There are no baby bears born on the old reservation now. I imagine there are no wild bears being born in all the former domain of the Osage.
The ducks have continued their flights south with the exception of a few winter mallards along the creeks. In the days when the cattlemen fed grain instead of cake, they wintered here by the thousands.
The days grow colder and the first heavy snow comes, but, of course, not at the right time, which would be Christmas Eve. When there is a snow at Christmas time, the state papers carry news of the fact in the headlines. The first snow of any consequence, outside of the flurries during November, comes usually before Christmas Day and is gone before the great day arrives.
The prairie is deep copper-color now and remains so all winter. The leaves of the blackjacks are brown and tick gently on calm days but rattle like shot on paper when the wind blows….
[Excerpt from Chapter XII of Mathews’ book Talking To The Moon, available at the Visitor’s Center of the Tallgrass Prairie Preserve.]
As the year waxes and wanes, birds come and go heralding the changes in the seasons. The arrival of the Neotropicals and the departure of the Canadian Snowbirds mark spring as surely as the arrival of the Snowbirds and the departure of the Neotropicals mark autumn. This is the rhythm of avian life and was early man’s clock of the seasons. The Cedar Waxwing is a minute hand on that clock. The dying landscape is brightened up by this traveler. It gives your soul a smile to see a flock of these multicolored birds. They are not only very visible, they are also audibly noticeable. Often you can hear their high pitched whistles and buzzy trills before you see them flitting around in the canopy.
The Waxwing has a distinctive crest and the face has a narrow black mask neatly outlined in white. Its head and chest are a pale brown fading to gray on the wings. The belly is a lemon yellow, and the tail is gray with a bright yellow tip. This bird gets its name from the bright red waxy tips on the terminal of its wing feathers. In fact these red tips serve as an important mating indicator to the Waxwings during the breeding season. They are a visual cue to potential mates about each others age. Age is a determining factor of egg size, clutch size, and the ability to find and deliver food to both the nesting female and the young. The end result is that associative-mating occurs, based on age: younger birds having fewer red wax drops, and older birds with more red wax drops, tend to bond and mate with individuals of their own age. The red tips are not always visible so it is difficult to get a good photo of them, but you can see them in the picture below-right.
As you can see, the Cedar Waxwing exemplifies well-kempt fashion. Bombycilla cedrorum describes the natty garb of this
bird. Bombux comes from the Greek root for silk,
while cilla comes from modern Latin meaning tail.
So loosely translated, which is the only way I translate Latin, you have
silky tail of the cedar
.
The Cedar Waxwing is not a native Oklahoma bird, but it is a winter visitor. Its year round range is across the northern tier of states continent wide, while its breeding range is across Canada from coast to coast. If you examine Waxwing migration patterns, you can see that it qualifies as an erratic winter resident in the States. This species is irruptive, with erratic winter movements dictated by the fruit and berry crops. Sometimes its moves long distances, it has been reported as far south as the tip of northern South America and sometimes it has very short seasonal movements, staying in place with an abundant wild berry crop. When in the tropics it prefers to inhabit highlands. In the end it is the berry crop which dictates how far this bird migrates.
A majority of the Cedar Waxwing diet consists in fruit. It dines from a veritable buffet of fruits and berries that include mulberry, cherry, privet, yew, red cedar, hackberry, and choke cherry. It supplements this fruit diet during the spring and summer with flying insects, but it can survive on fruit alone for several months. In fact because of the high fruit diet, Cowbirds are not successful parasites of Cedar Waxwing nests; cowbird chicks eventually starve on the fruit diet.
One of the most memorable sights I have ever seen occurred while I was fly-fishing the Yampa River in northern Colorado. There were hundreds of Cedar Waxwings in the willows bordering the river; it was a late afternoon in July and a hatch was emerging, The Waxwings were darting out from the willows by the tens and twenties hawking insects in the air and returning to the willows to consume their catch and then off again for more insects. To see a flock of Waxwings in any season is an awesome sight. They are a highly social bird and often travel and feed in large flocks numbering hundreds of birds.
This bird has a very healthy appetite that borders on gluttonous. Cedar Waxwings eat the whole fruit, seed and all. Many birds eat a lot of fruit, but separate and regurgitate the seeds, but not the Cedar Waxwing. Because of this eating behavior, Waxwings are a source for the spread of mistletoe and red cedar by eating the fruit in one location and excreting the seeds in another. Waxwings never pass up an opportunity to eat, even when the berries may be overripe, resulting in the birds becoming intoxicated from eating berries that have started to ferment and produce alcohol; sometimes this kills them. The Cedar Waxwing is truly the movable feaster, much like the ghost of Christmas past.
At the Tallgrass Prairie, Waxwings usually arrive in mid-October and stay until May. The best places to look for this bird are high in cedar trees or in fruit bearing trees like the hackberry. You will often find them along streams or ponds. Cedar Waxwings tend to congregate in flocks from 10 to 20 to hundreds. It is not uncommon for them to mix in with big flocks of small birds. They are easily distinguishable in these flocks because of their coloration and 7-inch size. Waxwings are similar in size to Starlings and often form large flocks that grow, shrink, divide and rejoin. These behaviors are similar to the behavior of Starling flocks.
Cedar Waxwings are a forest-edge bird. They specialize in open woodland, orchards and residential areas, especially where fruit bearing trees and bushes are present. The Christmas Bird Count at the Tallgrass Prairie has a 14-year average of 68 individuals. But over the 14 years the yearly numbers have fluctuated from a high of 264 to a low of zero, showing you how the berry crop will dictate the numbers of Waxwings you will see.
The Cedar Waxwing has benefited from human introduction into the landscape of fruiting ornamentals; it is a bird of least concern. Waxwings have been very successful in nesting and fledging chicks and have benefited from man clearing the landscape and creating edge habitat. While the Cedar Waxwing is not a breeding guest or resident bird in Oklahoma, it is present for the winter holidays and makes a great Christmas guest.
During several years as a Docent, I have been a regular visitor at the Tallgrass Prairie Preserve. On those visits, I have seen a tremendous variety of plant and animal life that makes the prairie such a beautiful and wonderful place. I always have my camera with me to help me capture some of that wonder and beauty, but a photograph, even a good one, does not even come close in capturing the prairie. You just have to be there to experience it fully. First, I have never seen a photograph that reproduced the expansive openness of the prairie. Every time I am there, I am awestruck by the vista of rolling hills of grass and also the immensity of the sky. You just don’t see that in New York City or even in the Appalachians. Second, no photograph can fully capture the weather — the wind, the clear blue sky or clouds of all types, the rain, the snow. When you combine the weather, the vista, and the plants and animals, every trip to the prairie is a new experience.
The last time I was at the Tallgrass Prairie Preserve was on December 1, 2012. That visit like every other previous visit renewed my appreciation of the prairie. Here’s why: As I was driving in at about 8:00 a.m. on County Road 4220 from the East, I topped one of the oak-covered hills and at the side of the road, I saw a flock of about 20 wild turkeys. They looked at me and began moving away from the road into the woods but were in no great hurry. I quickly stopped my car, unpacked my camera, and began trying to photograph the flock as they moved into the woods. I was not very successful in getting a good photograph, but I had a great experience in watching them. I have been around wild turkeys in the past — as a farm boy in Western Oklahoma seeing them roost in cottonwood trees, and as a scientist with Department of the Interior in trying to get reclaimed coal mines in Tennessee repopulated with wildlife. But this was still exhilarating because they were so near and they did not scatter and disappear immediately. I had time and location for a great view of them. Of course, the Wild Turkeys were not all I saw: the prairie was still there in all its splendor — this time of the year a study in tan and gray; the Bison were near the roads — the young ones always seem to have an inclination to look directly at me as I looked at them; the weather was windy but very warm for early December. The sky was mostly cloudy, but the sun shone through in shafts of light; later in the day, the clouds disappeared leaving behind a bright blue dome overhead. It was a great day for prairie watching.
Here we provide some links to other places worth visiting.
Here is the latitude and longitude of the Visitor’s Center that you can give to visitors for entry into their GPS navigation device.
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.
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.
2012—January
February
March
April
May
June
July
August
September
October
November
December—2012
2011—January
February
March
April
May
June
July
August
September
October
November
December—2011
2010—January
February
March
April
May
June
July
August
September
October
November
December—2010
2009—January
February
March
April
May
June
July
August
September
October
November
December—2009
2008—January
February
March
April
May
June
July
August
September
October
November
December—2008
2007—January
February
March
April
May
June
July
August
September
October
November
December—2007
2006—January
February
March
April
May
June
July
August
September
October
November
December—2006
2005—January
February
March
April
May
June
July
August
September
October
November
December—2005
2004—January
February
March
April
May
June
July
August
September
October
November
December—2004
2003—January
February
March
April
May
June
July
August
September
October
November
December—2003
2002—January
February
March
April
May
June
July
August
September
October
November
December—2002
2001—January
February
March
April
May
June
July
August
September
October
November
December—2001
2000—January
February
March
April
May
June
July
August
September
October
November
December—2000
1999—January
February
March
April
May
June
July
August
September
October
November
December—1999
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
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.
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.