Passport to Texas

House Sparrow male sitting on snow-covered hedge, Texas

TPW Magazine: 12 Birds Every Texan Should Know Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

Texas Parks and Wildlife non-game ornithologist, Cliff Shackelford, compiled a list of 12 bird species he thinks every Texan should know.

10— No two experts or seasoned veterans in this field are going to come up with the same 12 birds. I’m sure people are going to go: Why
didn’t he pick this? Why didn’t he pick that?” Well, it’s just personal preference.

In addition to personal preference, birds made the list based on questions he receives from the public about unfamiliar species they see.

22—Yeah. And then, the other thing I did is I thought about species that have statewide ranges that you could be in just about any corner of the state and see. Of course, some of these are wetland occurring, and if you’re out in the very dry parts of West Texas, you might not see them; but eventually you’re going to cross a creek or pond or something and potentially see a Killdeer or a Great Blue Heron.

Killdeer and Great Blue Heron are on the list of 12, which is in the August / September issue of Texas Parks and Wildlife magazine. The Northern Mockingbird, Red-tailed Hawk, Barn Swallow, Turkey Vulture, Cattle Egret and others also made the list — including the house sparrow, which is a non-native species.

10—And it’s not even a true sparrow –it’s a weaver finch—and it’s in a totally different part of your bird book; that’s why I put that one in there. It’s just so atypical for a sparrow.

Find the article Twelve Birds Every Texan Should Know by Cliff Shackelford in the August/September issue of Texas Parks and Wildlife magazine.

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

Northern Mockingbird, Mimus polyglottos

Birding: Know Your Birds Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

Some bird species in Texas are ubiquitous – but that doesn’t mean we notice them.

17—Ubiquitous simply means they’re all over the place. We might tune them out as just like background noise; we don’t really look at them. But once you start tuning in and really looking at them you’re like, what is that? I’ve never seen that. But, you know, it was always there. You just didn’t look.

Non-game ornithologist, Cliff Shackelford, compiled a list of 12 such species he says every Texan should know.

19—This arose from questions over the years that I’ve received about, “Hey, what’s that dark duck we see when we drive over the ridge?” Or, “What’s this weird striped bird at our bird feeder?” And when you get that kind of call over and over and over, you realize there are some really common birds that people don’t know what they are. So, that’s kind of how I generated that list of twelve.

Find the list in the August/September issue of Texas Parks and Wildlife Magazine. And while Cliff says there’s no order to the list, a special species takes the number one spot.

05—I had to start the list with our state bird of Texas, which is the mockingbird.

Find the article Twelve Birds Every Texan Should Know by Cliff Shackelford in the August/September issue of Texas Parks and Wildlife magazine.

Tomorrow, some of our other feathered friends that made the list…and why.

Funding for our series provided in part by Ram Trucks: Guts. Glory. Ram

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

Canoe the Colorado River in Columbus (publicity photo by Tonya Britton)

TPW Magazine: "Upstream, Downstream" Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

Continued drought and a growing population are taking their toll on the Colorado River. This important source of water for humans and wildlife stretches 600 miles from west Texas to the Gulf of Mexico.

11— The Colorado River is the lifeblood of the state of Texas because it runs right down the center [of the state]. It supports every single kind of Texan, [from] old cowboys and little fishes to everybody in-between.

In the July issue of TPW magazine, writer, Jenna Craig, provides an overview of the challenges regulatory agencies face regarding distribution of the resource among its users. She said, in the water game, no one emerges a winner.

18— We simply do not have enough water to meet everybody’s needs—and that is nobody’s fault. There is no way [so far] that anyone has [devised] a way to distribute the water to meet everyone’s needs that won’t be upsetting to somebody.

What we need is rain, and a lot of it, falling in recharge and runoff areas. Until then, personal responsibility must be part of the overall management strategy.

15—Conserve water. Think about what you’re doing. Think about the kind of plants you have in your yard [for example], and how often you water. Is watering your yard the most important thing you do with that resource? That’s a choice we make. [Remember: what you do] doesn’t just affect you and your yard. It affects everybody.

Find Jenna Craig’s article—Upstream, Downstream—in the July issue of Texas Parks and Wildlife magazine.

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

Angler and redfish, image by Tosh Brown in the April issue of Texas Parks and Wildlife magazine.

TPW Magazine: Best of Texas Photography Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

The photography in Texas Parks and Wildlife magazine is world class, and April’s issue focuses on the best of the best. Deciding what those would be was no easy task.

08— The process was tough. We have such amazing photographers; staff photographers as well as freelance photographers.

Art Director, Brandon Jakobeit (yah-ko-BITE), says he asked regular photo contributors to submit their favorites, and from there, the work began.

10—I printed every single image out – small. Then I cut them out, and kept editing the groups down until I got down to the final grouping that were going to go into the magazine.

He ended up with 16 spectacular photographs of Texas’ places, people, and activities. One image even caught him by surprise.

13—It was Dan Klepper’s image. It was this mountain biking image, and in the very front, looking at you at the bottom, is a horned lizard. So, that one was very surprising, and I thought it was a very neat image.

Brandon says none of the images were built in Photoshop.

17—Some of these guys use amazing techniques – like Tosh Brown’s image. You see this shot of a redfish –I’m not sure exactly how he did it—but I know that he partially submerged the camera, so you can see this redfish that was caught, but you can also see the guy fishing above water.

The April issue with the Best of Texas Photography is on newsstands now. 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.

Monarchs at their overwintering site.

TPW Magazine: Monarch Decline Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

Extreme weather and vanishing habitat, have taken a toll on monarch butterflies.

14—To use the oft-worn cliché about a “perfect storm,” that’s sort of what’s happened to the monarchs, unfortunately, and has caused their populations to plummet almost 80% since the winter of 2012.

Rob McCorkle wrote an article about the monarch decline for the March issue of Texas Parks and Wildlife Magazine. Monarchs migrate to Mexico from Canada and the US.

18—The first hit [to the monarchs] was in 2002 when they had a severe freeze in the mountains of Mexico where the population overwinters. Monarchs can take cold weather, but if it rains, or snows and they get wet – they can’t survive. They died off by the millions that year.

Weather is only part of the equation. Habitat loss is the other.

33—That is being propelled by the elimination of grasslands in the Midwest to plant GMO soybean and corn crops, and to plant crops for biofuels. What that’s done, obviously, is to limit the places where the monarchs go to fuel up for their migration. Also, the overwintering forests in the mountains of Central Mexico have been logged heavily and are being impacted by [tourism] people going to see the monarchs that overwinter there in the fir trees.

More on why monarchs are in decline and how to help — that’s tomorrow. For Texas Parks and Wildlife, I’m Cecilia Nasti.