Passport to Texas

Coastal Birds and Birders segment coming up on Texas Parks and Wildlife TV series on PBS.

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This is Passport to Texas

The Texas coast is rich with bird life and year-round birding opportunities. Next week discover what all the fuss is about on the award-winning Texas Parks and Wildlife TV series on PBS, when ornithologist, Cliff Shackelford takes a group of birders to what he calls a “mecca”.

We are at Bolivar Flats Shorebird Sanctuary on Bolivar Peninsula in Galveston County and this is a mecca for birds, for water birds, for shorebirds that use the Texas coast.

[Alice Anne Odonell] Does everybody see the skimmer, going right down that very first wave? You can always go down to the beach and see anywhere from fifteen to thirty species of birds, no matter whether it’s in the spring or the hot summer time.

[Cliff] There are birds here for many reasons, for foraging for roosting and some are even here for nesting. This time of year we have least terns and Willetts.

[Birder] I see it. The least tern went back to the nest.

[Cliff] Oh good, good, good, yes excellent!

Coastal Birds and Birders airs next week on the Texas Parks and Wildlife TV series on PBS. Check your local listings.

The Wildlife Restoration Program supports our series.

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

Don Cash’s frog pond.

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This is Passport to Texas

Don Cash is one of the producers of the Texas Parks and Wildlife TV series on PBS. At work, he creates the shows. At home, he creates wildlife habitat.

As a matter of fact, when I leave here and head home, I have my own little nature preserve waiting for me.  This…is my frog pond.

Don, who lives in southwestern Travis County, started his pond about 10 years ago, first filling it with goldfish.

Now, the goldfish are really nice, but the pond attracts other animals as well. Every spring it seems every frog in the neighborhood hangs out here.

Don wanted to know how frogs find his pond, when the nearest creek is three miles away, so he asked Andy Gluesenkamp, Director of Conservation at the San Antonio Zoo, to explain.

Part of it is random chance, frogs finding it. But also, once a frog finds it, and there’s a male calling, other frogs are going to be attracted to that.

Andy says frogs aren’t the only ones using the pond.

When you build a fish pond you can expect other wildlife to show up. Birds will come and drink and bathe. Frogs will show up and breed and feed. And then snakes and other predators may show up and feed on those frogs.

Leopard frogs, Gulf Coast toads and myriad other critters call Don Cash’s frog pond home. And it’s featured on the Texas Parks and Wildlife TV show next week. Check local listings.

The Wildlife and Sport Fish Restoration program supports our series.

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

Ignition operations on an RX-burn at the Matador WMA. Image: Verble Fire Ecology Lab.

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This is Passport to Texas

The Matador Wildlife Management Area offers vistas of colorful rolling plains and canyons. Texas Parks and Wildlife maintains the beauty and balance of this 28-thousand acre natural landscape with the regular use of an ancient tool.

Right now they are preparing to light a test fire. It gives us a pretty good indication of what the fire behavior is going to be like. And since it’s a test, if it doesn’t work out, we can put the fire out and go for it another day.

Chris Schenck is part of Texas Parks and Wildlife’s prescribed fire crew. A segment about prescribed fire airs next week on the Texas Parks and Wildlife TV series on PBS. Team member, Derreck Holdsctock, says fire is an important, natural process.

Whenever you don’t have fire brush encroaches. The more brush there is, the higher the fire danger is going to be during a dry year. So the more fire you put on the ground the less the effects of a wildfire will be and the more controllable it will be.

Prescribed fire has many jobs. It knocks back invasive plants, returns nutrients to the soil, and promotes native species, creating a balance of cover and forage for wildlife.

Every time we do a fire I feel like we’re taking a big chunk out of our management of that area. And then when you come back three months later and you have all this tall grass and you have all the wildflowers out there, it just kind of brings it all together and you realize what you’ve accomplished.

Catch the segment on Prescribed Fires this week on the Texas Parks and Wildlife TV series on PBS. Check your local listings.

The Wildlife Restoration Program supports our series.

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

Eisenhower State Park gets visit from 72-year-old Dave Roberts, walking across Texas – Image: Herald Democrat – Sherman, TX

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This is Passport to Texas

For septuagenarian, Dave Roberts, an adventure that took him across Texas on foot, started a little more than two decades ago with a dream…

In my dream, I died and I went to heaven. St. Peter looks at me and he looks down at his book and he looks at me again and says, ‘Why didn’t you take advantage of what they had to offer down there?’ End of dream.

A retired math teacher and computer programmer from Maryland, Dave soon quit his job to become a full-time volunteer, taking time off for adventures.

I don’t want to just sit at home and play card games on the computer and raid the refrigerator every ten minutes and get fat and lazy. I want to be outdoors, I want to breathe unfiltered air, I want the weather to affect me, I want to meet people I’ve never met, I want to go places I’ve never been, and that’s the lifestyle that I’ve chosen for myself.

That’s how Dave Roberts ended up walking across Texas, visiting close to 30 state parks along the way.

Visiting state parks has made my trip much more interesting. I made a spreadsheet: at 15 miles a day, how many state parks can I do? And I came out to 23 state parks. When I got to Tyler, I was like a week and a half ahead of schedule. I was doing 23 miles a day, not 15.

Join Dave Roberts on his walk across Texas, and find out how it all started, this week on the award-winning Texas Parks and Wildlife TV series on PBS. Check your local listings.

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

Guzzler on the Black Gasp Wildlife Management Area

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This is Passport to Texas

A guzzler is a rain catchment device. Collected rainwater gets funneled into a tank that feeds a water trough for wildlife.

As we all know, animals need water. Our annual rainfall is only around 11 inches a year. So we’re trying to supplement that water during dry periods.

Travis Smith is a biologist at the Black Gap Wildlife management area in Brewster County. So is Will Rhodes.

We’re in southern Brewster County which is in the Trans-Pecos region of Texas.

They build and maintain guzzlers on the Gap—45 so far—and see to the needs of wildlife on the management area.

We’re in the Chihuahuan Desert Ecosystem. The area is 103,000 acres or a little over. Black Gap is kind of in the middle of nowhere.

Next week the men explain and demonstrate guzzlers on a segment of the Texas Parks and Wildlife TV series on PBS.

So this catchment consist of R-Panel in 12 foot lengths, which is connected to these 6 inch C-Purlins by…

Let’s stop there. Will’s going to tell us about purlins and pitch threads and storage tanks; it’s not sexy stuff. But it’s necessary when building guzzlers at Black Gap. And, so are wildlife cameras.

On these game cameras it’s triggered by motion. Usually that’s going to be wildlife coming in to get water from the guzzlers here.

Which means their efforts are successful. See the segment on Guzzlers next week on the Texas Parks and Wildlife TV Series on PBS. The Wildlife Restoration Program supports our series.

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