Newsletter title

August 2012

In This Edition

Fall Work Days at the Preserve: September 22 & October 13

—Dennis Bires

What better way is there to enjoy comfortable fall weather than to venture out on the Tallgrass Prairie Preserve for one of our fall work days? These are always good times, and the satisfaction from a job well done is icing on the cake.

On Saturday, September 22, meet at the Tallgrass Preserve Visitor’s Center at 10:00 a.m. for equipment and assignments on the Prairie Road Crew. Volunteers will beautify the county roads for the busy fall visitor traffic. Bring along a lunch for the noon break, and we will wrap up at 3:00 p.m. Pleasant weather guaranteed.

Then on Saturday, October 13, gather again at the Visitor’s Center at 10:00 a.m. to caravan to the Bison Corrals for some major painting. We have a discerning bison herd that prefers a neat-looking and well-preserved facility for its November Round-Up. As a side benefit of our work, the corrals will look great for the special visitors and media representatives who will be invited to Round-Up this year. There are few sights as satisfying as a freshly completed paint job on a sunny autumn day. Remember to bring lunch, and wear clothes that won’t suffer from a few dark red smudges. All equipment will be provided. We will finish around 3:00 p.m.

Science in Action: Volunteer Computing with BOINC

—Andrew Donovan-Shead

The Berkeley Open Infrastructure for Network Computing (BOINC) is an open source middleware system for volunteer and grid computing. It was originally developed to support the SETI@home project before it became useful as a platform for other distributed applications in areas as diverse as mathematics, medicine, molecular biology, climatology, and astrophysics. The intent of BOINC is to make it possible for researchers to tap into the enormous processing power of personal computers around the world. So begins the Wikipedia entry for BOINC, which you can read in full by following this link.

Why would we be interested in BOINC? As docents, we volunteer our time to help visitors to the Tallgrass Prairie Preserve understand what it is all about. Perhaps some of us would be interested in volunteering spare capacity on our personal computers to help researchers with their investigations by doing number-crunching for their computer models.

For example, I installed the BOINC software on my computer from this location http://boinc.berkeley.edu/ and joined the Climate Prediction modeling project to help solve work-units for several experimental models run by Oxford University and the Meteorological Office in the U.K.

Once BOINC is installed and running, you can easily connect to and support other projects, such as the Virtual Prairie though, at present, there are no work-units to be computed. You can find out more about the Virtual Prairie by following this link.

Yellow-Flower Moon

—John Joseph Mathews

If the Osage had known about gold and had not been so close to the creative earth, they might have called this the Golden Moon for aesthetic reasons. The flowering weeds are predominantly yellow during this season, the blues, reds, and purples having passed or faded into pastels, so that the prairies are softer and mellowed. Yellow is very definitely the color of August; even the bluestem seems old-gold-washed at a distance, especially when blooming. There are the pastel blues and lavenders of the thistles and other flowers, but the sunflowers and the prairie goldenrods are glowing yellow. Yellow butterflies predominate, and the goldfinch comes to the ridges to tear at the thistle and to find something in the heart of the sunflower….

[Excerpt from Chapter VIII of Mathews’ book Talking To The Moon, available at the Visitor’s Center of the Tallgrass Prairie Preserve.]

Ruby-throated Hummingbird (Archilochus colubris)

—Nicholas Del Grosso

You can see this ruby and emerald dynamo in deciduous forests, along forest edges, in meadows and grasslands and along stream banks on the Tallgrass Prairie Preserve. It is not particularly fussy about habitat as long as there is an abundance of nectar and insects. Its main diet consists of nectar from flowers and flowering trees. Some of its favorite flowers include trumpet creeper, cardinal flower, honeysuckle, jewel weed, bee balm, red buckeye, red morning glory, red petunias and thistle. This hummingbird shows a strong preference for red and orange tubular flowers. Its long extendable tongue is used to tap the flowers nectar. These Hummers are also attracted to sap wells drilled by sapsuckers and other woodpeckers. The sap wells accumulate sweet sticky sap which the Hummers drink. This sweet treat also attracts insects which the opportunistic Hummer takes advantage of as a food source. Since nectar has no protein the insects become the Hummers only source of protein. In addition to taking advantage of the sap wells bounty the Hummers hawk small insects in the air and glean insects from flowers, leaves, bark and even spider webs.

Male Ruby-throated Hummingbird

Both sexes of this flying jewel are a bright emerald green on the back and crown, with a gray-white stomach. The females have a rounded tail with visible white tips. The species is sexually dimorphic. Males have a bright ruby red throat which pops in good light. This area is also called a gorget. In poor light the gorget looks black.

I usually see my first Ruby-throated Hummingbird around the first week of April and they are usually gone by the second week of October. In Oklahoma this Hummer is fairly common from the central through the eastern portion of the state. I have seen them sipping nectar from Cardinal flowers along Sand Creek and hawking insects in the woods along the trail. The best time of day to spot these colorful little birds is in the cool of the morning or early evening, at these times they seem to be the most active. These little dynamos range from southern Canada to central Florida and west to the central Great Plains and east Texas. Central Oklahoma sits on the edge of the Ruby-throat’s range.

With a length of 3 to 3¾ inches and a wing span of 4 to 4½ inches this mighty mite is a champion long-distance migrant. It spends its winters in Central America and its summers in the eastern portion of North America. It appears that there may be at least two favored migration routes. Most of the eastern birds probably migrate across the 500-mile width of the Gulf of Mexico to reach their Central American wintering grounds; they make this remarkable flight in one non-stop trip. The second migration route follows the coasts of Mississippi, Alabama, Louisiana and Texas; this route is favored by Hummers making their way south from the North American mid-west and western Canada.

Female Ruby-throated Hummingbird

While here in Oklahoma the Ruby-throated Hummingbird will mate, raise one to two broods and gain weight for its fall flight back to Central America. Ruby-throated Hummers are probably polygamous. The males will arrive on the breeding grounds first to establish their ¼-acre territories. When the females return, the male will court the females who enter his territory. Ruby-throated Hummingbirds are solitary and have little social contact beyond courtship and mating. Once mating occurs the male will leave the female and does not assist in nest building or care of the hatchlings. The pairs are together only long enough to procreate, then the males attention is focused on finding a new prospective mate.

Once mating occurs the males will aggressively defend their territory, chasing away other males. They will often find a perch with a good view from whence they launch sorties to engage in aerial combat with other males.

During these encounters the aerial displays are remarkable. These little birds are amazing flyers capable of flying full speed and stopping in an instant to hover and hang motionless in midair. When these birds hover their wings beat 55 times a second, producing a loud humming sound. They can move up, down, sideways and backwards with little adjustments. I spend hours watching the dawn and dusk dogfights as the males aggressively defend flowers and feeders.

Ruby-throated Hummingbird nest

Even nest building is an exercise in miniature, as you may imagine; the nest constructed by the female is quarter-size and built directly on top of a branch rather then in a fork. I was lucky enough to examine a nest which I found while trimming a large hackberry tree in my backyard. It was an astonishing structure, the composition of the nest was from thistle- and dandelion-down held together by spider silk. The outside was camouflaged with lichen and moss. The nest is usually located 10 to 40 feet above the ground.

The clutch size is from 1 to 3 eggs which hatch in 12 to 14 days. The hatchlings are fledged in 18 to 22 days and during that time the female will feed them insects she gathers in her foraging away from the nest site.

The average life span of a male Ruby-throated Hummingbird is five years. Although there are some records of banded birds recovered that lived as long as eight to nine years. The female on average can live up to seven years. The difference in longevity appears to be a result of weight loss during the breeding season due to the high energy demands of defending a territory followed by the high energy demands of the migration. In addition to the costs of its lifestyle, the hummer is faced with a myriad of dangers from aerial, terrestrial and aquatic predators. Due to its small size it can be a meal to such insects as Praying Mantises, Orb-weaving Spiders and Green Darters. Death from the air is the result of Sharp-shinned Hawks, Loggerhead Strikes and Blue Jays. Cats quickly learn that easy prey is attracted to feeders and stake them out. The little birds are even vulnerable to Bull Frogs and Largemouth Bass when they stop for a drink at a stream or lake. Even with all these negative populations of this remarkable bird are stable.

Hummingbirds are placed in the same taxonomic order as Swifts, Apodiformes, which means without feet; certainly this is how a Hummer looks in flight. The extremely short legs of the Ruby-throat prevent it from walking or hopping, the best it can do is shuffle along a perch. Never the less it is an aerial acrobat. Life for this little guy is hazardous, fast and furious.

Docent Coverage Of Season Days

—Andrew Donovan-Shead

Docent Coverage of Season Days

Visitor Counts

—Iris McPherson

In June we had a total of 699 visitors. Of that number there were 656 visitors representing 37 states and 43 international visitors representing 10 countries. Following Oklahoma (339) in number of visitors were the top 3 states of California (50), Kansas (38) and Texas (24). We had our first visitors from Malta in June. Yes, Malta is a country though I have to admit I had to look it up to be sure. It is a small island off the toe of Italy. It is close to being the smallest country and is very densely populated.

The following table displays the total counts for June, 2012, with that month in previous years.

We have reached the halfway point in the year, and we are still missing five states; they are Alaska, Delaware, North Dakota, Rhode Island and Vermont. If you have visitors from any of these states on your shift, please make an extra effort to encourage them to sign the guest book. I would encourage each of you to make sure to ask all of our visitors to sign the guest book.

I think you’ve been doing a good job. Just keep it up. Here’s to a high visitor count in 2012 and a great year for the prairie!

Other Places to Visit

Here we provide some links to other places worth visiting.

Tallgrass Prairie Preserve Visitor’s Center Latitude & Longitude

Here is the latitude and longitude of the Visitor’s Center that you can give to visitors for entry into their GPS navigation device.

Kiosk Maintenance

The manufacturer’s instructions for cleaning the touch-screen recommend use of a soft dry cloth only. This proved inadequate for smeared fingerprints. Soft-paper kitchen towels work well, slightly damp with a small drop of soft handsoap. Application of a dry kichen towel removes any residual moisture.

Over time, a matter of several weeks continuous operation, I have noticed that calibration of the touch-screen drifts away from the initial set-point. If you notice that the cursor isn’t under your finger when you touch the screen then restart the kiosk by unplugging it from the wall, waiting a few moments and then re-inserting the power plug. It will restart and recalibrate.

This link points to the complete Kiosk Maintenance Manual.

Back Issues

Some printed back issues of the Docent Newsletter, to February 2009, can be found in the two green and one blue-black zip-binders, stored in the Perspex rack by the file cabinet in the office of the Visitor’s Center.

All back issues are available electronically via the links shown below. All newsletters prior to December 2007 are available in Portable Document Format (PDF), which means that you will need Adobe Reader installed on your computer to read these files. All newsletters from December 2007 onwards are in HTML format that is easily read using your web-browser.

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1998—January  February  March  April  May  June  July  August  September  October  November  December—1998
1997—January  February  March  April  May  June  July  August  September  October  November  December—1997
1996—January  February  March  April  May  June  July  August  September  October  November  December—1996
1995—January  February  March  April  May  June  July  August  September  October  November  December—1995

Selected Topics Index

This persistent index of selected topics should make finding articles of interest easier. The list will grow as I move further into the past and it will grow as I add interesting topics from each new newsletter. Iris McPherson lent me the paper copies of the newsletter from the very early years of the docent program; I ran them through a scanner equipped with a document feeder, saving them as PDF files, then added them to Back Issues section above. Let me know of any dead links that you discover. Also, please lend me any paper copies of the newsletter that are missing so that I can scan and add them to the list of back issues.

Newsletter Publication

Deadline for submission of articles for inclusion in the newsletter is the 10th of each month. Publication date is on the 15th. All docents, Nature Conservancy staff, university scientists, philosophers, and historians are welcome to submit articles and pictures about the various preserves in Oklahoma, but of course the Tallgrass Prairie Preserve in particular.