Passport to Texas

Passport to Texas from Texas Parks and Wildlife and the Wildlife Restoration Program

It may be October, but the November issue of Texas Parks and Wildlife magazine is available for your reading pleasure now.

Managing Editor, Louie Bond, highlights a couple of stories that you won’t want to miss.

In our November issue we say good-bye to Lady Bird Johnson who, of course, was a great friend to Texas Parks and Wildlife. And we have a poignant essay by Barbara Rodriguez, who felt like so many of us that she lost a member of the family when Lady Bird passed away.

They say that last year was a bust, but this year with all the rain – it’s pretty optimistic. So, quail hunters have every reason to be quite happy and looking forward to quail season.

The November issue of Texas Parks and Wildlife magazine is on newsstands now.

That’s our show for today… with support from the Wildlife restoration program…working to increase shooting and hunting opportunities in Texas…

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

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Passport to Texas from Texas Parks and Wildlife

If you live in East Texas, and have noticed strange holes in the wood siding of your home… don’t call the police; call an ornithologist.

There are fifteen species of woodpeckers in Texas, eight of which are in the eastern third of Texas. And that’s where we get most of our calls of woodpecker damage.

Non-game ornithologist, Cliff Shackelford, says the pileated and red bellied woodpeckers are among the culprits inflicting the damage to these homes.

What happens a lot of time is that they see these houses that might be painted brown, they might have cedar siding, and this is very attractive to the birds to try to excavate a cavity. So, they’re not looking for food when they’re doing this; they’re looking to make a cavity to call home.

The pileated woodpecker, about the size of a crow, can excavate holes as big as a man’s fist — and not just in the outside walls of your home, either.

That’s right. We’ve documented pileateds going through into the sheetrock and into the room of the house. Of course, they’re very lost when they do that, they quickly go out. They’re not looking to make a mess of the house.

Keeping woodpeckers from damaging your home… [Woodpeckers pecking]…that’s tomorrow.

And that’s our show for today… Remember: Life’s Better Outside…For Texas Parks and Wildlife…I’m Cecilia Nasti.

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Passport to Texas from Texas Parks and Wildlife and the Wildlife Restoration Program

Whooping cranes are coming back to Texas.

Whooping cranes generally start arriving in Texas around mid-October or so; and by mid-November, most of them have reached the Texas coast. In the area in and around the Aransas National Wildlife Refuge, just north of Rockport.

Lee Ann Linam is a biologist with Parks and Wildlife.

In the 1940s, the Texas population of whooping cranes was about fifteen or sixteen birds. Last winter we had two hundred and thirty six in the population that came down to Texas. So it’s been a slow but sure success story for whooping cranes.

Linam says they hope to see that number jump to two hundred fifty this season. Texans between Dallas-Fort Worth and the edge of the Panhandle through Central Texas are asked to keep an eye to the sky beginning mid-October for whoopers in migration.

Because we’re very interested in learning what habitat areas they use in migration, and understand more about those, and the rate of their migration.

But don’t look for a huge flock.

Usually it’s family groups – two or three, or maybe groups of sub-adults that might number about five or six – but just small groups of very large white birds.

Find links to more whooper information at passporttotexas.org.

That’s our show…with support from the Wildlife restoration Program… providing funding for the Private Lands and Habitat Enhancement Program.

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

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Passport to Texas from Texas Parks and Wildlife

Fragmentation of old growth forests in the southeastern US and Texas, prime ivory billed woodpecker habitat, may have contributed to the species’ “extinction.” Yet, reports in 2005 said that after nearly 60 years in oblivion, the woodpecker had been rediscovered in Arkansas.

We’ve been getting a lot of calls since that announcement in oh-five, from people in east Texas that are wondering why there’s all this hoopla over ivory bills, because they’ve had them in their yard for years.

Cliff Shackelford is a non-game ornithologist with Parks and Wildlife. While the ivory billed woodpecker is the largest woodpecker north of Mexico…

We didn’t do a very good job telling people there are two big woodpeckers. And the other one is a common bird in the eastern third of Texas, and that is the pileated Woodpecker.

That’s the bird people have spotted, said Shackleford. It’s an easy mistake to make, too, as the woodpeckers are similar in size and appearance.

They’re black, white and they have some red on them. But the big difference between the two, when they’re perched on the tree, the ivory billed has a white backpack. So, the folded wings give it the look like it’s carrying a white backpack. Whereas in the pileated, there’s no white. It’s just continuously dark on the back.

Log onto passporttotexas.org for links to more information about the ivory billed woodpecker, and what to do if you think you’ve seen one.

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

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Passport to Texas from Texas Parks and Wildlife

Back in April 2005 a national announcement proclaimed the Ivory-billed woodpecker, considered extinct, had been re-discovered in an area in Arkansas known as the Big Woods.

And it was definitely the most exciting news that anyone can remember in the birding circles.

Cliff Shackelford is a non-game ornithologist with Parks and Wildlife.

There have been a lot of skeptics that have seen the documentation – it’s a little fuzzy – but there have been lots of people going back to the site, and have had glimpses. But no one’s been able to secure that really golden shot of the bird.

A team from the Cornell Lab of Ornithology Ivory-Billed Woodpecker research project has a team on the ground in Arkansas looking for this elusive bird.

The exciting thing is that this bird possibly has survived after sixty years of not being detected in the US; and the last sighting of the Ivory Billed Woodpecker in Texas was in November 1904. So, it’s been a long time since that bird has been in Texas. It occurred in the eastern third of the state, roughly, in mature river-bottom habitat.

Many east Texans claim to have seen Ivory-Billed Woodpeckers, but tomorrow we discuss a case of mistaken identity.

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

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