.

Maxey says, right now, the woodpeckers have a stable population thanks to forest conservation efforts by TPWD and the U.S. and Texas Forest Services among others. But even private landowners can do their part by creating suitable habitat for the woodpeckers.

If you’re a landowner, you can produce habitat for this species. We’ll be glad to work with any landowner to provide management recommendations to do just that.

That’s our show…with research and writing help from Gretchen Mahan. For Texas Parks and Wildlife I’m Cecilia Nasti.

 

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