Yes, I'm Working.... Check out my shirt.

If I have an assignment to rove or lead a tour , I have a hard time remembering to stop working. Mostly, I feel like I'm playing and gathering up new friends as I move around, or as I get involved in  interesting conversations. And  before and after my scheduled work hours, or on my days off, I'm doing the same thing.  So the only way to tell if I'm working, is to check my shirt. If I'm in my official shirt, I must have had to work eight hours during that day.

The red maple seeds look especially beautiful against the Spanish moss

These plants have been blooming a few weeks

Right now the refuge is changing each day.  New trees are leafing out, and new wildflowers and blooming shrubs are appearing.   I need to find all this new vegetation and then help visitors find it. Winter avian visitors are leaving while migrants are stopping by.  Gotta keep tabs. Resident birds are nesting or raising young. I even saw a pair of fledgling owls on my last boat tour. (It is also part of my duty to take frequent boat tours so I can advise visitors of what they will see by boat - and I can't wear my shirt, so you'll have to take my word for it - It's WORK.)

One of the palm warblers that were still here early this week

On one of the tour boats reaching Chesser's prairie

I worked hard to get this sunset from the sunset tour boat

This past week, I went out with another volunteer to rove.  We assigned ourselves the task of finding every blooming species of plant, picking the best sites for each species and then learning the location so we can describe both the flower, and the area in which to find it.

Willow blooms - pollinators love them

Volunteer Barb and I found several Osceola's Plume, Zigadenus dengus

Osceola's Plume Close Up

Orange milkwort, Polygala lutea - one local name is Swamp cheetos

Barb found these newly emerged Pink Sundew, Drosera capillaris, but now I can locate them too

On another work day, as I was getting ready to count birds on the Cane Pole Trail,  I met a visitor I've met a few times before - she and her husband are wintering her and come by often.  She was interested in both birds and plants.  We started off by counting all the bird species we could find on the Cane Pole Trail. She was able to get some gorgeous pictures of a Prairie Warbler.  That just may be the most cooperative warbler we have.  It forages low and slow so you get lots of clear looks at it. We didn't find a Palm warblers but I had found them while "working" a day or so earlier.

Palm warblers are heading north

Mary was kind enough to send me a picture of the prairie warbler we found.  Thanks Mary

After that we went on down the auto tour, stopping to look at all the flowers I'd discovered and also looking for the just-up sundews.  We ended up spending about three hours together and found six parrot pitcher plants trying to regrow, two with flower buds on them. Then we had her husband take our picture on both our cameras.

 Me with my new friend, Mary, after finding six parrot pitcher plants,  Note the shirt, and the truck - a sure sign I'm working.

I also had to wander around the boardwalk by myself, between visitors, but got to enjoy our blonde raccoon that forages near the beginning of the boardwalk.  It is being seen often enough that we tell early and late visitors to watch for it.  On one day, I spent about ten minutes taking pictures of it.

Blonde racoon foraging

I also find lots of puzzling things.  One of them appeared to be a bundle of male longleaf pine cones.   If you know what this is all about, please share.

Mysterious bundle

Friday I grabbed my clothes out of the dryer in the community trailer during my lunch break and then noticed some big greenish-white blooms nearby. They were pawpaw blooms. So I went around looking for more as part of my afternoon job.

Pawpaw plants among the saw palmetto

They just get prettier, the closer I got to them

Intricate blooms start off green and then turn white

Saturday, I was supposed to lead a boardwalk tour but no one showed up.  I just roved down the  boardwalk,  and was able to share alligators, turtles, birds and the first magnolia bloom with visitors, including a German couple.  Earlier, I also found a red-shouldered hawk nest that is just past the canoe launch site. The nest is mostly invisible but I watched the male red-tailed hawk come screaming in with a large lizard.  Then I heard the female talking to the babies.

One of the pig frogs I help visitors find and identify

Another way I can tell if I'm working or not is by the sunset.  If I'm looking at one, I'm NOT working because the refuge closes before sunset and I have no work to do.  (At least that's true unless I'm on the sunset tour boat.)

Relaxing after yet another hard days work

 On the personal front, I'm down to just two more adventures and 8 days of work before I'll be packing and leaving April 15.  Tomorrow I'm off to paddle the Altamaha River for two days with Julie DeVore who was my guest blogger recently. This will be our first real meeting but I feel I know her well after lots of chats via e-mail and phone.  Next weekend, I'm going to visit another new friend that I met while WORKING here. We'll be paddling and birding ..... stay tuned for the details. Probably lots of hard play will be involved.

Hunting Brownseed Paspalum

I took a day off from work to go on a seed collecting trip.  We could either keep the seeds we collected, for our own projects, or give them to the plant guys at Armand Bayou Nature Center where volunteers grow seeds from seed to rebuild a prairie from land they are wresting from tallow trees, a major invasive problem in east Texas. We went to Brazos Bend State Park which is managing a 400 acre Indiangrass-little bluestem tall grass coastal prairie  through periodic prescribed burning and mowing.

Some of us carpooled  from Houston and others met us at the park.  Tom Solomon, our leader, led us out into the prairie and showed us what brownseed paspalum looks like.  It grows in little clumps among other grasses and we had to practice seeing it for a few minutes. We also compared it to vasey grass,another paspalum species, that is an invasive weed that is of concern in Texas and some other states. And we were to follow the rule of taking twenty percent  of the seeds and leaving the rest. We also stripped the seed from the stems and the wind took some of it so we helped distribute the seed in its home prairie.

Starting out with our paper bags

The inflorescence (seed head) we were looking for

Brownseed paspalum (Paspalum plidatulum) is a warm season grass that grows in sandy to mineral clay moist soils. It provides nesting cover for bobwhite quail and food for bobwhites and turkeys. It is the larval host of the bunchgrass skipper.

The prairie where we hunted

The hunt position

We also visited the Nash  and Mowotony Prairies after we collected seeds. Several of us collected the seeds of green milkweed there and I enjoyed taking pictures of some of the prairie forbs. We learned that the Nash Prairie has never been plowed so it has all the grasses and forbs that it has historically.  But it is threatened by the terribly invasive tallow trees.  It gets mowed and burned to protect it.

Yellow-Puff (Neptunia lutea)

I don't remember seeing this plant and thought it must be related to the sensitive briar, a plant that has leaves like this one but pink fuzzy balls, but it is in a different genus.  The leaves react to touching by closing in the same way, though.And the next day, I found a plant growing at the base of one of our new trees at Anahuac NWR.

Green Wild Indigo ( Baptisia sphaerocarpa)

Rattlesnake Master (Button Eryngo), a prairie indicator species

Rattlesnake master was very abundant in the Nash Prairie.  It is an indicator of a intact prairie.

Green Milkweed (Asclepias viridis)

This is the most common milkweed of the coastal prairie and I actually took this picture along Hwy. 1985, the road that brings you to Anahuac NWR. But I collected seeds on the Mowotony Prairie from green milkweed that I need to get planted. We'll put the plants in the Monarch/Queen section of the butterfly garden.

If you are interested in learning more about prairie remnants in Texas, check out the Native Prairies Association of Texas.