Morgan O'Hanlon 00:00

You're listening to better outside a Texas Parks and Wildlife production this season was brought to you by WHOLE EARTH provision company. I'm your host, Morgan O'Hanlon,

David Yoskowitz 00:10

and I'm David yoskowitz, executive director of Texas Parks and Wildlife Department.

Morgan O'Hanlon 00:14

This week I'm going to try out birding over at Mason mountain Wildlife Management Area where I'll be looking for the Black Capped Vireo. I can't wait to take you with me right after this break. Whole Earth provision company has been helping Texans roam wild and free since 1970 whether you're road tripping through the Hill Country, catching a sunrise and Enchanted Rock or planning a Summer Park hop, they've got what you need to do it right. Think sun protective shirts, trail tested sandals, packable hats and water bottles that actually keep your drinks cold, traveling light. They've got carry ons, duffels and gear bags from the names you trust, and if you forgot your shades or backup charger, well, they've got those too. Visit one of their six Texas stores or shop 24/7 at Whole Earth provision.com,

David Yoskowitz 01:07

David, are you much of a birder? Morgan, I'm getting to be a better birder.

Morgan O'Hanlon 01:13

I would count myself maybe in that same camp, I'm not much of a birder. But maybe for me, I honestly can say I've never really gotten the appeal. Um, the closer I get to 30, and the longer I work at Texas Parks and Wildlife, the more I know it's coming for me, whether I want it or not.

David Yoskowitz 01:36

Well, we live in a great state for birdie. I mean, the birdiest state in the country is Texas. We have over 671 birds that have been cataloged, that have been through this state. So there's opportunities. Whether you're out in Far West Texas, East Texas, the panhandle, or down along the coast, there's a bird near you, and there's plenty to do.

Morgan O'Hanlon 02:01

I've got to say there's so many birds that I've got a really hard time picking them out from the crowd. Yeah, me

David Yoskowitz 02:09

too. I mean, I am all about the use of technology. I know there's some questions about whether you should use technology or not, but there's this great app, and I think you maybe use it as well, called Merlin. I'll pull that out at a moment's notice. When I hear something new, some new call that I can't recognize, and it helps me a lot.

Morgan O'Hanlon 02:30

You know, I actually just downloaded it. Can you explain what it is for anybody who doesn't already know? Basically,

David Yoskowitz 02:36

it takes sound bites of bird calls and then runs it through an algorithm that then finds that bird and identifies it for you, and it can capture the calls of several birds at once.

Morgan O'Hanlon 02:48

It was Megan, one of our photographers at the magazine, who told me about Merlin, and it's come in handy, especially because I'm getting ready to head out to Mason mountain Wildlife Management Area where I'm going to link up with some even more hardcore birders. It feels kind of like a cheat sheet, but hey, if it works, it works, Will y'all be looking for any specific birds? I am so glad you asked. We'll actually be out there counting Black Capped Vireo. This is a migratory song bird that nests in Texas every spring.

David Yoskowitz 03:19

I know a bit about the Black Capped Vireo. It's just had a great comeback story.

Morgan O'Hanlon 03:23

That's right. The survey we're conducting is actually part of a post delisting monitoring project. After the species was delisted in 2017 it was placed on a 10 year monitoring plan to make sure it continues

David Yoskowitz 03:35

on the right path. And how's it been doing since 2017

Morgan O'Hanlon 03:39

Well, you know David, I could tell you, but I think it would be better if we went out into the field to find out. Are you ready to go outside? Let's go. You before we head out into the field, I wanted to check in with TV, WDs, expert on birds, to fill us in on the black cap areas. Backstory,

Speaker 1 04:23

my name is Tanya holmayoun, and I currently work as the ornithologist with our non game and Rare Species Program.

Morgan O'Hanlon 04:30

Nice, so that makes you the bird lady,

Speaker 1 04:33

yes, or alternately, the bird nerd or a bird nerd. There are a lot of us hanging out here.

Morgan O'Hanlon 04:39

Why is Texas such a hot spot for birders?

Speaker 1 04:43

So we are really fortunate to have this amazing kind of confluence of geography and ecosystems, and so we sit on this amazing place that is really it's part of the central flyway. We're this. Gateway across the Gulf, as birds are migrating during spring and fall migration, which brings us a whole suite of different species at different times of the year. And then on top of that, geographically, we just have this incredible array of different habitats that birds can inhabit. And I think that really gives us a leg up

Morgan O'Hanlon 05:19

today. We're talking about the Black Capped Vireo, which is one of the many bird species that we can find in Central Texas. I am not a birder, so to me, all birds are mostly kind of the same, unless they're like a flamingo or like a pelican or something super identifiable. So can you tell me how the Black Capped Vireo is special?

Speaker 1 05:40

Oh, that's a hard question, because every bird is special in their own special way. So I think it's just a matter of, you know, embracing the things that make them so well suited to their environment, so definitely different from a flamingo. They are a small song bird, primarily insectivorous. Interestingly, they're one of the smallest of our Vireo species, so when you see them out in the field, you're going to be looking for a very small, very active bird. The males and females look fairly similar, but they are just a little bit different. The male, his body is typically this beautiful olive green heat from his throat going down to his belly and under parts. It's this very pale, kind of white color. The distinctive thing about him, when you see him is he's going to have this really dark black cap and these white spectacles. It looks like he's wearing, like, white goggles that go around these kind of reddish brown eyes, like very striking and the female is very similar, except her cap is going to be a little bit more in the gray tones, as opposed to this, like very bold black. And another fun thing about them, I think, when you're out in the field, in the places where they are, is they are super vocal. During the breeding season, the males will sing and vocalize pretty persistently during the day throughout the breeding season. So a lot of birds are most active around sunrise. And then there's, it's almost like they have a little bit of a timer, and they're like, Okay, time's up. I'm clocking out. I'm done singing for the day. And these little vireos, they'll just keep going.

Morgan O'Hanlon 07:19

And where do vireos like to spend their time?

Speaker 1 07:23

So they are migratory. So they breed here in Texas and up into Oklahoma, down into northern Mexico during the early summer, and then they will migrate out of those breeding areas into western Mexico, which is where they spend the winter.

Morgan O'Hanlon 07:39

In the Vireo like parent species. I don't know if that's like the class in the taxonomy. What defines them like? Do they all live in Central Texas? Are they spread out?

Speaker 1 07:50

So they're in this group, the virionity, which has vireos, this other group called Shrike, babblers. There's eight different genera. So the genus under which these birds are, and 61 total species in that larger family. And then when you get down into the genus Vireo, that's where you have now 33 species. So they're distributed across the Americas. There are some in that larger group that are found over in Asia,

Morgan O'Hanlon 08:22

and the black cap Vireo in particular, ran into some trouble in the last few decades. So when was that species placed on the endangered species list?

Speaker 1 08:34

So it was federally listed in 1987 so at that point, when all of this information was being pulled together, there were only 350 known birds, collectively, males females in the breeding range. But at the time that they were listed, there had already been range contraction. Historically, we have records that go back decades before that that suggested the species used to breed all as far north as southern Kansas, through down through Mexico.

Morgan O'Hanlon 09:03

What led to that circumstance? What? How did it become endangered?

Speaker 1 09:07

Okay, so I guess to lay this out, it helps to have a little bit of background about the species. We'll start at kind of 1987 when the bird was listed. So imagine you're hiking through maybe Central Texas, and you're in a shrub land. So there's these scattered clumps, or what we often call mots, of woody plants. They're kind of lower growing, you know, maybe they're your height, maybe a little bit taller, but they go all the way down to the ground. And then separating these clumps, you'll have things like grasses and wildflowers, and maybe, you know, if it's in a rocky area, just some bare rock and bare dirt, and that is the kind of habitat that we think of as kind of typical for black CAD burials, the shrub cover, relative to the other stuff, is typically between like 35 and 55% of the veggie. Cover. They're going to be in this habitat, looking for these clumps of trees. They're going to build a deep, Open Cup nest. They're going to use like dead leaves and tree bark and weave it together with spider webs. And they're going to be looking for a V in a branch, and that's where the nest will kind of hang down from that structure. And typically, we often think of bird nests as being really high up in a tree. These guys do not do that. The shrub cover is pretty short to begin with, but the nests are going to be fairly low to the ground anyway, so it's kind of like laying the foundation here. So then we start kind of getting into like, okay, so what happened? Why did these guys end up where they are on, you know, when they were listed in the late 80s? So there's a couple of different things that are happening. So we have these changes to the landscape. Some of that is just removing the habitat, you know, clearing the shrubs, some of it in some parts of the range, means that we stop wildfire from happening, which means, especially in like the eastern part of the range, it's susceptible, then to things like eastern red cedar and things like that moving in and totally changing the profile the habitat.

Morgan O'Hanlon 11:12

When I drive out west, over toward Kerrville, over toward the Highland Lakes, what I noticed looking out over the horizon is just like super, super dense brush, like you cannot even walk past it. Is that a problem for the black cafe?

Speaker 1 11:30

Yes, so that's getting into that profile where it's just not going to be suitable. If it's kind of this wall to wall brush and there's it just doesn't have what they need, then they're going to be looking someplace else to get what they need for breeding habitat.

Morgan O'Hanlon 11:48

And was the loss of their nesting habitat, the only thing the black cafe was up against.

Speaker 1 11:53

One of the things that's happening is over the decades, is the introduction of cattle. And so we had bison. Previously, bison were eradicated, largely from the landscape, but then brought in cattle. And what one of the other organisms that has this very interesting relationship with many of these birds, including black Cadburys, is the brown headed cow bird. So historically, that was a species that was associated with bison and the bison herds, and they would kind of form these flocks and follow the bison herds during as they would wander across the landscape. And what they were really benefiting from with these bison is they'd walk along the ground, and as the Bison would be moving through, they'd stir up insects, and the brown headed cowbirds would eat those. So the reason that they have a kind of contentious relationship, shall we say, with some of their fellow birds, is that they have a really fascinating reproductive strategy. So brown headed cow birds lay their eggs the females lay their eggs in the nest of other birds, and they let the host parents raise the babies. So this is kind of like a cuckoo. Then so many cuckoos have evolved that same behavior, but it's a behavior that's popped up in several different lineages of birds, and so we see that in in these cow birds. So this is where things get messy for the Vireo. So we've got these vireos in these open landscapes, and we have cattle moving into some of these landscapes that previously may not have had them. The cow birds have expanded their range across North America substantially following the introduction of cattle. And so these their numbers can go way up, and you can get a lot of cow birds in these spaces. So cow birds and black caberos have always existed together. But one of the things, I think, that's kind of an important anchor to the story about this bird and mate, and probably with so many other species, where they're imperiled in some way, is something interrupted the balance. And when one thing gets off kilter, it can trigger kind of a cascade of other effects that feed on each other, and then suddenly you have a species that really needs a lot of help.

Morgan O'Hanlon 14:07

And is there any other major factor that contributed toward this endangered listing?

Speaker 1 14:13

So again, I think it helps to think about this by picturing the landscape. And we got this little bird that likes to build its nest pretty low to the ground. So cattle are one thing, but another thing that was pretty prevalent in many of the places within their range, especially in Texas, were browsers. So cattle are grazers. They're, you know, nom, nom, nom, on the ground. And then we've got browsers which are looking for more of the woody stuff, and right at that height where you have things like goats, they're going to be browse, browse, browse on a lot of this shrub material. That's right where the vireos want to be building their nest. So let's say you packed a whole bunch of goats into an area where maybe you had vireos, and they're just doing what goats do, and they're. Just, you know, browse in a way, you could lose that structure that the vireos need. So that was one of the things that was really identified as a problem, a threat we needed to keep track of in the listing for this species, was overgrazing and over browsing from domestic livestock like goats or many of these exotic ungulates which are also browsers. So it sounds like this is

Morgan O'Hanlon 15:25

just kind of like a big perfect storm of all of the precise conditions that kind of domino effected into each other to create this horrible circumstance for the black cap Vireo. Is that

Speaker 1 15:35

right? Yeah. So we have the loss of habitat from a few different things. Fire Suppression is one thing changes that come with land conversion from this kind of wild shrub land into something that's being more used for agricultural livestock purposes. And then also the type of grazers and browsers that are on the land make a big difference too. So yeah, all these things come together. And then on top of that, part of the change also is that you've suddenly got now more pressure from this nest parasite, the brown headed cow bird.

Morgan O'Hanlon 16:09

And of course, we wouldn't be talking about this today if the species had not made a really happy recovery. How did we start to turn this around?

Speaker 1 16:21

So the first one of the first challenges is just figuring out what the birds need and what they want, and so learning more about their basic biology, which we kind of talked about a little bit, then identifying the threats. So how are they responding to brown headed cowbird nest parasitism? So this was a major area of research, and a lot of work done on that. In some places that were being studied before they started instituting control, more than 90% of Vireo nests were being parasitized. How are they responding to that? Again, research found that a lot of cases, they abandon the nest, and if they don't abandon the nest, they raise almost virtually none of their own young, and end up popping out this hungry little cow bird out of an s who then goes on to do cow bird things. So, you know, there's a lot of background work that has to happen in order to identify the places where we can make a difference. So figuring out, yes, cow bird control is going to be a major strategy in a lot of these areas where there's a lot of cow birds out there, but then also figuring out what do they want in terms of optimal habitat? And then we can go in and start to say, okay, great, let's put some prescribed fire in the ground. Maybe we do some manual brush thinning in places where we need to do that. And we begin to kind of do this work, and then the other important part is we monitor the response, and that's how we kind of get them on a trajectory to recovery.

Morgan O'Hanlon 17:48

And we had a big update in that recovery story in 2017 what happened then?

Speaker 1 17:55

By the time they got to 2017 2018 they had enough information to say we can track how this species has been responding. We know what it needs in order to persist into the future. We think that it's recovered to a place where it doesn't need to be on the endangered species list, which is really what the goal of that is. So they proposed a delisting that went through the regulatory process, and so now, for the next several years, we're actually in the middle of this post delisting monitoring, where the management is continuing in a kind of maintenance phase, and the participating partners are reporting their results from this monitoring, just so that we can make sure that it looks like the species is going to continue to be stable going into the future as kind of a last, the last little, you know, check on how it's doing. And I do want to also point out that one thing we did learn from all of this work that's been done is that this is a species that's considered conservation dependent, so in order to keep it at healthy populations in the landscape, given the changes that have happened and the fact that we are on a human dominated landscape, the Vireo is going to continue to need human management intervention to persist into the future.

Morgan O'Hanlon 19:13

Of course, tomorrow, both of us are going out on a bird survey, a black cap area survey on the Mason mountain. WMA. So how is that part of this monitoring process? Is that going even after this post delisting monitoring process? Is that going to continue?

Speaker 1 19:34

We're a little bit more than halfway through that process, and so far the interim report for the halfway point has been released, and so that's out there to see. And the basic summary of that is so far so good. So for sure, that partners will continue to be doing their monitoring through the end of that period. And then I think that's the real question, is, you know, for some of these locations, they can be real strongholds for for the speed. Species, and those will probably be the places where there will be, you know, a bit more focus on making sure that its populations are are still healthy.

Morgan O'Hanlon 20:09

In addition to the Texas Parks and Wildlife staff members who are going out and doing these surveys, are there also non profit groups or just volunteers who are doing this work on their own, or like can somebody who's just a member of the general public volunteer or use iNaturalist or something like that, to go out and do this monitoring work and help.

Speaker 1 20:31

Part of the reason that we are able to know more about what's happening with bird populations than almost any other group of organisms out there is because we've had this tradition of people who are just interested, they're just passionate about birds. There's always a place there for for those observations. So I would say for people who are going out, maybe they're planning a trip in the next few weeks out to some of our state parks, for example, that host black cafes like Kickapoo. Keep an ear out for them. There's a lot of value to logging your checklist of birds that you see and putting that into a platform like eBird, or if you're taking photos, putting that into iNaturalist, so that we have these additional data sources, other than just the surveys that are being done by staff or land managers on these, these kind of particular properties. So all this information can be really, really valuable.

Morgan O'Hanlon 21:34

When we come back from the break, we'll go out into the field and take part in that post delisting monitoring process by going out and listening to some birds. So stay tuned. From Big Bend to Barcelona, Whole Earth provision company, outfits, free spirits and side Questers alike in superb quality goods. Find them in store or online at Whole Earth provision.com

Speaker 2 21:58

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Morgan O'Hanlon 22:24

to take part in the post delisting monitoring process, I went out to Mason mountain, a wildlife management area in the hill country where there's a large population of Black Capped varios. This wildlife management area is home to a lot of endangered species. In fact, the purpose of this WMA is research and to help some of our state's most threatened species recover.

Speaker 3 22:45

My name is Jeff foreman. We are at Mason mountain Wildlife Management

Morgan O'Hanlon 22:50

Area. And what are we doing today? We are

Speaker 3 22:53

participating in a black cap Vireo survey.

Morgan O'Hanlon 22:57

Jeff will be my tour guide for the day.

Speaker 3 22:59

We do them annually, not just here, but other areas in the state. I believe we've identified over 300 singing male territories in the past few years. How long have you worked out here? I've been out here almost 20 years. I'm about to retire.

Morgan O'Hanlon 23:16

Jeff isn't a biologist, but he still knows a thing or two about birds.

Speaker 3 23:21

Biologists are degreed professionals. I do not have a degree. I like to say I work for a living, and since I've come here, you know whether you're plowing or welding or fixing a fence, you can still pay attention to the birds and the flowers and the wildlife that exists here

Morgan O'Hanlon 23:40

today. Jeff is going to use that knowledge to help me become a better birder and assist in scientific research in the process,

23:46

what

Morgan O'Hanlon 23:48

does a black hat Vireo sound like? So like I'm not a birder. Can you demonstrate to me what I should be looking out for in the call?

23:58

So the call to me sounds like and that last little

Morgan O'Hanlon 24:05

is Vireo. Listen for the birds to say their names.

Speaker 3 24:08

It just that's a mnemonic that I use just for my benefit. And

Morgan O'Hanlon 24:13

it turns out there's a lot of fun tips and tricks that birders use to help their memory when it comes to bird calls.

Speaker 3 24:19

The mnemonic for the Black Cat Vireo is come here right now. Quick, Jad, that's a lot,

Morgan O'Hanlon 24:30

come here right now. Quick, what?

Speaker 3 24:32

Judit did it? Yeah, it'll be jaded. Jaded. You did it. You know, there's a lot of people who don't have a musical ear, and I was able to work with a man who did and he could distinguish between individuals just by their tones. And it was really something to see. His name was Kelsey Behrens. He was a former wildlife technician here at Mason mountain. Had a hard time learning to read music in high school band, and he taught him. Off to play by ear, and that carried over his whole life.

Morgan O'Hanlon 25:03

So repeat that first part for me. And then it said, do you do? So it's six part.

Speaker 3 25:12

Well, there's more to it than that. They're all individuals, and they they add and subtract from that. I can play a recording, yeah, if that would be helpful. So this is an app called I bird, and this is one of the song variations,

25:35

so not exactly like mine. I bet you can't pick anything out of what I did, out of that.

Morgan O'Hanlon 25:44

I don't know how bird people do this.

Speaker 3 25:48

Well, you start with easy birds like Bob White's and the purple martins that you're hearing outside of your house, and all the little native birds live here year round that you hear in this in the springtime and in the spring and summer. Gosh, in my mind, I'm trying to pick an easy one that would make that example a black and white warbler. We may see some of those today. They sound like a squeaky roller skate to me, and the phonetic text is, we see, we see, we see play that

Morgan O'Hanlon 26:21

Winky weeky. Winky, that one's easier, yes, more of a whistle that feels a little bit more distinct. The Black Hat virion me kind of sounds like very, extremely generic bird calls. Oh, yeah, like YouTube generic bird calls. That's what I would think of. Well,

Speaker 3 26:41

let me pull another one out here for you. This is a painted bunting. Do you know what they look like?

Morgan O'Hanlon 26:47

Yes, yeah, they're really pretty. So we have 100,000

26:51

of them out here, out in the hill country. That's just noise. I

Morgan O'Hanlon 27:05

a complicated one,

Speaker 3 27:06

but they like to sing. They sing a lot, and they sing often, and you can get to where you can

Morgan O'Hanlon 27:11

recognize it years and years of practice, I guess, yes, and

27:14

you don't even know the years are going by.

Morgan O'Hanlon 27:18

Unfortunately, I don't have years of time to study if I want to help with the survey today. Luckily for me, there's a lot of technology out there now for birders to help identify songs and calls. Today, I'll be using Merlin to help me pick out the black cap Veria song.

Speaker 3 27:33

It's important to note that there's a difference between a song and a call. The song is typically used when they're defending it or establishing a territory. The male is singing, letting all the other birds know this is his spot. He's going to raise this, attract a mate, building this, raise a family there. So the survey is just, we're identifying singing male territories. That's how we've done it for years. And so we're consistent throughout our numbers throughout the years.

Morgan O'Hanlon 28:01

As part of the survey, I've been assigned one section of the WMA to walk through and listen for the songs black cap theories. I'll turn on a GPS to mark my path, and as I walk, every time I hear a singing male, I'll drop a pin to show where that location was. Then at the end, the biologist will aggregate these maps to help them gain a rough estimate of the number of singing males in each territory and then across the entire WMA. So I guess most of the people who are coming out know what the birds look like and also know what they sound like,

Speaker 3 28:36

yes, but a lot of them are very new hires, and a couple of years ago, I sat here at this table with him and went out with them to show them what we were doing. And I can teach anybody to do this. And yeah, you're going to make some mistakes.

Morgan O'Hanlon 28:52

How long does it typically take to do a region where, like, one of the math sections,

Speaker 3 28:58

it can take you either two mornings or a full day, and I have walked when we didn't have enough help some years, a couple of years over eight miles doing this. Oh, wow, yeah, but your area is not like that. Trying to be nice to you on your first day.

Morgan O'Hanlon 29:18

With the help of technology and Jeff's guidance, I'm hoping that I can figure out what I'm doing today. We'll make a few pit stops on the way out to my section to Practice.

29:28

You don't mind, we'll just hop in my truck, and

Morgan O'Hanlon 29:36

it isn't long until Jeff hears his first black cat furious song of the day through the rolled down windows.

29:44

There's a Vario over here. Sorry, boy, that just changes everything. So I'm talking driving, and I hear a Vireo. How is that possible?

Speaker 3 29:59

You can step out. So he's right over here, and I'm going to wiggle my finger when he's calling,

30:12

so just kind of set your eyes for a small flying bird

Speaker 3 30:21

or so welcome to the world of birding. So years later, when you're an established birder in the state of Texas, you can say my first bird was a black cat Vireo.

Morgan O'Hanlon 30:36

We'll do one last practice stop before we head out to my section.

Speaker 3 30:40

Make one more stop over here before we I feel like every little bit of this you get is gonna help you out somewhere. Just build some confidence so that you can go ahead and just become a burner. So we are about to be in an early prime Black Cat Vireo habitat. Straight ahead is those brush species I was talking about with the foliar apron all the way down. There will be about 30 territories established on top of this hill. So let's just say this was in our area. You're doing your transect. It's been a while since you've heard a Vireo. You may hear 20 in your area. You may hear only three.

Morgan O'Hanlon 31:30

That's not one, is it over that one? I was

Speaker 3 31:33

listening to one over here. Sorry, that's a Vireo. And you got it, didn't you? Yeah, you're doing well

Morgan O'Hanlon 31:41

now with a decent grasp on the black catfuria song, it's time to put it to the test in my assigned section. Okay,

Speaker 3 31:49

so we're both tracking from here. Why don't I get you to walk down this road? Okay, paying attention to the birds on your right side, and you'll continue all the way around to right here, and you wait for me. I'm gonna go. I'm gonna go this way.

Morgan O'Hanlon 32:07

We're splitting up to divide and conquer. As I said, out on my own, it starts to drizzle and the bird calls get quiet, but as I get close to the end, I finally hear the call of a black cab. Theory. Oh, starting to get the hang of it. Yeah. I mean, did you hear one? Yeah,

Speaker 3 32:26

I think the storm kind of might have subdued it. How many did you see? I saw three way on the other end. Haven't heard one in a long time.

32:34

Yeah.

Morgan O'Hanlon 32:37

We finish up in our sign section and head back to Mason mountain headquarters. Jeff obviously has a lot of passion for birds, and especially the black cap vireal. So before I head out, I make sure to ask him what this bird means to him and why we should care.

Speaker 3 32:52

When you identify species of concern, you're concerned that it might go extinct and it's placed on the endangered species list, and those men before us, men and ladies, worked trying to propagate populations, learn more about the species, do everything they can to get them off that endangered species list. And in my career, they were delisted. That is a huge victory for all of us, and not just because we saved a species, it's because of what we learned. We learn a lot about what we as humans are doing wrong. So the little guys are affected first, and then maybe larger mammals. And then, you know, it might trickle down to where it's affecting humans, like my mentor, Bill Armstrong, said, You know, when the land is healthy and happy, the animals are happy, and when they're happy, we're happy.

Morgan O'Hanlon 33:51

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David Yoskowitz 34:37

So Morgan, how did you like Mason mountain?

Morgan O'Hanlon 34:40

I think it might be the prettiest piece of Texas Land I've ever been on. The granite rock formations are so interesting. There's like these huge, round boulders. It's part of the same geological formation that Enchanted Rock is on, and it's obviously so well managed. There's tons of tall grasses between the trees, and it's not choked up with bread. Like a lot of land in the hill country.

David Yoskowitz 35:02

Mason Mountain is a really great Wildlife Management Area. Besides providing habitat for song birds, it's also a great spot for us to reintroduce some native species, including horn lizards and black tailed prairie dogs and grasses. We've utilized a lot of prescribed fire and other land management techniques, which are really important to get it back to its condition that it was over 200 years ago. The property's primary mission is for research. So it's closed to the public right now, but we do landowner workshops and other educational programs out there to teach some of these practices.

Morgan O'Hanlon 35:38

Well, I could definitely see why the animals love it out there. After spending a good three hours tromping around through the trees and grass, I really didn't want to leave. So did you come back a birder? You know, I think I might be well on my way Jeff, who's a wildlife technician there at Mason mountain, had some really great mnemonic tricks for recognizing bird calls, and by the way, he'll be retired by the time this episode airs. I feel really lucky to have gotten a tour from him and to have been passed down some of his knowledge from his time at the WMA. So David, are there any bird calls in particular that stick out in your head?

David Yoskowitz 36:15

Well, there aren't any particular bird calls that stick out my head, except the gobble of wild turkey. But there is a particular bird that I like that's along the coast, which is the roseate spoon bill. That's a favorite of mine.

Morgan O'Hanlon 36:30

Yeah, I think the turkey is one of the few I can pick out by ear. Maybe I'll get to the point eventually where I can recognize the songs of song birds without using a crutch. But hey, I don't mind using the tool like it is for now,

David Yoskowitz 36:43

anything that we can do to get people interested in birds and birding and the habitat that birds need to flourish is critically important, and that's a win. You

Morgan O'Hanlon 37:06

better outside a Texas Parks and Wildlife production is brought to you by WHOLE EARTH provision company. This episode was written and recorded by me Morgan O'Hanlon, story edited by Wes Ferguson and aislin Gaddis for free range productions, sound design and audio engineering by Austin Sisler at Eastside studios in Austin, Texas. Our theme song was written and recorded by Walker Lukens and grant Epley. Artwork for the show is by Aaron Zachary. And if you like the story, you should check out Texas Parks and Wildlife Magazine at TPW magazine.com, that's Texas polecat waco magazine.com, and you can support us by subscribing to the magazine for only $2 a month. All this information, along with transcripts, photos, links, and so much more, is available in our show notes. You can find them at better outside.com and of course, you can find better outside wherever you get Your podcasts. Until next time We'll catch you outside. You