W ILD A B OUT TEX A S
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feet here. It is a type of tall-grass prairie that extended along the Texas and Louisiana coasts from Corpus Christi to Lafayette. One could call it critically endangered today, because less than one-tenth of one percent of that habitat still exists relatively undisturbed. The other 99.9 percent of the land went the way of agriculture and development long ago.
TMN working to protect endangered Monarch butterfly migration.
TMN volunteers Gerald Trenta, Sal Cardenas, and Roger Hathorn setting fenceposts for hog proof fence in the Seabourne Park demo garden.
Butterfly Gardens Big Help for Small Flyers Butterfly gardens are rapidly growing in popularity and are a great way to beautify homes and public spaces with wild blooms and colorful wings, while providing critical habitat for pollinators. Members of TMN have helped build butterfly gardens throughout Fort Bend County, including one that is one of the primary features at Seabourne Creek Nature Park in Rosenberg, Texas.
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The basic building blocks of a butterfly garden are host plants and nectar plants. Host plants are the preferred food source for caterpillars (that ultimately become butterflies). Common host plants include milkweed for monarchs and queens and passionflower vine for gulf fritillaries and zebra longwings. Once these caterpillars complete their first life-stage and emerge as butterflies, however, they will need nectar sources. These native blooms provide this critical nectar . Blue and white mistflowers, purple coneflower, lantana, and coral honeysuckle are excellent native options to attract and feed the adult butterflies. Don’t be surprised if you see colorful moths also enjoying these plants.
These gardens are a delight for observers but they also play an important conservation role. Texas is a critical habitat in the migration of endangered monarch butterflies because it is situated between the principal breeding grounds in the north and the overwintering areas in Mexico. Monarchs funnel South through Texas in the fall, with our region in the center of the flyway. The land in this important flyway has changed drastically over the last few hundred years with the loss of thousands of acres of milkweed that provides the sustenance for monarchs. The future of the Monarch migration is uncertain but we are hopeful it can be preserved by bringing back the flora that sustains it.
Birds of Many Colors Birding, sometimes called birdwatching, is the recreational observation of birds. As mentioned before, Texas is an extraordinary place to be a birder with 645 resident, migrant, and incidental species. It would likely not come as a surprise to anyone reading this article that many Master Naturalists are avid birders. Readers might be surprised, however, that birders have documented nearly 200 distinct species in nearby Seabourne Creek Nature Park. On the first Wednesday morning of most months (usually excluding mid-winter and mid-summer), the public is invited to join a Monthly Bird Hike in the park led by local experts. Many people don’t realize the surprising beauty and vivid colored plumage that are sometimes hiding in plain sight, such as the brilliant painted bunting. Far from a selfish hobby, birding checklists can contribute valuable scientific data to individual landowners, the state, and the world. On the most local of scales, TMN volunteers form survey teams to help local landowners understand their own species diversity and as an aid for their 1-D-1 Wildlife Management Plan. This plan allows a landowner a significant tax benefit for dedicating and managing a portion of his land for wildlife species. However, the minimum requirement is 25 acres dedicated to the Wildlife Management Plan.
Roger Hathorn, Diane Shelton, and Linda Rippert prepare to re-plant the butterfly garden.
Citizens can be scientists when bird lists are uploaded to the eBird.org database. This is an online, publiclyaccessible database created by the Cornell Lab of
