American Alligator

On May 5th I started the latest round of The Wild Lives of Texas Reptiles & Amphibians, a four-part training that I offer with slides and discussion in class as well as time in the field. The idea is to dig down a little deeper about herp (reptile and amphibian) natural history, more than I’m able to when training incoming Master Naturalists. And the people participating get several sessions in the field, which is both fun and important when learning about how to find and interact with herps.

And so I got to meet several new people, one of them a 15-year-old who is new to all this and one a Master Naturalist in her 80s. They were all delightful. I covered some very practical issues like watching out for bull nettle and how wild snakes, including venomous species, usually respond when we encounter them. I also gave a quick overview of taxonomy and scientific names, though the discussion about why some of these names keep changing might have gotten a little thick – but it was brief.

*An eastern river cooter basking in the warm sunshine*

At 3:00 it was time to take a walk; the rain clouds had parted and it was a sunny and beautiful day at Fort Worth Nature Center & Refuge. We walked up the Cross Timbers trail along the Trinity River for a while, with the long, torpedo bodies of gar easily visible and the big scales and reddish fins of carp breaking the water’s surface. Our first herps were the turtles swimming or basking on branches of fallen trees. I am used to seeing more red-eared sliders, but today the river cooters were more common.

*Witches’ butter, a type of jelly fungus*

Meanwhile our group of 8 or 9 people were captivated by everything around us. After all the recent rain, the fungi were proliferating. Sheryl told us about some of the mushrooms as well as the jelly fungi like witch’s butter and wood ear. Soon, Caleb found a little brown skink. Those words serve as the actual name of the lizard as well as a description of it; they’re small and have a broad, coppery-brown band down the back, edged with a darker brown band on each side. They are sometimes described as “elfin,” perhaps because they are woodland creatures that are sometimes glimpsed for a moment as they make their way through the leaf litter.

*Sara gently restrains the little brown skink so we can get a good look before releasing it*

Across the river channel along the opposite bank, I spotted an American alligator that we estimated to be a bit more than five feet long. This one was half-submerged and presumably basking in the afternoon sunshine. Sometimes people are surprised that we have alligators in the DFW metroplex, thinking that they belong in the swamps of Louisiana or Florida. But the American alligator has made a significant recovery from the days when it was hunted to near-extinction.

Our ‘gators are generally found in secluded spots in or near the Trinity River. They are mostly shy around humans, though people on Lake Worth sometimes see them basking out in the open, seemingly without a care in the world. What I had shared with the group is that alligators should be admired from a distance (Texas Parks & Wildlife Dept. advises staying 30 feet away), and that alligators can run faster than we can for short distances. And yet, there are no records of people in Texas being killed by alligators and relatively few injuries.

One of the turtles basking over the water was clearly not a cooter or slider, but my camera lens was not pulling in enough detail. Caleb took a look and said he thought it was a musk turtle, and with the head and neck more visible in his photo I agreed. It appears to be a razor-backed musk turtle, a small turtle with a carapace (top shell) a little like a peaked roof. Such turtles are on the menu for lots of other animals, including that alligator we had seen. As a result, they are pretty wary and I’m a little surprised that this one didn’t drop into the water before we could take a photo.

*Sheryl (right) investigates a cluster of wood ear fungus, swollen and rubbery from the recent rain*

While I checked the local temperature and humidity (87.6F and 45%), Eleanor brought me the first snake, a rough earthsnake. These small snakes are found in leaf litter and under logs, as well as under boards or rocks in old fields and in gardens. In those places they find earthworms and small, soft-bodied insects that are their food.

*A pallid spiny softshell, pulled mostly out of the water to bask*

Meanwhile we continued finding lots of caterpillars as well as a variety of spiders. When the trail led us away from the river and into the woodland there were little refuges to investigate, in the form of fallen branches and logs. Could we find a frog or toad under one? Alaina did spot a leopard frog and chased it but it was soon lost in vegetation. The best things to turn over are bigger pieces that offer a larger area of shelter. Those are the ones that might conceal a ribbonsnake or cottonmouth (I brought a snake hook to insure that nobody turned a log by sticking their fingers under it).

I talked about the absence of small-mouthed salamanders in these places at the refuge. Intermittently flooded bottomlands are where I would expect them, and some persist along the Trinity River floodplain in Arlington. There are 93 observations in iNaturalist (55 of them just since the year 2020), all clustered in that area, but no observations are in the vicinity of Lake Worth and Fort Worth Nature Center & Refuge. Why would that be the case? What difference in microhabitats, predators, water quality, or something else would account for it? That would be an interesting puzzle to solve.

Everyone seemed to enjoy the walk and all that we found. This class is off to a great start, and I’ll post updates after future meetings. The next session is about amphibians, and we will look for frogs and toads around sunset and listen for frog calls. I think it will be magical!

*A cold morning beach on the Bolivar Peninsula (photo by M. Smith)*

Meghan Cassidy and I traveled to the upper Texas coast the weekend of March 6, working on the book project about mindfulness in nature in Texas. I am posting a few preview photos and a little description of what Anahuac National Wildlife Refuge and Sea Rim State Park were like, here at the end of winter. Most of the photos here are mine (they won’t be in the book; I snap pictures but Meghan takes photographs on a whole other level!) and a few are Meghan’s.

*From the High Island Bridge (photo by M. Cassidy)*

It’s the end of winter if you count the seasons according to equinoxes and solstices. By that reckoning, we’re still in winter until March 20th, but that first weekend in March felt like the cusp of spring. The smallest wildflowers were beginning to bloom, and the sun was higher and stronger, to the delight of all the wildlife.

*A humble plant with a fantastic name: Sticky Mouse-ear Chickweed (photo by M. Smith)*

The bird population was busy and diverse. We saw White Ibis, American Coots, shovelers and other ducks and the occasional Pied-billed Grebe like the one below.

*Pied-billed Grebe (photo by M. Cassidy)*

Anahuac is the first place where I saw American Alligators in large numbers, years ago on another early March weekend. They were out basking in the sun then and they were doing the same thing now, resting on the banks of waterways like inert statues. The alligators here seem to be accustomed to the many birders and naturalists who pass through without getting too close. Make no mistake, if disturbed they are capable of instantly plunging into the water to get away, or even charging a person if they harassed a ‘gator. And for short distances, they can move faster than we can.

*American Alligator (photo by M. Smith)*

*Another alligator, re-entering the water (photo by M. Smith)*

We came to a place where over forty young alligators were basking, piled on top of each other in many cases. Some were adolescents and some appeared to be last season’s hatchlings, so they were not one nest of alligators. I have described for the book what happened when a little water snake came cruising by and decided, through the worst decision making ever, to swim over to the edge right where the greatest concentration of little alligators lay.

*The World Conference of Young Alligators, or so it seemed (photo by M. Smith)*

The boardwalk on the Shoveler Pond at Anahuac NWR is a wonderful place, extending over a marsh and ending with an observation deck. There was an amazing variety of bird life, including a Cinnamon Teal that swam near the deck for a while. Turtles were basking, Red-winged Blackbirds were busy among the reeds, and a couple of Mississippi Green Watersnakes basked very close to the boardwalk. Those were life-listers for me, as I’ve seen almost all of Texas’ watersnakes but not this one until now.

*Red-winged Blackbird (photo by M. Smith)*

*A swallowtail greets Meghan on the deck (photo by M. Smith)*

*A gar waiting in the shallows (photo by M. Smith)*

*Mississippi Green Watersnakes – the tail of the second one extends up from the bottom of the photo (photo by M. Smith)*

The Great Blue Herons were very common, and we spotted one that had just captured one of the local snakes. Meghan did get a couple of photos as it lifted off ponderously and flew away (that shot should be in the book). There were other larger birds such as an Osprey we saw in McFaddin NWR.

*Great Blue Heron (photo by M. Cassidy)*

*Osprey with a half-eaten fish (photo by M. Cassidy)*

There was a mindful component to all of this, staying in the moment and fully attentive to the experience. In the car (on the Shoveler Pond Auto Loop, for example) we weren’t driving around with the radio on and chatting about various things. There were periods of silence along with times when one might get the other and say, “look at that!” We spent the time absorbed in the experience of the sunshine, bird calls, wildlife, and the various textures and colors of the water and vegetation.

*The varieties of blue in the water and sky at Shoveler Pond (photo by M. Smith)*

One a drive near the beach, going to McFaddin NWR, Meghan spotted a juvenile Gulf Coast Ribbonsnake, and we were able to get some photos. Ribbonsnakes are always elegant and graceful, and I am a big fan of the brown and golden colors in the Gulf coast subspecies.

*Gulf Coast Ribbonsnake (photo by M. Cassidy)*

The beach at Sea Rim State Park, when sunset came on the first day, was memorable. The beach was nearly deserted, which is a gift in itself for someone who wants to experience the waves and sand in their full depth and breadth, without the cars, radio, and chatter. As the sun went down we saw a child far away, standing in the waves fishing. I began to think about the possibilities – what a child like that might carry with him or her from that day. A beautiful sky, the wild Gulf of Mexico, imagining some amazing creature that might appear at any moment on the fishing line. I hope that the adult who was there with the child provides many other days and nights when such magical experiences can occur.

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End of Winter, at the Coast