Davis Mountains Preserve (a.k.a. possibly my favorite place in western Texas!)

I'm pretty sure I could write about five blog posts, just on the Davis Mountains Preserve.  Usually before I write a post I put all my pictures that I am planning on using in a folder so that they are quick and easy to access.  For this blog I put over 35 pictures in a folder!  I most likely will not put all of them in this post, but there is no shortage of pictures I have from this place!  The Preserve is owned and managed by The Nature Conservancy.  They have several preserves and protected areas around the country.  I feel so lucky to have the chance to get to work there since it is not actually open the general public (although they do have days that it is open to the public about once a month).  However, once you have done any kind of volunteer work or research on the preserve you kind of get a free pass to visit whenever you want if there is nothing else going on at the Preserve during the time you're interested in visiting.  Learning that made me pretty happy since that means if any of you ever decide to come visit I could bring you up there to show you the place!  Anyway, the Davis Mountains Preserve (I call it DMP for short) is located about an hour north of Alpine, and about a half hour north of Fort Davis.  If you remember my blog posts back in March you'll remember that there was a pretty bad fire that spread through Fort Davis.  Part of this fire was creeping closer to DMP and they ended up setting a backfire to prevent further spread of the natural fire on the preserve (basically they set some of the preserve on fire so that once the other fire hit the already burned areas of the preserve it would just go out).  This resulted in one of my trap sites getting burned, which means I'll have to find a new site for that habitat strata.  Well, since I have so many pictures, I'll just start adding them in and talking more about DMP as I go along :)

First, some scenery pictures! Back in October I did a hike with the Conservation Biology Club at Sul Ross.  We hiked up to Mt. Livermore which is the highest peak on the preserve.  There's not much to say about each picture, so I'll just let you look at them without any of my wordy explanations :)

Ok, so maybe a couple explanations.  This is a stand of aspen trees in some of the higher elevations of the hike!  This was basically the only taste of fall that I got from Texas this past year.

This isn't the greatest picture of one, but this is a madrone tree.  They're really pretty! (You could probably look them up on google images and get see some better pictures if you're interested)

This is a madrone tree growing out of an alligator juniper tree.  The main manager of the preserve said they call it a "madroniper."  I liked that :)

Now a few somewhat depressing pictures of the part of the preserve that was burned.  Here I have a few "before and after" pictures.

This picture and the one below are taken from the same view.  Although most of the trees are still standing, you can see that all the shrubs and grass are burned away. (Despite the burned land, look how clear blue that sky is!  At least that is something you can count on down here - a beautiful sky!)

Although the tracks in this picture may look like tire tracks, they are not.  This is an obvious animal path.  Could be deer, javenlina, foxes or coyotes, but it's obvious that even though the habitat has been changed, the wildlife is already learning to adapt.

This was taken on one of the sites I've trapped on (although it ended up being the wrong habitat so I was not going to use it again anyway).  I'm pretty sure that tree in the middle was already burned by a previous fire, probably years ago.  But again you can see that all the grass and shrubs are no longer there.

I wanted to put this picture up since it shows again that even amongst the black soot and ashes there is still life! And it can be bright, like these bright purple flowers that really stood out against the burnt background!

To me this picture and the one below may be the most depressing "before and after" picture I took.  This picture is from my study site that I was planning on using again before I realized it was burned.  I just LOVED this view the first time I trapped there and thought it was so beautiful.  When I drove up here after the fire I purposefully walked to this spot to see how different it looked.  And you can see in the "after" picture below that is it definitely different!  Look how bare it looks now that it was burned!  Even with trees still standing it is just not at all the same.

Ok, I'll make this my last "before and after" pair, because it is making me sad!  These pictures aren't taken from exactly the same spot, but they are basically looking at the same scene.  I never realized how much the grass really makes everything look so much more full.  As you can see in the picture below everything just seems more open and bare without the grass there to fill in the gaps.

Ok enough with the burned pictures! Let's move on to something more... alive!  I know in my blog post about Big Bend National Park I mentioned that it was difficult to get good pictures of birds since they don't always sit still long enough to get good photos...  Well, I may have been a little wrong about that.  Apparently I was the one that needed to learn to sit still long enough to wait for the birds to come!  (Should have known the problem was me and NOT the wildlife!)  DMP is an awesome place to see all different kinds of birds.  Since it is surrounded by desert, and there are plenty of trees, it is the perfect place for the birds to pass through during their migrations.  Being that it is easier for them to hide themselves in trees, this also forced me to better learn their songs so that I didn't have to actually see them in order to identify them during my surveys.  In the evenings I sat outside on the back patio of the McIvor Center (where I stay on the preserve) and just watched all the different birds come in.  My little digital camera has fairly good zoom for it's size and I was able to get some pretty good pictures of the birds I was seeing.  In some of the pictures below I also cropped and zoomed in on the birds a little more so that you could get a better view of them - so they may be grainy.  This just makes me want to save up for a really nice camera so that I can get some lenses capable of capturing awesome up close and personal bird pictures!  Maybe some day :)

Anyway, first I'll put in a couple lizard pictures I captured (one of which is a new species for me) and then I'll move on to the bird pictures.

This is a lizard that I have seen quite a few times during my herp surveys, and even when I'm just walking around (which is what I was doing when I took this).  I think I have looked through all my field guides about 100 times trying to figure out what it is and just cannot figure it out!  So if any of you looking at this have any ideas let me know!

This is a Chihuahuan spotted whiptail.  This is the new species.  I was hiking along a trail when I saw my first one (this picture is actually the 3rd one I saw up there), and I think I chased him for about 20 feet or so trying to get a picture!  I finally did get one, but this one here was better, so I posted it instead.

This is neither a lizard nor a bird, but I just remembered that I had it.  This is a rock squirrel - fitting since he's sitting on a rock in this picture.  I know he kind of looks like a regular grey squirrel that you'd see anywhere up north, but upon closer inspection he has spots on his back and a less bushier tail.  I've seen a couple of these while running my mammal traps but have never caught one.  Although I think it would be cool to catch one, I'm not too optimistic considering one would have to really stuff itself inside a trap to get caught. (And I doubt he'd be too happy once I got him out!)

Another mammal species - there were a bunch of deer up near the McIvor Center the last evening I was there and here's one of them.  I'm pretty sure they were white-tailed deer.  Mule deer are more common out here in western Texas, but there are places (mostly higher elevations) where you'll see white-tailed deer.

This may be one of my new all time favorite birds!  Isn't he beautiful?? This is a western tanager - a species that we do not have up north!  I think all tanager species are beautiful, but this one may be the most :)

This cute little guy is a yellow-rumped warbler.  In addition to the yellow throat, yellow patches on his sides, and yellow patch on his head, he also has a little yellow rump patch that you can see when they fly around. They're so cute!

Another shot of the yellow-rumped warbler.  This one was flitting around flying really crazily and it took me a while before I realized he was chasing after bugs! When I realized what he was doing and then watched him some more I could actually hear him snapping his beak shut.  So cute!

This is a hermit thrush.  He actually got pretty close to me a couple times.  They're not too exciting to look at but I still like them.  :)

This is a western bluebird.  When the sun is shining on them in the right way they are SO BLUE!  We get eastern bluebirds back home, and they will come down here also, but you can tell this is a western because it has a blue throat (the throats of the eastern bluebirds are the same color as their belly and sides - the brownish-red that you can see on the one above).

This is a northern flicker.  This is female.  The males have much brighter coloring during breeding season - which it is now.  We have these up north and they are pretty common, so some of you may have seen them before.

They had hummingbird feeders hanging outside the McIvor Center so one evening I went out there and sat at a picnic table nearby to watch them.  I managed to get some really great pictures!  They are pretty hard to follow sometimes since they flit and buzz around like insects more than move like birds...  There are actually something like 10 species of hummingbirds that migrate through this area (Alpine too), so it's a great place to put up feeders!

Here is another one.

There were two species that I saw there.  This is a magnificent hummingbird.  They are pretty large as far as hummingbirds go - at least in my opinion.  I was pretty excited to have gotten this shot!  Look how awesome the iridescence is on him!  Most of the time they just look black all over, but every so often the light would hit them just right and you'd get this brilliant flash of color!

Here is another magnificent hummingbird.

I know this picture isn't that great, but here is the second species that I saw - a black chinned hummingbird.  These have some pretty cool iridescence too.  As you can see in the picture their chins are black, and then purple right underneath on their throats.  And you can't see it in this picture, but their backs are green.  Not as green as the throats of the magnificent hummingbirds, but they are still pretty! I also like that little band of white on the ends of their tail feathers.

Just wanted to put this picture in here so you can see how tiny they are!  You can barely tell there's a bird in the tree!

It could have been because I had birds on my mind all weekend, but one afternoon when I was opening my traps for that night I saw this cloud and thought is sure did look like a bird!

Well, that's all the pictures I have for now.  I saw several other bird species that weekend that I didn't get pictures of - such as black crested titmice (so adorable!), mountain chickadees (another new species for me), ash-throated flycatchers (that would flit around like the yellow-rumped warbler and catch bugs), lark sparrow (another new species), Cassin's kingbird (another new species, we have northern kingbirds up north that I love, so I was excited about this species!), and turkeys (which were so noisy in the mornings!).  I think that was it on birds.  I have one more weekend to trap at DMP at the end of the month, but I'm taking this weekend off since Bob will be here (he's flying in tomorrow and I'm so excited!!).  Maybe I'll be able to capture some more bird pictures when I'm there next time.  It may be a while before my next post though.  I am moving into my house on Saturday (thankfully, with Bob's help!) and I won't have internet for a while.  I'll be able to get internet in the school building where my graduate office is, although its never that easy for me to sit in there for very long so I don't know how much blogging I will get done.  But, I'll post more as soon as I can :)

I hope I helped you fall a little bit in love with the Davis Mountains Preserve after reading this post.  I sure do love it!  It's such a beautiful and peaceful place to go.  It's so full of wildlife that I can never get enough :)  Like I said earlier if any of you ever come down to visit me this will probably be one place that I'll definitely want to bring you!

As always, thanks for reading :)

Laura

P.S. Just counted the number of pictures I posted in this one - 34!  Guess I did get pretty close to the 35 I put in the folder :)