Newsletter title

May 2015

In This Edition

 

Docent Hike, Lunch, & Council Meeting

—Kay Krebbs

Please join us on Saturday, 13 June 2015, for all or part of a busy day at the Preserve. The tentative schedule will be as follows:

More details will follow via email or postal service. Please RSVP no later than June 6 to Kay Krebbs via email to kkrebbs@tnc.org or by telephone to either 918-287-4803 or 918-855-7189.

Docent Recognition Luncheon

—Nancy Irby

Save the date for this year’s Docent Recognition Luncheon, which will be held on Saturday 26 September 2015 at the Research Station.

Blue-gray Gnatcatcher (Polioptila caerulea)

—Nicholas Del Grosso

The Blue-gray Gnatcatcher is the only Gnatcatcher found in the continental United States. It is one of my favorite little birds, measuring 3.9 to 5.1 inches overall length. Like small dogs it has a Napoleonic complex; it is very pugnacious and will defend its territory aggressively. It makes itself known by its soft but insistent calls which are a raspy peweez or screez sound. If you don’t see it in the leafy understory just play a Blue-gray Gnatcatcher call on your cell phone and watch the fun begin. In the early spring the male will aggressively respond to the call in defense of its chosen territory. It will fly to the sound and hop from branch to branch giving an irritated and loudly insistent call with its tail held upright looking for the intruder. Unlike most birds responding to a call it is not frightened by people, in fact it will even respond aggressively with the same calls when a person enters its territory, so it’s an easy find in the spring woods. This little guy even looks a little irate. If vocal displays and posturing fail to deter the intruder it will charge the interloper and chase it as far as 70 feet. If this fails to drive the challenger from the defending male’s territory the chase will escalate into midair confrontations, with the two birds climbing steeply, breast to breast snapping at each other.

Blue-gray Gnatcatcher via Wiki Commons

This bird is a denizen of broad leaf and mixed deciduous forests, it is an edge species, so you do not have to venture far into the deep woods when looking for this bird. It shuns coniferous woods but is very fond of ash, maple, oak, willow and cottonwood especially if they line creeks, streams, rivers or lakes. It is bird often found in moist areas.

The Blue-gray Gnatcatcher is a year round resident of the extremely southern United States, especially the coastal forest areas of the Gulf States from Texas to Florida. About 35-percent of the population winter in these areas, while 65-percent will over winter in Mexico and Central America. The total population is estimated at 160 million and 74-percent will migrate from the wintering areas and breed in the continental United States from coast to coast. It is rare for this bird to migrate as far as Canada or the central northern states. However, climate change has influenced the Gnatcatcher; during the past quarter-century, it has shifted its nesting range northward about 200 miles in concert with increasing average temperatures.

The name of this bird is a perfect match for its appearance. It has a blue-gray back with a grayish white belly and a black tail with white edging. The male has a more vibrant color then the faded female and is crowned with a black V on its forehead. Both sexes have a white eye ring. As you can see from the following pictures the Blue-gray gnatcatcher is a handsome bird.

Blue-gray Gnatcatcher: Male left, Female right -- by Nicholas Del Grosso

These are tiny slim birds with long grayish black legs a thin straight bill and a long tail. They are a perpetual motion machine hopping and sidling in dense outer foliage as they flick their tail from side to side, scaring up insects and chasing them. Most of the time the Gnatcatcher feeds from a perch, but it can hover to glean insects from the foliage or hawk a flying insect it has scared and return to its perch and begin foraging again. The Gnatcatcher is an opportunistic forager, even taking food from spider webs. Generally it feeds on a varied diet of treehoppers, froghoppers, leafhoppers, plant bugs, leaf beetles, weevils, wolf spiders, caterpillars and grasshoppers. Small prey is swallowed alive, while large prey has their wings torn off and their bodies beaten on a perch prior to being eaten. The Gnatcatcher uses a very effective tenderizing technique making the larger prey more palatable. Parents generally feed the young the same prey, offering progressively larger prey as the chicks mature.

Blue-gray Gnatcatchers arrive in Oklahoma in early April. They are common in the forests of eastern Oklahoma, although less common in the west, it has been known to breed in suitable habitat all the way to the edge of the Oklahoma Panhandle. The only counties where the Gnatcatcher has not been observed is Greer County in the southwest and Texas County in the Panhandle.

Blue-gray Gnatcatcher Nesting by Nicholas Del Grosso

When the male arrives on the breeding ground he chooses his territory and begins to look for a female to pair bond with. After the selection process is completed he tours the territory with her to select nest sites. Once the sites have been surveyed, both sexes will aid in the building of the first nest. They collect materials and it will take about two weeks to complete the nest. Like building a house they start with a solid foundation of fibrous material like plant stems, bark stripes and grass, held together by spider and caterpillar silk, the outer edges are built with lichen and silk. The nest will be built on a limb or the crotch of a branch and will look like a tree knot. It will be 2 to 3 inches across. The cup will be 1.5 inches wide and will be lined with plant down, paper, cocoons and hair or feathers. Here on the Tallgrass Prairie Preserve bison shed is often found in the cup because it easily available during April. During the breeding season up to seven nests will be used. After the first nest is occupied the male will construct the additional nests to counteract the effects of predation, mite infestations, or Cowbird parasitism. Adult Gnatcatchers will often attack intruding Cowbirds, but once they lay eggs in the Gnatcatcher’s nest the Gnatcatcher will abandon the nest because they do not have the ability to puncture the Cowbird’s hard eggs and few if any Gnatcatchers will fledge in this type of situation. These subsequent nests are built by the male using recycled materials from previous nests. The female will then finish the interior with softer materials. Gnatcatchers will double brood, usually the clutch size is three to five eggs and they are pale blue with reddish or brown spots. Then both sexes will incubate the eggs for eleven to fifteen days. After hatching both the male and female will provision the young Gnatcatchers. Gnatcatcher eggs are vulnerable to a number of predators and can be taken by Jays, Magpies, Woodpeckers, snakes, Crows, Grackles, Raccoons, Squirrels and Chipmunks. In defense of their nest Gnatcatchers will mob predators by themselves or they will join other small birds such as Chickadees and Kinglets in preemptive strikes to chase the predator away from the area.

Gnatcatchers can often be seen on the trails along Sand Creek in the woods. As you approach their nest trees they will loudly scold you. Typically they will be in the trees at mid-level having a tantrum hopping from branch to branch, so they are very easy to spot, if you use your phone you can call them in closer with a Gnatcatcher call. They are very curious and will approach the sound of the call and this can result in some good photos. I have also used an Eastern Screech-owl call to draw in small birds by the picnic tables. During the breeding season Chickadees, Ruby-crowned and Golden-crowned Kinglets, Gnatcatchers, Wrens and other small birds will show up to drive the forest assassin away. Blue-gray Gnatcatchers are a handsome bird with a lot of personality quirks which make them fun to watch.

Prairie Watching: Little Flower Killer Moon

—Dwight Thomas, Ph.D.

Talking to the Moon Cover by Dwight Thomas

Recently, Jenk Jones, retired editor of the Tulsa Tribune and a long-term Docent at the Tallgrass Prairie Preserve, handed me a book and said, You need to read this. The book was John Joseph Mathews’ Talking to the Moon. I knew something of Mathews’ story and knew that Talking to the Moon was his description of life on the prairie. I had even visited his cabin in one of our Docent field trips, led by Harvey Payne. I read the first chapter and then read it again to be sure that I understood what he was saying. The book was not easy to read. Every sentence contains gems of information and wisdom, and Mathews’ masterful use of the language made me want to know what this man saw and what he thought. Many of those sentences raised more questions than they answered. My pattern was to read awhile and then do some studying to try to get more information, so that I could see the bigger picture that he was portraying. The more I read, the more I wanted to find out what happened next. Jenk suggested that I look back at some of Mark Twain’s writing because Mathews’ conversations between characters in the book are like Twain’s and just as good.

Well, I finally worked my way through the book. It was good that I had an abundance of time. I needed it. I learned so much about the prairie and the blackjack woodlands and so much about the people of Osage County in the 1930’s.

With my inability to get to the prairie to make first-hand observations this Spring, I decided to use Mathews’ observations as the basis for this Prairie Watching article. I am not trying to improve on Mathews’ work, but I decided to sprinkle in some of my own observations and photographs. The part of the book that I am using as the basis for this article is Chapter V, Killing Little Flowers Moon, which corresponds generally to the month of May.

The Blackjacks by Dwight Thomas

In 1932, John Joseph Mathews built and lived in a small stone cabin in a section of the Cross Timbers on the South edge of the current Tallgrass Prairie Preserve. Late in 2014, the Nature Conservancy was able to complete the purchase of the Mathews property, including the stone house, adding that land to the Preserve acreage. The Nature Conservancy plans to clean up the area and renovate the cabin.

Mathews was an Osage, and after having been highly educated and having lived in various places around the world, he moved back to his Osage Headright home. He built the cabin, even personally collecting the rock for construction from his own land, and then lived a simple life in the Blackjacks and prairies for most of the remainder of his life. During that time, he wrote a number of books. One of those books is Talking to the Moon (University of Oklahoma Press, 1945). This whole scenario, like Elizabeth Mathews said in the Foreword, is the prairie version of Henry David Thoreau’s Walden Pond. Here is a photograph of the cabin as it looked in the Fall of 2013.

In Talking to the Moon, Mathews used the Osage names, translated to English, for the months and described events in nature, and in his life, that occurred around his cabin during each month. His descriptions are so thorough and real that reading his book is like hearing him tell you about it personally. It’s also like bouncing along with him as he drove his station wagon across the prairie, and like sweating with him as he crawled through the grass to see some ducks up close.

Mathews explained that the Osage name Killing Little Flowers Moon originated from the fact that the little flowers of early Spring died out at this time of the year and were replaced with taller, larger wildflowers. This name is unusual in that it isn’t based on some sharp event that begins with the month, but is generally a time of change, a time of new beginnings. Here is one of his statements:

These [little flowers] are the Johnny-jump-ups, spring beauties, and hundreds of others that I cannot name…. The spring beauties cover the blackjack ridges with their striped petals, and among them appear little blue and yellow flowers.

Well, his statement about the little blue and yellow flowers jumped out at me and held me captive for a while. What little blue and yellow flowers did he see? From my prairie and Blackjack woodland experience, I knew that the little blue and yellow flowers could have been one or more of several plants that grow and bloom with the Violets and Spring Beauties. Here are photographs of those two little flowers that he mentioned, first the Johnny-jump-ups, the Prairie Violets, and second the Spring Beauties.

Prairie Violets and Spring Beauties by Dwight Thomas

The blue wildflowers that he might have seen are likely Bluets, Blue-eyed Grass, or Violet Wood Sorrell. They all bloom contemporaneously with Spring Beauties and Violets. Based on what I have seen on the prairie, I would speculate that the little blue flowers were most likely Bluets. They are quite common when the spring beauties are blooming, while the others are not as abundant or at least not as noticeable. Here are my photographs of Bluets and Violet Wood Sorrell taken at the Tallgrass Prairie Preserve last year.

Bluets and Violet Wood Sorrell by Dwight Thomas

Prairie Wood Sorrel, Fringed Puccoon, and Yellow-star Grass are the first contemporaneously blooming yellow wildflowers to come to my mind. All are relatively common, but the Prairie Wood Sorrell would be the most abundant and would often be found growing in the midst of the Spring Beauties and Violets. I think that this would be the most likely one that Mathews saw. Of course, he might have seen all of them and just lumped them together as little blue and yellow flowers. My photographs of Prairie Wood Sorrell and Fringed Puccoon, each shown with Spring Beauties, are included below.

Prairie Wood Sorrell and Fringed Puccoon by Dwight Thomas

As the little flowers pass away, they are replaced with others. Mathews continued the statement above with:

…when the grass has covered the ridges in May, the weeds begin to grow and flower; the tall, waving spiderworts, the black-eyed susans…. The flowers of this moon are the tall flowers that wave above the grass and not the earth-hugging little flowers.

Of course, he didn’t mention a hundred other very obvious tall Spring wildflowers such as Blue False Wild Indigo that is so noticeable. And with that, he was through with plants for this chapter. Here are my Tallgrass Prairie Preserve photographs of a Prairie Spiderwort and a Black-eyed Susan.

Prairie Spiderwort and Blackeyed Susan by Dwight Thomas

Mathews described several observations of animal interactions in Killing Little Flowers Moon. In fact, he includes vignettes about or mentions twenty-four different native species: 19 birds, 3 mammals, 1 reptile, and 1 insect. In his observations, he specifically repeats that these animals live in a balanced community. He points out that human intervention can upset that balance quickly and change the interactions among the members of the community.

Mathews’ observations about the events of the month are often quite detailed and specific with lists; eight bird species are listed as back from Winter migration. And he often connects the events of the particular month to previous or future months:

The crows are quiet, and the bluejays are not so conspicuous as usual. This is the moon of the songsters…. The birds that have spent the winter away are back now…. During this moon the quail begin to whistle and the prairie chickens can still be heard at sunup.

The photographs below are a Bluebird and a Dickcissel, two of the songsters he mentioned.

Bluebird and Dickcissel by Dwight Thomas

With this statement, we can infer that the Crows and Bluejays are much noisier and noticeable in other months. We also know that even though the Prairie Chickens’ booming was primarily earlier in the year, it was still going on. He mentions Crows several times in this Chapter. One interesting Crow story is that, as he watched a Blacksnake attacking a Crested Flycatcher’s nest that had many birds aroused and screeching, the Crows gathered around, not in alarm, to watch the event as they conversed with each other calmly. He even compares the Crows and the Blacksnake as two of a kind. Following up on the Blacksnake, Mathews describes how his efforts to make bird boxes for several hole-dwelling birds to use helped the Blacksnake find and raid those nests. He found that he was forced to interfere, shooting the Blacksnakes as they climbed the trees before they could get to the nests.

He has a number of stories of his interactions with the native animals. One involved Skunks. He had a pen of special chickens and had made his pen almost impenetrable with wire around, above, and below. However, a Skunk visited regularly and occasionally took a chicken. One night, he found that the Skunk had almost ritualistically killed all the chickens, taking only their heads. The Skunk then made a fatal error in falling asleep in the pen. Here Mathews became philosophical in musing that even among animals, there are those who take only what they need, and there are killers.

Coyote by Dwight Thomas

Mathews was especially fond of watching Coyotes. He marveled at their intelligence and cunning. For example, the Coyote prepared a den under a limestone ledge where it was generally inaccessible to any enemies of the young coyotes. The Coyote would take a different route to the den each time she approached so as not leave a trail leading to the den and to ensure that she wasn’t being followed by a predator of her young. He also said that during the whelping season, his chickens were safe from the Coyotes because the coyote provided native food for its young, presumably to teach the young what is proper food from the prairie. He described an experiment in which, he placed a chicken where the Coyote could not help but see it and could catch it easily. The Coyote arrived with a Mole in its mouth and proceeded to ignore the chicken altogether. But when the young were older, his chickens were fair game. Here is a recent photograph of a Tallgrass Prairie Preserve Coyote, taken just before he disappeared, leaving me with a poor photograph and a sea of grass.

Well, Mathews told stories about Ducks, Crickets, Hawks, and about everything else that he saw from day to day. He talked about how the Dickcissel sings incessantly from a stalk in the prairie, as you can see in the photograph above, and he talked about strange sounds in the night. There are even weather reports. This month was often too hot or too cold, too wet or too dry, and funnel clouds could appear suddenly and destroy.

He ended the chapter with a lengthy, colorful, discussion of the local ranchers helping each other work the cattle. Remember in the 1930s, there were no Bison on the prairie. This was ranch country.

As Jenk said, You need to read it.

Visitor Counts

—Iris McPherson

Please remember to always politely request our visitors to sign the guest register.

Annual Number of Known Visitors to the Tallgrass Prairie Preserve Summarized by Month
YearJanFebMar Apr May Jun Jul Aug Sep OctNovDecTotals
1994260280569 9511,4561,5291,5651,0451,0101,11767233810,792
19952824206681,1671,6021,7001,4851,598 9921,58877026212,534
19962163257051,1001,9042,0811,3621,0301,1971,41653039912,265
19972912889121,0551,9221,8771,2991,0551,0321,30457841712,030
19983173406091,1781,4561,2581,182 960 8841,13366728910,273
1999215417628 7771,7121,8571,209 703 7541,54992234211,085
20002292825831,1761,6241,6141,017 597 8181,125438 93 9,596
YearJanFebMar Apr May Jun Jul Aug Sep OctNovDecTotals
2001131149855 9101,8111,5501,100 6381,0491,25065325210,348
2002217114761 7251,7451,3831,057 685 951 688517140 9,010
2003 98 39527 8081,190 832 594 6721,008 ????????? 7,125
2006????????? 586 810 629 709 310 605 641405 68 4,763
2007 47 35361 575 810 737 756 407 660 688396 81 5,553
2008 26 74299 507 941 664 629 436 488 724560111 5,459
2009117 72482 428 9691,026 790 688 746 615443 25 6,401
2010 23194471 735 979 739 898 538 769 793450 72 6,661
YearJanFebMar Apr May Jun Jul Aug Sep OctNovDecTotals
2011 35 42478 547 612 587 634 293 494 672313 92 4,799
2012 73 42368 436 732 699 446 293 389 416466 36 4,396
2013 64 33437 466 720 760 846 580 543 612391104 5,556
2014 81 41482 811 784 635 874 601 464 687385114 5,959
2015 92 78822 992

As of December 2014, we have received 154,605 visitors who took the trouble to announce their presence in the Visitor’s Book.

In 1994, George Myers started recording the numbers of visitors to the Tallgrass Prairie Preserve and from whence they came. He did this for almost ten years. His last report appeared in the September 2003 edition of the newsletter.

Beginning in April 2006, Iris McPherson took up the task of chronicling Tallgrass Prairie Preserve visitation, as recorded in the Visitor’s Book.

Docent Coverage Of Season Days

—Bill Alexander

We had a perfect 100-percent Visitor’s Center coverage for April 2015. Thanks to everyone who helped bring the purpose, mission, and wonders of Tallgrass Prairie to visitors each day of the month. Our year-to-date coverage statistics are 92-percent for 2015 versus 69-percent for the same period last year. Though we don’t have weather closings recorded for 2014, our year-to-date results for 2015 would be 98-percent if we removed the four days closed during the first week of March due to snow. These statistics show the results of the recruiting and training program for new docents. The visitors, staff, and previous docents are so pleased to welcome the new docents to the program and appreciate your service and the resulting improvement of Visitor’s Center coverage for the public. Presently 75-percent of the 2015 docent class is fully trained, and another 12-percent are already scheduled for completion during May. Thanks to all docents for their service; please continue to check the schedule and fill in the blank spots for the current and coming months.

Tallgrass Prairie Preserve
Vistor’s Center Docent Coverage of Season Days Compared
2014DaysClosedCoverage 2015DaysClosedCoverage
March 311165% March315 84%
April 30 873% April300100%
May 31 584% May31
June 301067% June30
July 31 487% July31
August 31 487% August31
September 301163% September30
October 31 777% October31
November 30 873% November30
December 14 471% December14
Year2897275%Year to date615 92%
Docent Coverage of Season Days Annual History

Other Places to Visit

Here we provide some links to other places worth visiting.

Visitor’s Center Latitude & Longitude

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

These coordinates are a verified position on the parking lot in front of the Visitor’s Center. This link to Google maps shows the position superimposed on satellite imagery: https://goo.gl/maps/hBUIu.

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.

Available Back Issues:

2015January  February  March  April  May  June  July  August  September  October  November  December—2015
2014January  February  March  April  May  June  July  August  September  October  November  December2014
2013January  February  March  April  May  June  July  August  September  October  November  December2013
2012January  February  March  April  May  June  July  August  September  October  November  December2012
2011January  February  March  April  May  June  July  August  September  October  November  December2011
2010January  February  March  April  May  June  July  August  September  October  November  December2010
2009January  February  March  April  May  June  July  August  September  October  November  December2009
2008January  February  March  April  May  June  July  August  September  October  November  December2008
2007January  February  March  April  May  June  July  August  September  October  November  December2007
2006—January  February  March  April  May  June  July  August  September  October  November  December2006
2005January  February  March  April  May  June  July  August  September  October  November  December2005
2004—January  February  March  April  May  June  July  August  September  October  November  December2004
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  December2002
2001January  February  March  April  May  June  July  August  September  October  November  December2001
2000January  February  March  April  May  June  July  August  September  October  November  December2000
1999January  February  March  April  May  June  July  August  September  October  November  December1999
1998January  February  March  April  May  June  July  August  September  October  November  December1998
1997January  February  March  April  May  June  July  August  September  October  November  December1997
1996—January  February  March  April  May  June  July  August  September  October  November  December1996
1995—January  February  March  April  May  June  July  August  September  October  November  December1995

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.

Biodiversity

Birds

Bison

Bison Roundup

Books

Botany

Butterflies

Butterfly Counts

Docents

Docent Recognition Luncheons

Docent Reorientations

Docent Council Meetings

Forbs

Insects

Grass

Haiku on the Prairie

History

Josie of the Prairie

Miscellaneous

Osage

Prairie Watching

Rangeland Management

Recipes

Science

Sightings

Trails

Trees

Verse

Visitor’s Center

Visitor’s Center Kiosk

Visits

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.