Passport to Texas

Passport to Texas from Texas Parks and Wildlife

[SFX: winter wind]
With winter on the way, you may be tempted to set out bird feeders for your feathered visitors.

There are people that maintain that feeders are unnatural, that they crowd the birds into a smaller area. Birds are like us, if there’s food available, they’re going to come to it.

Wildscape program coordinator, Mark Klym, says the crowding situation is fleeting, and should not be a factor when deciding whether to provide birds with supplemental feeding. Since we’re myth-busting, Klym adds that a dirty feeder—while unpleasant—will not cause disease birds that eat from them.

If they’re not kept clean, they can enhance disease situations, but they can’t—by themselves—cause disease.

Another unfounded feeder fear is that easy access to food will encourage migratory species to stay put.

Birds migrate for a much more powerful trigger than just whether there’s just food available. And if you look at it, in a lot of areas, when the birds start to move, there’s some of the biggest supplies of [natural] food that there have been all year.

Finally, there is no evidence that a bird feeder will cause species not usually found in your area to book a visit.

Your feeder is not going to bring a bird that wouldn’t otherwise have been in the area. It’s going to be a situation where that bird happened to be in the area already, saw your feeder, and came to it.

So, this winter, if you want to put out a feeder to supplement the diet of visiting birds, do so without guilt.

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

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Passport to Texas Outdoor Stories from Texas Parks and Wildlife

Nan Crouch and her sister Jan Wigginton of Brady, are avid outdoorswomen and hunt together whenever they can. Nan shared a “dirty” story with us about the rainy day she bagged a big buck on family property in Rochelle.

So, in order to get it out, we had to go back to the cabin and call my husband to come clean it for me. On the way back, we were excited and not paying attention, and we ran through this low place in the road and we got stuck [in the mud] up to the axels on the three-wheeler.

But, anyway, he came down and went over and got the buck, got him cleaned, got him back to town. It was quite an experience and it was fun. (giggles) You know, we never have a camera when we do stuff like this, because we’re always doing something kind of dumb.

Nan listens to our show on KNEL in Brady. She also won the grand prize in our Texas Outdoor Story promotion this summer. Learn more at passporttotexas.org.

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

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Passport to Texas from Texas Parks and Wildlife

Texas Parks and Wildlife Television begins a new season this month. Production Supervisor, Don Cash.

One of the really nice things about our show, it it’s not a news show—you don’t have to get everything in, in a minute or a minute and fifteen seconds. We have the time on the show to really get into a topic. We have anywhere from eight, nine, ten minutes, so you really get a good feel for the topic and the people that we’re featuring. So that’s something that’s really unique to this show.

So, it’s a new season, we’ve got a lot of new stuff coming up, and I hope people will watch the show.

Thanks Don. Find a list of stations that air the series, at passporttotexas.org.

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

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Passport to Texas from Texas Parks and Wildlife

Nobody thinks twice about collecting shells from the beach. But I started to wonder if it’s really okay since beaches are public land.

It’s okay to collect shells. The ones that are broken and come apart, they create the sand that’s out there, but there is no law against it [collecting].

Paul Hammerschmidt, with coastal fisheries, is a lifelong shell collector. He says collect responsibly to avoid creating problems for the environment or marine animals.

I highly recommend that you only take shells that are from dead animals—not live animals.

How can you determine if something is still alive? In the case of the popular sand dollar, small spines cover the shells of living animals…so look for smooth, spineless shells. If, like me, you’ve never found a sand dollar on the beach—there’s good reason for it.

I think it’s because everybody wants to get a sand dollar. And, too, they’re another very fragile shell. And when the waves are strong, they’ll get broken up, and you’ll just see fragments of them. A lot of times, the best time to find a sand dollar, is after a storm—and then very early in the morning—before anybody else gets out on the beach.

More tips on when and where to go shelling tomorrow. Continue this story online at passporttotexas.org.

That’s our show for today….remember: life’s better outside…For Texas Parks and Wildlife…I’m Cecilia Nasti.
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Information on Shell Collecting

Shell Clubs:
http://www.bcfas.org/museum/SSSBC/SSSBCdemo/ShellClubs.html
Shell Organizations:
http://www.bcfas.org/museum/SSSBC/SSSBCdemo/ShellOrgs.html
Images of shells of the Bolivar Peninsula:
http://www.crystalbeach.com/b17.html

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Passport to Texas from Texas Parks and Wildlife

Are you looking for a unique way to spend time in the Texas outdoors and get active in your local community?

Master Naturalist is a fantastic way for people who are interested in the natural history of Texas to learn more about wildlife, plants, and geology of their local area.

Kelly Bender is an Urban Wildlife Biologist for Parks and Wildlife, and helps train Master Naturalists.

So what we do is we provide a nine-week program, that’s provided by professionals in the field, to learn all about the natural history of their area. And then give them opportunities to participate in volunteer activity.

Volunteer opportunities that include helping scientists.

They have the opportunities to monitor wildlife and record species observations and provide those to scientists. We do native plant rescue. They have the opportunity to do habitat restoration in ecologically sensitive areas. Master naturalists are able to go in and help restore in places that have restricted access. So we really are dependent on people who are interested and who are engaged and excited about wildlife to provide more information than we could possibly gather on our own.

One of the great gifts we can provide future generations is a natural world, preserved in its wild beauty. Become a part of it. Learn how, at passporttotexas.org.

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

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