Wonder in the Woods: Chapter Field Trip

Post written by Suzy Meriwether with photo of Dickcissel by James Corgill

The great thing about going on a hike with fellow Texas Master Naturalists is you learn a lot about nature.  Our inaugural field trip was a self-guided hike around Commons Ford, a property that is a City of Austin Park, part of Balcones Canyonlands Preserve, and supported by Travis Audubon’s prairie restoration project.  It is one of the most natural parks in the area and includes native prairies, open fields, wooded areas, heritage trees, and river frontage.  

With the diverse knowledge of the group we slowly made our way around the whole property identifying sunflowers, Turk’s cap, really ripe prickly pear fruit, grasses, birds, butterflies, damselflies and spiders! There was unfortunately also quite a lot of Chinese tallow, an invasive plant in Central Texas.

The hike started with the group spotting bluebirds. This was followed by a large flock of finches – goldfinches, lesser finches, house finches – feeding on all the native sunflowers. We also spotted  Black and White Warblers, Couch’s Kingbirds, White-eyed Vireos, and many more! 

With the amazing diversity of habitats in such a small space, we saw lots of different arthropods (insects and arachnids). There were some beautiful butterflies including gulf fritillary, queen, red admiral, bordered patch, and swallowtail. We also saw several large yellow garden spiders, a big fishing spider at the edge of the creek, and a number of long-jawed orbweavers on webs stretched above the water. A rubyspot damselfly showed off its brilliant coloring at the edge of the lake, a little scarab beetle was found crawling through the leaf litter in the woods, and a blue mud wasp was spotted in the grass. It was a great morning for bug fans!

Check out some of the chapter’s observations through photos by Erin Hollis, James Corgill, Ruthann Panipinto, and Gene Janulis: