Another successful Docent Council Meeting! This time the group met for an afternoon session in Owasso. Those in attendance included Harvey Payne, Anita Springer, Kay Krebbs, Tawnda Hopper, George Pierson, David Turner, Betty Turner, Bill Alexander, Kathy Alexander, Nancy Irby, Karen Cruce, Barbara Bates, Nancy Muirhead, Dan Martin and Jerry Hofmeister.
The meeting was kicked off with discussion of creating committees to share the work load. Docents were asked to volunteer to chair a variety of suggested committees. The results were amazing. Following is the result of the committee discussion and appointment of chairpersons:
If you would like to participate on one of these committees, please contact the chairperson as soon as possible. The more, the merrier!
seehow the first type interface could work to show docents what might be provided and to get feedback for this type of interface. There was discussion of the second type of interface from other docents who have seen this type of device in operation at another center.
The date for the next Docent Council meeting has not yet been determined. We will notify everyone when we have scheduled the winter meeting. If you have suggestions for the Docent Program that you would like us to consider as an Agenda item for the next Docent Council meeting, please contact any or all of the following individuals:
Another bison book recently added to the visitor center inventory is Portraits of the Bison—An Illustrated Guide to Bison Society, Second Edition by Wes Olson and photographs by Johane Janelle, copyright 2012. This book has photos thoughout, and is about 10” x 12” with 108 pages. This is over twice the size of their companion book A Field Guide to Plains Bison in the visitor center which is has 87 pages. This book has a profusion of bison information from Olson’s life as a park ranger working with bison. It has a descriptive section on how to be safe around bison, and the three different zones surrounding a bison that cause specific kinds of behavior. He notes more people are injured in parks in Canada each year by bison than by grizzly bears. As an artist, Olson provides detailed sketches of both male and female bison at each life cycle stage, which make it easy to see how to distinguish age and sex. An interesting reference is a listing of all the public bison herds in Canada and the United States. Their Field Guide is handy to take with you on your Tallgrass Prairie trips and the Portraits volume is a nice coffee table book to have at home for reference and relaxed reading. Both books are signed by the author and photographer, which make them an even nicer set to have in your personal collection.
To a casual visitor, the prairie might appear to be a featureless and colorless environment. We all know that a horizon view may be relatively flat, but the reality is that the prairie is anything but flat. Rolling hills abound. They were carved by water erosion through the ages — much of it when the last glaciers were melting. And we all know that the prairie is anything but colorless. The dry grass is mostly tan, but beneath the tan cover, and sometimes towering over it, there are a multitude of colors. Green is most prominent, being the color of the chlorophyll which plants use to capture sunlight to make food.
But the prairie is not just grass, its many forbs blooming in many colors. It is not uncommon in the Spring to see whole fields of yellow as the Coreopsis blooms; in the Summer to see whole fields of purple as the Ironweed blooms; or in the Autumn to see wide areas of red as the Sumac leaves lose their green and allow the red to show. Almost any color you can imagine can be found in the extensive variety of prairie wildflowers.
Even the animals can be colorful. True most of the animals are various shades of tan and brown, but those shades provide them the safety of blending into the tan grass and the brown dry leaves of the forest floor. Those various shades of tan and brown provide a richness to the color palette much as a piece of walnut furniture does to a room. Think of the beauty and desirability of the fur of many animals. These animal colors are produced by melanin, a pigment that most animals can produce. Some have an abundance of the melanin pigment, which can provide a completely black appearance or a pattern of black with shades of gray or tan and even white — as in a skunk.
The most obvious expression of color in the animal world on the prairie is
found in birds. While many birds are various shades of tan and brown,
those little brown birds
and big dark-shaded birds
often
have striking patterns. Again their main pigment is melanin, which will
result in black if it is abundant and browns, tans, grays, and even yellow
if it is less abundant. Most of the other colors come from the foods that
the birds eat. Those foods contain pigments that plants produce that
animals cannot. The Redheaded Woodpecker is a picture in black and white
until you look at the brilliant red head. The pigment for the red comes
from eating red insects or red plant materials from which they get a dose
of carotinoid pigments.
The brilliant yellow of the Goldfinch expressed by the males in Summer comes from eating foods that contain carotinoid pigments. Goldfinches are vegetarian. To produce new yellow feathers, they must eat plants that contain those pigments. At the time of the year, early Spring, when the Goldfinches are molting and growing new feathers, the most abundant yellows are in dandelions. Goldfinches are known to eat the Dandelion flower buds.
In contrast, some birds exhibit colors without having pigments. The Eastern Bluebird with its blue back and reddish breast produces the blue color by a structural mechanism in its feathers by which light is scattered and blue wavelengths are reflected. This is true for Blue Jays also. And the irridescent colors of the Hummingbird’s neck are not produced by pigments, but like the Bluebird, are produced by the structure of the feathers selectively absorbing and reflecting certain wavelengths.
We also see some color among the reptiles of the prairie. Most are tans and browns, such as a rattlesnake or a female collared lizard.
But then there are those with some spectacular colors. The male collared lizard shows up in green and yellow because it has structures within its skin cells (chromatophores) that contain pigments in addition to melanin. They pick up carotinoids from the insects (that obtained the carotinoids from plants) that they eat. They also have iridiphores that contain no pigments, but reflect only certain colors of light such as blue (similar to the blues of bird feathers). These are a function of the lizard’s genetics. (I’m not going to get into lizards that can change colors — we don’t have any living in the prairie anyway).
And how about this Rough Green Snake. Its color is produced by chromatophores and iridiphores in the skin cells. The different colors are produced by combining layers of cells each producing a different color. For example the green of the male collard lizard or the rough green snake is produced by layers cells with yellow pigments and layers of cells that contain nonpigmented reflective crystals, i.e., yellow light reflected from the yellow pigments altered by blue light reflected by the iridiphores combine to make a green color. This means that if the yellow pigment is not available from the foods that the snake eats (insects primarily), the snake would likely appear blue.
Well, we see that colors abound in the prairie. Their expression is complex and is the result of evolutionary processes that ensure that those plants and animals that live in the prairie are the ones that are best fitted for the environment.
We also see that the Nature Conservancy’s Tallgrass Prairie Preserve plays an important role in preserving successful evolutionary lines and maintaining diversity and color of the life on the Earth.
Among the many guests at the 25th Anniversary of the Tallgrass Prairie
Preserve was Carolyn Mathews, who brought her prize-winning quilt to share
with the guests at the Visitor’s Center. The quilt was part of a
science project in which she encouraged her sixth-grade students at
Glenpool to participate. The students and Carolyn made at least four
Saturday trips to the prairie, along with their science teacher, to study
the various aspects and life of the prairie. Each of the 24 students made
a quilt square, one of which was decorated with buffalo hair. The finished
quilt won first prize at a freedom contest sponsored by the Oklahoma State
Supreme Court in 1996 and was hung in the capitol rotunda for the event.
Carolyn was one of the first twenty-five docents at the Tallgrass Prairie
Preserve and was here the day the bison were released. She is always
renewed when she comes home to the prairie. And, yes, she is related to
John Mathews and enjoys reading about each moon as it comes in her bedside
copy of Talking to the Moon
.
Crows, vultures and witches, oh my! The Crow has been described as a familiar to witches, omen of evil, and bearer of bad news; these characterizations do an injustice to the American Crow. This bird is a highly social, intelligent and family oriented bird. The American Crow stays together in year-round family groups made up of a breeding pair and offspring from the past two to five years. In addition to the nuclear family, crow groups sometimes include extended family members such as nephews, brothers, and half-brothers of the mated pair.
March and April start out the American Crows year, this is courting and nest building time. Oklahoma Crows stay all year long in their home territories. The breeding pair stays together throughout the year. They will be two of the blackest, glossiest birds in their group. The male tends to stay close to his chosen female, flying after her when she flies, and landing next to her on her branch. The male aggressively defends his mate from other males. March and April is a good time to identify the one-year-old birds, they tend to be a dull brownish color instead of a glossy black. Their feathers look so ragged you wonder how they can fly.
During this early season watch for crows carrying sticks, if you are stealthy enough you can often follow them to their nest tree. Even young from previous years will assist in building the nest. The nest will be hidden in a crotch near the tree trunk or on a horizontal branch towards the top third or quarter of the tree. Crows prefer to nest in evergreens, such as cedar, magnolias and pines, but they will build a nest in deciduous trees if evergreens are less available. The outer cup is made up of medium-sized twigs; typically the outer cup is 6 to 19 inches across with a comfortable inner cup lined with pine needles, weeds, soft bark, or animal hair. At the Tallgrass Prairie Preserve Bison shed is a prominent part of the inner cup. The inner cup is 6 to 14 inches across and 4 to 15 inches deep. The clutch size can be from 3 to 9 blue to olive green eggs with brown and gray blotches towards the large end. The female is the only bird who incubates the eggs and broods the nestlings.
It normally takes 16 to 18 days for the eggs to hatch. After hatching, the parents, and the offspring from the broods of previous years, will help care for the hatchlings. Each family member has an assigned role, the female stays with the hatchlings until they fledge in about 20 days, the male and helpers bring food back to the nest for the female and the hatchlings. Much like humans, Crows have a long adolescent period to learn the necessary survival skills to live life as a Crow. Learning starts as soon as the hatchlings fledge and continues through their apprentice period as helpers, this learning period can last anywhere from 2 to 5 years.
In April start listening for a new tune coming from Crow nests, it is a
high-pitched crow sound called whining
. This sound comes from the
female as she is sitting on the nest. In response to this sound the male
and helpers often fly to the nest with food for the incubating female
after hatching they also bring food to the hatchlings.
June and July are the busiest and noisiest time of the year for Crows. I have a small family group of seven birds that nest in a large Red-cedar in my front yard. They start cawing as soon as the sun comes up. At this time of the year these sounds are begging calls to their parents and helpers for food. As they begin to leave the nest the hatchlings will stay in the home tree, as this happens the helpers pick up a new duty. They now chick-sit the hatchlings and engage in social interactions with their new siblings. By keeping their new siblings as safe as possible they ensure that their DNA will survive in the gene pool. Breeding is only one way to ensure that DNA is passed on, caring for a mother’s subsequent chicks also fosters increased survivability and opportunity to ensure their DNA will continue to survive. It takes a few weeks before the young of year begin to follow their parents and older helpers, begging, on the ground. Crows normally feed on the ground and eat almost anything from fruit and seeds to insects, worms, chicks from nests they rob, to small animals, carrion and garbage. They are patient and opportunistic foragers.
Like people, juvenile birds spend a lot of time playing. Some common types of play are wrestling or pulling the tails of their nest mates. Play can often be just for the fun of it, but it also helps them explore their environment. Several winters ago I saw a Crow slip on the icy ridgeline of my house and slide down the icy slope only to fly back up to the ridgeline and purposely execute the maneuver again. This thrill seeker had discovered sledding. This went on for 15 minutes until the crow saw me watching and flew off. The repeated action over a long period of time made me believe that this Crow enjoyed sledding down the roof. Play makes you aware of your surroundings and available resources that can be used to your advantage. Most biologists agree that higher intelligence requires a genetic imprint to foster more advance behaviors like learning, innovation and play. In addition to the genetic element animals learn from individual experience, like my sledding crow, and what they acquire or learn through social input from the nuclear family and flocks. These interactions over the year multiply the individual crow’s experiences by supplementing these experiences with the flock member’s experiences.
In September many crows start leaving their territories to forage in other places. They will be looking for easy food resources and they have learned that cut corn and milo fields always have waste grain to be feed upon, as do feedlots. They remember that Oak, Beechnut and Pecan trees have rich mast available to be eaten at this time of the year, the older birds also teach the juveniles about the town dump which is a great place for foraging. So the older birds pass on the institutional knowledge to the juveniles increasing their ability to survive. Flocks also serve to teach fledglings and juveniles to hone their call repertoire and better understand and communicate within the family group and flock. Like song birds and humans, Crows must learn the complex nuances of communication.
During the winter months, large flocks of Crows begin to gather. These flocks are made up of birds from further north spending the winter and also local residents. Crows are short term migrants, whose migration is dependent on severe weather patterns. Crows are a common sight at the Tallgrass Prairie Preserve all year long but their numbers increase during the winter. Last years Christmas Bird Count tallied 164 Crows and the 15 year average was 133 Crows. Most resident family groups spend at least part of every day on their home territories, but they also interact with big flocks when foraging and roosting.
Crows are the ultimate angry birds! Research has shown that Crows remember
the faces of people who have threatened or harmed them and these memories
probably last for the bird’s lifetime, which in the wild can be 15
to 40 years. It has also been shown that individual birds can pass this
information on to other individuals increasing the flock’s threat
awareness. Like a scene from Alfred Hitchcock’s horror film, The
Birds
, Crows scold dangerous people and bring in family members and
even strangers into the mob. Like a telephone-tree one crow alerts another
who alerts two more who alerts four more and the number grows
exponentially. Naive crows exposed to mobs learn to identify the dangerous
person, and associate that individual’s face with danger and act
accordingly. Crows who have been shot at also associate a person carrying
a shotgun or rifle with danger and stay away from that person.
Crows adapt to their surroundings. Crows in urban areas are far less defensive of their nests than Crows in rural areas. There is a difference in how people interact with Crows in these two environments. Crows in rural areas are often persecuted and hunted by people, while urban Crows are not. Research has shown that rural Crows are often more cautious in defending their nest because of this, staying out of gunshot range and calling as people approach. While urban Crows only start to call when people actually begin to climb the tree in which the nest is located and then proceeded to actively defend the nest by diving at the intruder.
Crows are capable of learning and innovation; I have even observed Crows fashion and use a stick to grab a spider from a hole when it realized its bill was too large to gain the object of its desire.
We watch neo-tropical birds to be inspired by their beauty, we watch Crows to be
amazed by their intelligence. Most ornithologists believe the Crow to be
the most advanced stage of avian evolution. Maybe we should consider
changing the name for a group of Crows from a murder
to a
mensa
.
Crows stand together against the world, helping each other on every possible occasion. By means of variations in their far carrying calls they signal the approach of danger, the discovery of food, the presence of natural enemies like foxes, large hawks and owls and people. When several are feeding together there is always a sentinel in a nearby tree to sound a warning to the foraging Crows. Henry Ward Beecher, the famous abolitionist, gave us the best summation of this dark traveler’s intelligence when he remarked that if men wore feathers and wings a very few of them would be clever enough to be Crows!
The month of August had 601 visitors with 580 from 33 states. Oklahoma was represented by 378 visitors followed by Texas (28), Arkansas (25) and Kansas (21). There were 21 visitors from 9 foreign countries.
Keep up the good work of getting as many visitors as possible to sign the guest registry. We seem to be having a pretty good year, as far as number of visitors is concerned. I know that the Saturdays that I have worked have been really busy. Hopefully the weather will continue to cooperate with us this fall.
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
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April
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December—2014
2013—January
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December—2013
2012—January
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November
December—2012
2011—January
February
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August
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October
November
December—2011
2010—January
February
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August
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November
December—2010
2009—January
February
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October
November
December—2009
2008—January
February
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December—2008
2007—January
February
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October
November
December—2007
2006—January
February
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October
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December—2006
2005—January
February
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December—2005
2004—January
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December—2004
2003—January
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December—2003
2002—January
February
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December—2002
2001—January
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December—2001
2000—January
February
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December—2000
1999—January
February
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December—1999
1998—January
February
March
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December—1998
1997—January
February
March
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December—1997
1996—January
February
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December—1996
1995—January
February
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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.