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The Nature Center

The Llano Estacado

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These essays are licensed under a Creative Commons License. They are free for non-commercial use with attribution.

The Essays of Frances Williams

Frances Williams was the pioneer ornithologist for West Texas. She was the co-author of the first study on Cassin's Sparrow (published in Arthur Bent's Life History of American Birds). She was also a founding member of the Texas Ornithological Society, and the regional editor for 25 years for Audubon's American Birds Journal. Frances also edited the Midland Naturalists newsletter, The Phalarope, for 35 years. We have selected many of her essays and divided them into categories.

Although her driving interest was the behavior and populations of birds, she observed the natural world closely. The Phalarope never had a readership of more than 250, but they included teachers, politicians, and scientists, as well as members of the Midland Naturalists. She saw the newsletter has an educational tool, and her essays often reflect her intended audience – people curious about what they discovered as they traveled about West Texas and made their living in town.

Please check back as new essays –ultimately, more than 300 of them! – will be added regularly.

Updated on May 10, 2012 - Completion Status: 35%

Vertebrates Other Than Birds

Invertebrates

Naturalists have a different mental map of their home landscape than other people. Most folks rely on towns and roads as landmarks, and then named buildings as details for the landscape. A naturalist sees the landscape in the terms of draws, playas, specific populations of out of range plants, or places where birds or other organisms are found most easily and in the most diversity.

Places

Over the years, Frances began going further and further afield, to places within a day's driving time.

Plants

Plants were Frances' second great passion. She first had the only two books with Texas wildflowers available in the 1950's, and as more were published, she always bought the newest, including the Rickett's huge set of American wildflowers with two oversize volumes just on Texas...and when Correll and Johnson's Flora of Texas came out, purchased it and learned the technical language.

Birds

Birdwatching is a social activity, as well as a science. Birdwatching can become an all consuming passion for some people, the force that shapes their lives. Birdwatching is a great escape from the workday world.

Frances found great pleasure in researching the history of the field sciences as a way to broaden her scope of interest.

In her role as editor of The Phalarope, Frances sought to have at least one educational essay in each issue. She knew she would never run out of material, even if she just wrote about birds. Of special interest to scientists documenting population changes are the essays in which she writes a second time about a species twenty or thirty years later and comment on the changes of a particular species.

Many of her essays focused on a single species, other times it was a family of birds, and often it was about the behavior of birds. When trying to observe behavior, a person sometimes sits very quietly for long periods of time, with plenty of time to theorize about what is being seen, and to notice details not noted from just a fleeting glance or look as a bird flies away. A person has to be "part" of the landscape.

Many species of birds are always found around water...and a quick drive to a location with water often produces something interesting to watch. Most folks do not associate the southern Llano Estacado with water and water birds, but birders learned long ago to visit every impoundment, including sewage facilities. Midland's original sewage farm, only three miles east of downtown Midland, was called "Rose Acres" by the Midnats, and an overflow area just below the ponds was known as "Flushing Meadows."
Sibley Nature Center
1307 E. Wadley, Midland, Texas 79705
phone 432.684.6827
email bwilliams@sibleynaturecenter.org