Essays

Moseying: Exploring the Natural World

Learn more about Box turtles, prairie dogs, and toads
August 5, 2009

On August 8th at 9 a.m. at the Sibley Nature Center, Lee Ann Linam of the Texas Parks and Wildlife Department is presenting a citizen’s science training to anybody interested in helping the Department learn more about these classic West Texas creatures. The training will end at 5 p.m. and you will receive a CD of the songs of the toads and frogs of Texas along with other material. If we get more rain a day or two before the program, there will be an optional field trip to go to a playa to hear them sing. These citizen science projects are great family fun (but the program will be too long for elementary age children). Parents should come to learn what to do and then get their kids out exploring West Texas! At the same time, sign up for the 2010 class of the Llano Estacado chapter of the Texas Master Naturalists. Many members of the local chapter will be in attendance, for the program is advanced training for them, as part of their membership commitments.

With all the rain the last couple of weeks a number of folks called us about all the toads they were seeing (and hearing.) Any playa (buffalo wallow, or depression) that filled with rain also quickly filled with toads singing all night long. We have six species that live here in Midland County. The Couch’s Spadefoot’s eggs hatch within 24 hours and baby toadlets go hopping away 11 days later. Other species take longer. In some of the playas in Midland, a new race of the species seems to be developing. Type in Couch’s Spadefoot in our search engine at left, and learn more about our local race.  

If you have never heard toads sing, you should. It is one of the grand wonders of the Llano Estacado. When many playas are full, you can hear them sing in every direction. Sometimes the sound can be heard over two miles from a playa. Thousands of toads emerge from the soil and hop to the playas to sing and mate. Each species has a different song (and each species can only hear the song of their species).

We all know the prairie dogs have been spreading into locations inside of the town of Midland. More than likely, it is a result of discovering that there are fewer predators in town. The species is also spreading in other parts of the southern Llano Estacado, and the Texas Parks and Wildlife Department seeks to document the phenomenon. Years ago, the state paid a bounty on the big furry squirrels with such loud voices, and the population dropped to 1% of what it once was – from almost a billion  to just a few million.
Their holes caused broken legs on the cowboys’ horses, and they keep grass mowed down around their holes and diminished the amount of grass for cattle, so war was waged for many years on the “varmints.”

The prairie dogs are a “keystone” species, however, and many species of other animals, including birds and insects, and even species of plants rely on their shaping of the landscape. The major prey of Ferruginous Hawks are prairie dogs, and this species has declined, so it is now a species of concern. Ferruginous Hawks winter on the southern Llano Estacado, partly because we have increasing populations of prairie dogs. Golden Eagles are also major predators on prairie dogs, and they too winter here.

Everybody knows somebody with box turtles in their backyard. Box turtles are the favorite wild animal of Llaneros. In Andrews on the 4th of July you can attend Box Turtle races! (Click here for the story.) Recently several folks have brought box turtles to Sibley to be let go along our trails after the reptiles were rescued from being in the middle of busy streets. With all the rain, every box turtle in the region is out feasting during every cool morning and during the last hour of sunlight in the evening. They love to eat anything that is moist (for that is the way they get most of their water for survival). They will eat almost anything, from tomatoes and cantaloupe to hamburger meat or a dead animal.