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Greeting Fellow Naturalists. As of This Writing, We Have Come Back To Hawk Watch Team by John Wright Galveston Bay Area Chapter - Texas Master Naturalists June 2018 Table of Contents President’s Corner by George Kyame, President 2018 Wetland Wanderings 2 Prairie Ponderings 2 Greeting Fellow Naturalists. Dire Diseases in 3 As of this writing, we have come back to reality after an interesting spring. The mercury Deer, Part 2 finally hit 90, and won't be changing soon. Of course this means we must properly AT: iNaturalist 4 prepare for all of our outdoor stewardship. Please remember the big three: hydration, AT: Gems of the Gulf 5 sun protective clothing, and SPF 30 and above. A cooler beginning to 2018 was nice, although it was accompanied by a rather rainy season, which brings me to my next Heritage Book Study - 6 point. Review The Big Picture - 6 Ah, Beach and Bay. Last year's record attendance would be hard to beat even without Ocean Worlds and the wind and rain that was visited upon us! Impressive was the number of attendees Our World’s Oceans that did come out, and, with our dedicated volunteers, braved the elements! Alas, we Another Botany 8 shut down a little early, but not before our participants got some extra hands-on Question attention. Thank you all for the hard work. AT: The Big Thicket 8 The City Nature Challenge wrapped up 96 hours of species observation on April 30. So 2018 Class Fun and 10 how did the Houston Metro fare? In the Most Species category (my favorite), Houston Adventures placed 2nd. We were 1st last year. Apparently, the SF Bay Area was prepared, as they June/July Activities 11 won all 3 categories, the other two being participants and total observations. Please view full results at http://citynaturechallenge.org/. My positive take on this year's Houston Metro performance is simple. With just under 700 observers, Houston had 3088 species. Compare that to 1532 and 1211 observers with 3211 and 2946 species for San Francisco Bay and San Diego, respectively! All right Houston Metro, let us take this next year!! Finally, congratulations to our 2018 spring training class! On May 3rd, the class heard Next Chapter Meeting Julie Massey address the topic, “Being a Naturalist and Working with the Public”. Remember “Advice from an Old Farmer”? Well I do! Some guests shared their own June 7 class memories and then, after 12 weeks, class members received their badges! Dragonflies and Damselflies We then promptly assembled in classroom 2, where partners and chapter members By introduced their representative opportunities and stewardships to our newest GBA Bob Honig members. As always, it was a lovely Environmental Consultant cacophony of exciting pitches and interesting conversation. I certainly hope our newest members will find the most rewarding At Extension Office naturalist niches! Bravo all. Be the change you wish to see in the world! GBAC – Texas Master Naturalist www.txmn.org/gbmn Wetland Wanderings: Let’s Get Small With Shelled Amoebae by Lana Berkowitz Sometimes while tramping through the wetlands to do “I was just amazed by this notion of amoebae with shells seed collections, surveys or plantings, your imagination and it held my imagination for the rest of the day, thinking can go to wilder places. on what the shells must look like.” It was a comment about amoeba that prompted Marissa The shell of the tiny single-cell organism that lives in a Llosa’s musings about a tiny world of wonder. range of wetlands and soil is called a test, so shelled amoebae are called testate amoebae. Most shells are “I consider myself lucky enough to be in the field with formed from sand grains, diatom shells and other organic Paul Roling, our volunteer botanist, but I am always and mineral particles fixed together with organic cement. astounded by his wealth of knowledge and my lack of it — Some amoebae secrete silicium, calcium or hollow as evidenced in this case,” Marissa wrote in her field globules to form shells, according to Microworld: World of notes for her Wetland Restoration Team. Amoeboid Organisms website. Paul mentioned shelled amoeba in the wetlands. “Holy The shells can have a variety of shapes so let your cow!” Marissa thought, “There are amoeba snails.” imagination run wild, or search YouTube for testate amoeba videos to see samples of their appearance and movement. Amoebae are microscopic, but their size depends somewhat on the available food supply. Freshwater species living in deeper water can be larger. The amoebae typically feed on bits of fungi, microalgae and bacteria. The shells provide protection for the amoebae, which can retract. Amoebae use projections of cytoplasm from the shells to help them move. The projections are called Used with permission © Ferry J. Siemensma pseudopodia (which translates to “false feet.”) “My knowledge of amoebae goes back to maybe junior The strong shells are often preserved long after the high or high school. And what I knew was simply that amoeba has died. Shells found in core samples have amoebae were freeform and classified as protist (a been used as bioindicators to reconstruct past climates. eukaryotic organism that is not an animal, plant or fungus). Pass my test. Move on,” Marissa wrote. “What I And if you want to know more, the Ninth International didn’t know was there were both a naked (common Symposium on Testate Amoebae will be held Sept. 10- image and idea of an amoeba as free moving and no 14 in Belfast, Northern Ireland. Maybe we could carpool! shape) and a shelled amoeba, which has pseudopodia extending out the ‘bottom’ of the shell.” Prairie Ponderings: Sam and Sheila Swainson by Diane Humes According to the Texas Parks and Wildlife Department, they occur east of San Antonio only during migration. “Swainson’s Hawks are gentle birds that live Actually, they are world travelers, forming huge flocks to harmoniously with other birds in their nesting habitat. migrate up to 12,000 miles, round trip, on a seemingly They eat grasshoppers, crickets, and small mammals perpetual quest for summer. Breeding as far north as that they hunt on the ground or catch in midair.” western Canada and Alaska for our summer, they return to Brazil, Uruguay, and Argentina for a second summer. Swainson’s Hawks, Buteo swainsoni, are buteos named for British naturalist and illustrator William John These prairie and grassland birds scoop up Swainson, 1789 - 1855, whose name has also been grasshoppers and small mammals by kiting, soaring, given to a warbler, thrush, sparrow, francolin, ant hunting from a perch, or walking on the ground. They catcher, fire-eye, flycatcher, and toucan. make their nests in any tree or cliff face. Usually Swainson’s Hawks are considered birds of North Most Swainson’s Hawks, and those seen on hawk watch, America’s western grasslands; according to our books are the light morph variety; when seen from below, their June 2018 The Midden pg 2 GBAC – Texas Master Naturalist www.txmn.org/gbmn trailing edge flight feathers are dark, while the leading have been affected by loss of prairie habitat and edge feathers are white, and their upper breast is brown. pesticide use. In the 1990s, South American farmers They soar with a slight dihedral, like a Turkey Vulture - sprayed monocrotophos on sunflower fields to control about the same size, but their light/dark color patterns grasshoppers and killed an estimated 35,000 Swainson’s are opposite. A dark morph occurs in 10 percent of birds Hawks in a single season. That chemical is no longer living west of the Rocky Mountains; we have never seen used in Argentina and hawk population levels are now this variety on hawk watch. stable. Although our bird books say Swainson’s Hawks shouldn’t be here, they have been sighted commonly along the Gulf Coast prairies, eastward into Louisiana and a few have summered on the NASA-JSC prairies. Having entertained hawk watchers for several seasons with their hunting, soaring, kiting, and “sky dancing” over LaPorte, this year we have nicknamed them “Sam” and “Sheila”. Are these birds lost or lazy? Or, is all our hard work with prairie restoration showing results? After all, we aren’t putting all those thousands of plants in the ground just because we like flowers! Will they return next year with extended family? We can only hope and keep watching. One thing is clear: our “Sam” and his lovely wife “Sheila” have never read the manual about gentle behavior toward their bird neighbors. Shocking all watchers, the irascible Sam decided that baby grackles in the treetops of Sylvan Beach were tasty snacks that a big, bad Swainson’s Hawk could easily snatch - never mind the wrath of all grackle parents! Photo by John Wright As Yogi Berra said, “You can observe a lot by just With 580,000 breeding birds, Swainson’s Hawks are watching”. considered a species of Least Concern, although they Dire Diseases in Deer, Part 2 by Madeleine K. Barnes This is the second part of an article that I started last issue. The purpose of Part 2 is to present the facts about two other diseases that can have devastating consequences for deer and have been found in Texas. These diseases are Epizootic Hemorrhagic Disease (EHD) and Bluetongue Virus. Both are found in North American ruminants, which are hoofed, even-toed animals. What these two diseases have in common is that they are transmitted by the bite of an infected midge fly in the genus Culicoides (commonly referred to as no-see-ums) and are acute infectious viral diseases, often fatal to some wild ruminants, including white-tailed deer.
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