Passport to Texas

This is Passport to Texas

To hunt ducks, you need to know where to find them.

People know where ducks typically are—along the coastal zone, maybe in the playa lake region of the Panhandle—but oftentimes they don’t think about these other places.

And those other places might surprise you, says Dave Morrison, waterfowl program leader at Parks and Wildlife.

Had we not been surveying places like the Blackland Prairies and Rolling Plains, people wouldn’t understand that there’s a large number of ducks in Texas on the stock tanks out in the central part of Texas. Sometimes we’ll see upwards of 800-thousand birds there. Those numbers actually, a lot of times, rival the numbers of ducks we count on the coast.

Biologists are presently conducting the annual mid-winter waterfowl survey, where they visually count and ID birds throughout the entire state, in a small plane 150 feet overhead. It helps them understand the birds’ movement, which they discovered is weather dependent.

You get conditions that are dry on the coast, but you get a hurricane that pushes a lot of water up on that brush country, puts a lot of water—guess what—a lot of ducks show up there….that otherwise people wouldn’t know they’re there. They say, well, the ducks aren’t here. Well, yeah they are. They just moved. Habitat conditions forced them into other areas. So, it gives us the ability to better understand where do birds go under different circumstances.

That’s our show…we receive support from the Wildlife restoration program…working to increase shooting and hunting in Texas.

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

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This is Passport to Texas

It’s time for the annual mid-winter survey of waterfowl.

Mid-winter surveys are pretty much a snapshot in time that states conduct every year the first week in January.

Dave Morrison is waterfowl program leader at Parks and Wildlife. He says the survey gives biologists an idea of how many of what species are “on the landscape.”

And, what it does for Texas, it gives us a comparison of what Texas has within the Central Flyway. Typically, when we do the mid-winter surveys, compared to the other nine states, seventy percent of the ducks are in Texas during that snapshot in time.

And this is good news for Texas duck hunters, because the survey can tell them where the ducks are.

It provides an opportunity for us, when people start questioning—well, there’s no ducks in Texas—well, we can say ‘no…here’s what it shows.” Because our surveys are designed to be able to detect changes over time. So, if there was a significant decline in numbers of ducks, we’d see it. But, by and large, we’d say, ‘well, they may not be where you’re at, but we know where they’re at. They’re over here.’

See what I mean? What factor moves ducks to unexpected locations? Find out tomorrow.

That’s our show…we receive support from the Wildlife Restoration Program…working to increase shooting and hunting in Texas.

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

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This is Passport to Texas Outdoor Stories

When you love the outdoors, you may be hard pressed to come up with a single moment in nature as being the most memorable of your life. Texas Highways Editor, Charles Lohrmann, took on the challenge.

When you asked me to describe one of my most memorable Texas outdoor moments, I thought about a particular amazing sunrise over the gulf in Padre Island, and then sort of a psychedelic sunset at Big Bend. And then, one afternoon I was out birding, and saw a bobcat who seemed to watching me as I was birding.

And I feel like I can sense the earth’s heartbeat at that time, and that I’m connected to something far greater than my imagination.

Thanks, Charles…works for me. Have an outdoor story to share? Go to passporttotexas.org and tell us about it.

That’s our show for today… 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.

TPW-TV: Spreading His Wings Play Now | Play in Popup | Download