April 19 is a packed day for us. Dennis Bires has scheduled a fence pulling day, for those so inclined, and we will also have our annual cookout. We will meet at the research station. Harvey Payne will be our guest speaker for the morning session of reorientation. If you attended the Feb 22 reorientation, feel free to join us for the morning session and leave after lunch. The afternoon session will contain the same information as the Feb 22 session.
So...come have coffee with us at 9:30 a.m. and the morning session will begin at 10:00 a.m. with Harvey. We will then cook hamburgers and hot dogs for lunch and begin our afternoon session about 12:30. DO NOT BRING YOUR LUNCH!
I hope to see you there. Please RSVP to Kay Krebbs or me for lunch, so that we can be sure to have the classroom set up with enough chairs and have enough food and drinks for all.
This month, sections C and D of the Docent Manual are on-line. See this
link. We can make changes when they are approved by Anita and the
Preserve management:
http://oklanature.com/docentnews/TGP-Docent-Manual/0-TGPD-Manual.html#SECT-C
All Tallgrass Prairie Docents and friends who have experienced cabin fever during this cold winter will want to come out this spring for our optional outdoor work days. There is no need to bring along bottled water and granola snack bars, as those will be provided.
We have all been taught that the Tallgrass Prairie is dominated by four
species of grass. I remember Dr. Jerry Crocket emphasizing those species
in a Botany class many years ago at Oklahoma State University. The four
species are: Big Bluestem (Andropogon gerardii
Vitman), Indian Grass (Sorghastrum nutans (L.)
Nash), Switchgrass (Panicum virgatum L.), and
Little Bluestem (Schizachyrium scoparium (Michx.)
Nash). These grass are easily found in the prairies of Oklahoma (and the
Tallgrass Prairie Preserve), and easily identified when they are
flowering. We are all familiar with the tall turkey foot
inflorescence of the Big Bluestem towering over the other prairie plants.
All of these four grasses are warm-season grasses that flower in late
Summer and early Autumn. During the Spring and early Summer, we find only
the leafy clumps of these grasses.
This Spring, as you take a walk along the Tallgrass Prairie Preserve
trails, starting at the Gazebo, head to the right and look for a tall
grass — yes a tall grass in the Spring. At first glance, the
flowering stalks look like Big Bluestem with the turkey foot
flowering head. However, as you look more closely, you will see that the
flowering head is entirely different from that of Big Bluestem. Big
bluestem flowers are perfect,
having both staminate and pistilate
parts in each flower. This Spring
grass, Eastern Gamagrass (Tripsicum dactyloides L.), has two different kinds of
flowers in the flowering head. At the top are flowers with only staminate
parts, and at the bottom are flowers with only pistilate parts —
separate male and female flowers.
Being monecious is not a common occurrence in grasses, but you are familiar with another grass that has separate male and female flowers — corn (Zea mays L.). In corn, we see the tassels at the top of the plant. These are staminate flowers. Then we see pistilate flowers along the stem in a cob arrangement.
Well, it turns out that this Spring-flowering tall grass, is a distant relative of corn. It is believed that both corn and Eastern Gamagrass evolved from a common ancestor, and corn may have had help in its evolution by inhabitants of central Mexico in their quest for a food crop more than 7,000 years ago.
Eastern Gamagrass is not as commonly found as are the major tall grasses, but it can be abundant in places. It is often found growing where the soils are wetter. In our meadow surrounding the Gazebo, we find Eastern Gamagrass growing alongside the other tallgrasses, but we do not often find it growing with the other tallgrasses on the rocky hillsides and tops. Eastern Gamagrass is a preferred grazing grass; it is high in protein and apparently tastes good. I didn’t find any studies on Bison and Eastern Gamagrass, but studies (Eastern Gamagrass; Roberts, Craig and Kallenbach, Robert; University of Missouri Agriculture Extension Guide) indicated that cattle will overgraze Eastern Gamagrass even when there are plenty of other grasses available.
On April 3rd my wife and I were in for a surprise as we drove onto the Tallgrass Prairie Preserve for our peaceful day on the prairie. Just after entering the Preserve, we saw a bison cow with her new calf trailing behind. It was instantly recognizable for a couple of reasons. One is the small size setting it apart its yearly siblings, some of whom are still trying to get milk from their mothers. The other is the reddish brown color, which I always think is orange, possibly because of my time at OSU. When I mentioned the calf at the headquarters, it turns out that this was the first reported sighting of a new bison calf for the season. What an exciting thing! Now I wish I had stopped for a picture of what turned out to be a momentous event.
If you haven’t been early in the season, this is a great time to come to Tallgrass Prairie Preserve. The bison herd is in abundant visibility along the loop to the Visitor’s Center. It is so rewarding to hear from the visitors about their bison sightings. The calves are really fun to see before they lose their new birth coloring, which occurs within a few months of birth. As we drove out in the late afternoon we noted that many of the females are very large and that a lot more were resting on the ground, possibly because of the extra weight that the females were carrying just before giving birth.
As we drove on through the prairie, we could see the rebirth of green grass especially in the patch burn areas, with the bison immediately grazing on these new areas when the new grass appears. In the burn areas you can see how rocky it is where the tall grass grows, and get a better understanding why this might not have been good land for farming. Compared to our visit last week, it was obvious that a new yearly life cycle was underway on the Tallgrass Prairie Preserve.
Another aspect of coming at this time is seeing the bison attired in their full dress coats from the winter season. As this new season begins, many other animals are eagerly watching for these coats to be shed, so that they can use them to line their nests with the soft wool. This is an excellent time to get pictures of the prairie as it awakens from the winter season, and then begins to change colors throughout the summer. We remember last year coming onto the Tallgrass Prairie Preserve when it would be covered with purple one visit, orange the next visit, and then to yellow on the next visit. It seemed that every time we came it was new in some way.
A special highlight for us was sitting on the porch of the Visitor’s Center having a picnic lunch. Come to the ranch for an early spring visit. The weather is delightful and the prairie is welcoming you to see it in rebirth.
If I was a sheep rancher, and coyotes were annoying my critters, I know exactly which method I would use to deter them: LGDs — Livestock Guardian Dogs. No need to bother with fladry lines, poison, traps, electronic motion-sensing gadgets that trigger bright lights or loud noises, beefed-up fencing, coyote rollers on top of existing fencing, enclosures, or even range riders. Livestock Guardian Dogs are raised with the sheep, imprint on them, live outside with them, and protect them — chasing and even fighting off predators. Many of the breeds used as LGDs even resemble sheep, such as the Hungarian Kuvasz, or the Turkish Akbash; they are large, with heavy heads and muzzles, and their coats are white. Their presence alone, near or among the flock, is often enough to discourage predators.
Most of you are aware that the coyote is an opportunistic omnivore. His diet is not as meat-heavy as the wolf’s, and with his quickness and smaller size, he can feed himself easily. Coyotes can spend quite a bit of time gorging on fruit dropped from trees, or plucking berries from bushes. Rodents — a lot of them — are consumed happily; at some places and times of the year, the coyote’s diet can be 90-percent rodents. The coyote can also form packs to work together to hunt larger prey. But he can also nosh on lizards, insects, frogs, bird seed, Carrion, garbage, and almost any other thing you can name, including sometimes our pets and livestock.
It’s these last two menu items that really get our clever and versatile
friend into so much hot water. Most of you living in coyote areas know
enough to keep your small pets in at night, and not to leave anything
around your property that could entice a passing coyote to stop in for a
bite. But for a sheep rancher, especially one with an operation of any
size, it’s not so easy. Some ranchers will resort to the age-old method of
shooting coyotes on their land. But sometimes the following year, they
will notice an increase in coyote numbers. This is because when you kill
the resident coyotes, transient coyotes will often move into the area and
divide it up into smaller lots
. Also, when the pack structure is
disrupted, more females will breed, and more will bring their fetuses to
term. So the best thing to do, if you decide to kill them, is to be
selective, and just take the problem coyotes. Not every coyote in a
population will kill livestock. Often it is the dads
, willing to take
any type of food for the weaned and hungry pups.
It would be helpful if the sheep mothers would be as militant as, say, the pronghorn in protecting their young. But with the help of Livestock Guardian Dogs, they stand a much better chance of having peace and serenity on the range, and the rancher a more restful night’s sleep.
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.
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.
2014—January
February
March
April
May
June
July
August
September
October
November
December—2014
2013—January
February
March
April
May
June
July
August
September
October
November
December—2013
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.