Passport to Texas

TPWD staff photographer, Earl Nottingham, helps feed fawns

Wildlife: Baby Mammals Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

This time of year, reports start rolling in to Parks and Wildlife from people who think they’ve discovered abandoned baby animals.

09—What could have happened is you walked up there, and mama ran off and hid – and baby is hiding there. And, as soon as you leave, mama will come back.

That’s not true in every case, though, says Jonah Evans, Texas Parks and Wildlife mammalogist. If you see an abandoned baby possum, for example, mom could be gone for good.

14—With 184 some odd mammals in the state, it’s probably pretty difficult to give you a list of which mothers will come back wand which ones won’t. So, what I recommend is before touching and animal – call a [wildlife] rehabilitator.

Licensed rehabilitators know animal behavior and can tell you which critters may benefit from intervention.

09—If you contact one of the many throughout the state – and there’s a whole long list of them on our website – they are really the experts in this. Not Parks and Wildlife.

Jonah Evans says although—as a mammalogist—he researches and studies warm-blooded animals, rehabilitators are the ones with skills suited to helping citizens’ where abandoned baby animals are concerned.

Find a list of licensed rehabilitators by county on the Texas Parks and Wildlife website.

The Wildlife and Sport Fish Restoration Program supports our series…For Texas Parks and Wildlife, I’m Cecilia Nasti.

Bird watching

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If bird watching is your passion, consider sharing your sightings with the world on eBird…

03— That the Cornell lab of Ornithology sponsors.

Cliff Shackelford is Parks and Wildlife’s non-game ornithologist. With spring migration underway, who knows what you’ll see in the next few weeks.

26— And you can easily – on your smart phone or your computer – enter your sightings. You can even start with eBird by setting up your yard as a hotspot or a patch that you frequent. And it’s already in the system, and then all you have to do is you go and say, ‘Okay; it’s April 27th, and we had a black-throated green warbler, and two Tennessee warblers, and a chestnut sided warbler. And other people can see that and get pretty excited.

Of course if the hotspot is, say, your backyard, you may not want strangers walking up to your fence line with binoculars. You can be somewhat vague when inputting the location of your sighting, and still provide meaningful information to your fellow birding enthusiasts.

15— If you’re worried about people finding your secret patch, you can make it more of a broad brushstroke on the map, but still submit the data so people can say, ‘Wow. That was Travis County and they had all those great birds.’ So eBird is a real good tool.

Find a bunch of birding information on the Texas Parks and Wildlife website.

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

On Galveston Island

Birding: Field Guides Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

Before long you’ll see treetops dotted with color. Flowers? Nope. Feathers! Feathers of migrating bird species stopping over in Texas. To know what you’re seeing, you’ll need a good field guide.

17— There are so many really good field guides out there. I always like to recommend the ones that cover the whole country, because that way you just spend $20 or so, and you’ve got a book that’s great for any trip, when you go visit California to Florida to New York or here in Texas.

Cliff Shackelford is Parks and Wildlife’s non-game ornithologist.

26— So, I really like the National Geographic Society’s Field Guide to the Birds of North America. The Sibley guide is very good. The Roger Tory Petersen guide is very good. And the Golden Guide to Birds of North America. So, there’s really three or four. And the neat thing is, is to buy more than one; have one in the car, have one at home, and have one at the office. That way, you see different depictions of the birds, and then wherever you are that book is going to be at your fingertips.

Find birding information on the Texas Parks and Wildlife website.

10— We humans – we like to watch reality TV. You can have that experience out in your yard or at your local park, just looking to see what’s going on in the life of a bird.

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

Working with Landowners on Conservation

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Texans don’t seem to be familiar with the Texas Parks and Wildlife Foundation.

03— We’re a well-kept secret – unfortunately.

Anne Brown is Executive Director of the Foundation.

14—Our mission is to provide private support to Texas Parks and Wildlife Department to manage and conserve natural and cultural resources of Texas. But, we always like to say we leverage private philanthropy with public funding for impactful change in Texas.

And that means reaching out to potential donors to support the agency’s “aspirational” projects.

12— We do not raise money for operating – mowing the lawn and things like that. We choose high priority projects of the department, and we focus on raising private dollars to help support those projects.

We’ll learn how projects are decided and how strong partnerships make them a reality.

10— The first thing we do is we sit down with the department and their staff, and based on the direction they’re getting from the commission – what are important projects that rise to the top as a priority for Texas as a whole.

Meantime, find more information about the foundation in the April issue of Texas Parks and Wildlife magazine.

We record our series in Austin at The Block House. Joel Block engineers our program.

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

President Lyndon B. Johnson and ladybird Johnson in a field of Texas Wildflowers

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Spring in Texas is a colorful time of year thanks to wildflowers growing statewide. Jackie Poole says these native plants create a sense of place.

09— That is something Ladybird Johnson said that was so great about these wildflowers: they really are unique to different areas.

I spoke with Jackie, a TPW Botanist, at the Ladybird Johnson Wildflower Center. To get a sense of how wildflowers define a locale, she says look beyond the roadside.

20—If you get away from the roadside, you’ll notice that the wildflowers are different in South Texas to Central Texas to the Trans Pecos to East Texas to the High Plains. And so, they’re all unique; it’s like having a home town. You can always go back and you can recognize these areas of the state by the plants that are growing there.

Bluebonnets and Indian paintbrushes are winding down, making way for other flower forms.

21— [Such as] Little yellow daisy-like flowers. Later in May, there’s a plant that called the basket flower; it’s a tall plant, three to four to even six feet tall with large pinkish-white flowers. Right before that, you’ll have Mexican Hats and Fire wheels starting in April and going through May and maybe even going into June.

Find more wildflower information at the TWP website.

That’s our show for today… Funding provided in part by Ram Trucks. Guts. Glory. Ram

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