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 former Texas Parks and Wildlife 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.
As bluebonnets and Indian paintbrushes start winding down, look for other flower forms to begin popping up.
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.
For the first 16 of its 19 year history, birders had to flock to coastal areas to participate in the Great Texas Birding Classic.
09— We’ve now gone statewide. So, this will be our third year to be a statewide competition, and people love it. They’re coming out to do all the different tournaments.
Shelly Plante is nature tourism manager for Texas Parks and Wildlife. The tournament has experienced 40% growth in participation since expanding statewide, and a 50% increase in funds available for grants.
23— The whole point of the event, and the reason this growth is so great, is all the money raised goes towards conservation grants for birding and birders. So, they can be enhancement grants, which can be boardwalks, or birding blinds. They might be acquisition grants, or restoration grants that restore native habitat that’s great for birds, or remove invasive species. So, it’s a really great win-win.
Since becoming statewide, Shelly Plante says they’ve seen greater diversity in habitat projects that receive funding.
11— Two years ago, we funded a community park project in Utopia, Texas – Central Texas Hill Country area – and that was our first project ever to not be on the coast. So, that was very exciting.
The event is April 15 – May 15. Registration ends April 1. Check out all the Great Texas Birding Classic tournaments and habitat projects at birdingclassic.org.
The Great Texas Birding Classic – the world’s biggest, longest and wildest bird watching tournament – welcomes birders of all ages and abilities to form teams.
07— We’ve added some really good entry level tournaments, so beginning birders can take part; it’s not just the hard core listers anymore. Anyone can do this.
Shelly Plante is nature tourism manager for Texas Parks and Wildlife.
20— I loved seeing more families involved last year; a family of four could go out and do a sunrise to noon tournament because it’s an all ages tournament. A group of co-workers and their kids might go out and do a Big Sit, because there’s an unlimited number of people that can be on that team – it’s not a three to five person team like some of the others. So, there really is enough variety that you can find something that fits your needs.
The deadline to register a team is April 1. And your team can compete any day from April 15 to May 15.
23— And you don’t pick that ahead of time. Some people have really flexible schedules, and so they don’t tell me until 24 hours out from their tournament day that they’re going to go birding. They wait, look at weather patterns, see when birding is going to be really good. If it’s a really good birding day, and there’s a cold front, and birds are everywhere – they can just pick on the fly: “We’re going to go tomorrow; that’s our day.” And they just shoot me an email. So, it’s really flexible.
Check out all the Great Texas Birding Classic tournaments and register your team by April 1 at birdingclassic.org.
Event | Birding: Great Texas Birding ClassicDownload
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Calling all twitchers, listers and dudes…The Great Texas Birding Classic invites you to form a team to watch birds.
09— It’s a really great win-win, where people are able to go birding with their friends or family. And then they’re raising money for a really great cause: conservation right here in the state of Texas.
Shelly Plante, nature tourism manager, says teams go into the field and ID bird species from a checklist over the course of a few hours or even a few days. Tournament winners determine which avian habitat conservation projects receive preservation and restoration grants.
05— And the more habitat we’re able to preserve here in the state, the more birding opportunities there are going to be for birders.
Birders of all ages and skill levels that register at birdingclassic.org by the April first deadline may participate in this statewide series of tournaments.
22—Go online. Fill out your registration form. Pay online. And then you’re ready to go. Everything I do is through email: I’m going to email you updates; I’m going to email you how to submit your checklists to be in the running for the prizes; I’m going to let you know who won, where the award ceremonies are. So, it’s all done online to save on costs so as much of this money goes to habitat conservation as possible.
The Great Texas Birding Classic, April 15 through May 15, is for beginners and advanced birders. More on the classic tomorrow.
Funding for our series provided in part by Ram Trucks. Guts. Glory. Ram
If you catch a 13 pound or bigger largemouth bass, your first instinct may be to take a photo with it, and then release it. Or…you could donate it to the Toyota ShareLunker program at the Texas Freshwater Fisheries Center.
04—The ShareLunker Program is probably the reason this facility is here.
Allen Forshage is Director of the Center, which is a state-of-the-art fish-care facility that contains special tanks known as the “Lunker Bunker”.
17—The way this center was built, particularly the extensive hatcheries, improved our ability to do a selective breeding program where we’ve been taking these ShareLunkers and spawning them with males that are also offspring of ShareLunkers in an effort to try to improve the genetics of fish that we put back into public lakes.
Find out how to donate a fish to the program on the Texas Parks and Wildlife website. The program will accept donations of live fish through April 30. Every time an angler donates a fish to the program they make bass fishing better for everyone.
13—One of the measures of success for the program is how many column inches are being written about the ShareLunker Program. A lot of the outdoor writers use the ShareLunker Program as a barometer to measure how good fishing is in Texas.
It’s darned good if you believe what you read. And you should. Find details about the Toyota ShareLunker Program on the Texas Parks & Wildlife website.
The Sport Fish Restoration Program supports our series and provides funding for the operations and management of the Texas Freshwater Fisheries Center.
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