Frog Calls

NEWSLETTER OF CROSST IMBERS CONNECTION

June, 2016

Volume 4, No. 2 ISSN: 2471-6979

Feature Page

Pond Life at Southwest Nature Preserve 1

Events 5

The Tandy Hills BioBlitz 6

A LOOK AT THE POND LIFE OF SOUTHWEST NATURE PRESERVE

On Sunday, May 15th, around 2:30 in the afternoon, Michael Smith and I carried out a pond survey at the South-

west Nature Preserve in Arlington, Texas along with members of the Friends of Southwest Nature Preserve. We

wanted to document the kinds of plants and animals living in this pond. Based on earlier observations, we expected

to see turtles like the Red-eared slider, frogs such as the Blanchard’s cricket frog, Watersnakes, Sunfish, Mosquito

fish, and who knew what else.

Leading up to this survey, I had looked at this park many times on Google Maps. On Google Maps everything

looks flat, but I could see on the maps that there were four ponds; a large pond at the top, a slightly smaller one—

but still a decent size for fishing—in the south, and two smaller ones. Only one of those smaller ones is easily ac-

cessible, and this is the one we planned to focus on. I also noticed that the south pond seemed to have a dock/

boardwalk on it as well which lead me to believe that this one had to be the best fishing pond. On the day of the

survey, I arrived early to take a look at our target pond because I had not been to this park before and I was curious

to see what I could find before Michael and I started the survey. I arrived around 1:00 pm and I was astonished

how much topography there was. Among that which I noticed, the north end of the park has a good sized hill cov-

ered with Eastern Crosstimbers sloping down to the south.

By Nic Martinez

Nic inspecting the contents of the net, with Mike McCorkhill on shore

Frog Calls June, 2016

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A Look at the Pond Life of Southwest Nature Preserve, continued from page 1

The first thing I needed to do was get my gear ready. I

purchased a 20-foot seine specifically for this survey

and was anxious to use it; however, because I did not

want to bring any uninvited guests into this pond, the

seine sat in the box in the back of my SUV until the

day of survey. I strung up the seine to the pine rod, got

the aquarium nets that I bought earlier in the day, as

well as a few white five-gallon buckets, slipped on my

rubber boots, and with a tiny plastic kid aquarium, I

made my way to the pond. When you are in the park-

ing lot of this park you cannot see any of the ponds, so

I walked over to the really inviting park map sign to

figure out where I needed to go. I got my bearing and I

went down the trail to find this nice looking pond with Float-

ing water primrose (Ludwigia peploides) and Alligator weed

(Alternanthera philoxeroides) surrounding the edges and

Muskgrass (Chara spp.) just under the surface of the water. I

began walking the edge trying to see if I could catch any crea-

tures trying to hide out in the primrose, and I saw Mosquito

fish (Gambusia affinis) hugging the primrose (I assume hiding

from me). I stumbled across the outlet where the middle pond

dumps into what the map labeled as the fishing pond. At this

pond, I saw more Mosquito fish, so I scooped a few up with

my net and placed them in the small aquarium to take a few

pictures.

When Michael arrived, I was just completing my search around the pond and we went to go check out the fishing

pond. As we were getting in sight of the pond, I could hear the splash of bobbers hitting the water and a kid saying

“I got one, I got one!” At that point, I knew it was going to be a good day. As we were making our way around the

last curve, there was the fishing pond. It’s

a great sized pond and there is also water

primrose skirting the edges all the way

around. the primrose and other features

make this pond a great habitat for fry

(baby fish) to hide out and eat until they

are big enough to venture out. As Mi-

chael and I walked on the boardwalk to-

wards the dock, we discussed the plan for

the survey. He told me that the Friends

of the SW Nature Preserve would be

joining us and one of the board members,

Mike McCorkhill, was a native fish guy

Floating water primrose

Alligator weed

Mosquito fish

Frog Calls June, 2016

Page 3

A Look at the Pond Life of Southwest Nature Preserve, continued from page 2

who would be assisting

us with the pond sur-

vey. To pass time, we

walked around the park

talking about this hid-

den jewel just off of

Interstate 20 in the

heart of DFW, and

how we needed more

parks like the preserve

that show what this

land used to look like.

Before we knew it, it

was 2:20 pm and Mi-

chael had to head home

to get a few things. I

went to my SUV to put

on my waders and grab

a few more things, then

I headed down to the pond to see how deep I could go before water flooded my waders. I thought the pond would

have a hard bottom to it, but I was mistaken; after just a few steps in the pond I started sinking. The bottom of the

pond was like quick sand, if you didn’t move fast you were likely to get stuck. As Michael was returning, Mike

also showed up to lend a hand. Michael asked what I thought and I informed him this might be harder than it

looks. Michael, Mike, and I discussed how we were going to go about doing this survey. There was only one area

where the primrose had not completely closed in so we decided that would be the spot where we bring the seine to

shore. Michael and I grabbed the seine and we were off to seine up anything we could, but our first haul didn’t re-

veal much. We caught a few Bluegill fry (Lepomis macrochirus) and Mosquito fish. Then we tried something differ-

ent - Mike brought a pond rake which he used to pull up the vegetation so Michael and I could use the dip-net to

see what we could find. It worked surprisingly well; we caught all kinds of fingerling Lepomis and dragonfly

nymphs, and placed them in the aquarium.

After dip-netting one side of the pond, we decided to try out the

seine again. Michael and I were fighting the muddy bottoms of

the pond in chest to shoulder deep water, but we finally got the

seine to shore and this time it worked. During our second go

with the 20 foot seine we pulled up a Green Sunfish fingerling

(Lepomis cyanellus), more Bluegill, and a few dragonfly nymphs. I

was excited, so we tried two more times; all we were catching

were fingerlings and nickel-sized Bluegill fry. We discussed try-

ing the seine at the other end of the pond where it dumps into the

fishing pond when full, but there was a dense carpet of

Muskgrass. The Muskgrass did not allow the bottom of the seine

to reach the bottom of the pond, so everything was just swim-

Sunfish—notice the spines followed by softer rays of the top (dorsal) fin

Dragonfly nymph

Frog Calls June, 2016

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A Look at the Pond Life of Southwest Nature Preserve, continued from page 3

ming underneath the seine. By this

time, about an hour-and-a-half had

gone by and Michael and I were

confident we managed to catch

everything we were going to catch

out of the pond. After the pond set

us free of its grip and we had a cou-

ple bottles of water, we wanted to

take pictures of the fish and

nymphs we caught. We surveyed

two Green sunfish fingerlings,

twelve Bluegill fry and fingerlings,

three dragonfly nymphs, and male

and female Mosquito fish. Addi-

tionally, the cricket frogs were common all along the edge of the pond, and Michael spotted a couple of Leopard

frogs near a Black willow tree. Those frogs escaped the net, so we could not be sure if they were Southern leopard

frogs (Lithobates sphenocephala, the most likely one) or Plains leopard frogs (Lithobates blairi). A couple of species of

spiders were common, and we saw one Six-spotted fishing spider making a meal off of one of the cricket frogs. Un-

fortunately, we did not catch any sliders, probably because the turtles were easily able to outrun our slow-motion

attempts to move through the mud. All-in-all, I feel it turned out great and I had a blast doing it. In the future, my

plan is to see how I can survey both the

large pond and the fishing pond as well.

(Please note that this activity was carried out

by Crosstimbers Connection under a permit

issued by the Arlington Parks & Recreation

Department. Please do not wade and seine the

ponds at Southwest Nature Preserve on your

own—the ponds and creatures living in it can

tolerate this kind of disturbance once in a

while, but not often!)

Blanchard’s cricket frog

Six-spotted fishing spider eating a cricket frog

Frog Calls June, 2016

Page 5

k June 2016k

June Events:

(All of our events are free, but the host location may charge an entrance fee – check their website to see if there is a fee.)

Outdoor events are subject to change based on weather - if you have registered by email, we will make every effort to email you if there are any changes to this event. Additionally, you can check our Facebook page.

6/21/16, 7:00pm n Reptiles & Amphibians of SW Nature Preserve (& Surrounding Area) n Friends of Southwest Nature Preserve

An introduction, in pictures and stories, to the reptiles and amphibians of this cross timbers remnant and the surrounding area. Mi-chael Smith will talk about the frogs, salamanders, turtles, lizards, and snakes (including venomous species) of Tarrant and nearby counties. We’ll have a harmless example or two of these animals for you to meet up close. The event is in the Community Room at the West Arlington Police Station, 2060 W. Green Oaks Blvd, Arlington, TX. It is free and open to the public. http://www.swnp.org/

Please register for our events by emailing us at: contact@crosstimbersconnection.org

Stay Connected! … Subscribe on Yahoo Groups or find us on Facebook. Want to stay in touch, so you hear about events early and can share your ideas about the crosstimbers and prai-ries? We have a free subscription email list at Yahoo Groups, and we hope you’ll join. Although anyone can join, memberships need approval and so it’s unlikely you will see spam or off-topic emails. It’s a great way for your voice to be heard, about your favorite places or species, experiences you’ve had, and what you’d like to see from us. To join, email crosstimbers-subscribe@yahoogroups.com and we will get you on the list! We would also love for you to visit our Facebook page, at www.facebook.com/CrosstimbersConnection . Please “like” our page and feel free to post your thoughts there!

Texas ratsnake (now the “Western” ratsnake)

Frog Calls June, 2016

Page 6

This past April 22 and 23, a team of people got together to provide some answers to the question, “What lives in

the Tandy Hills Natural Area?” Over the two day period, people who know about plants, birds, invertebrates, rep-

tiles and amphibians, mammals, and all kinds of other things worked together to find and document everything

they could on the rolling hills and shrubby ravines of this patch of Fort Worth prairie. In other words, they had a

bioblitz.

The Wikipedia entry for bioblitz says that it is an “intense period of biological surveying in an attempt to record all

the living species within a designated area” (Wikipedia, 2016). As you can imagine, this requires lots of energy

from lots of people, and there were 159 observers keeping the iNaturalist site humming with new entries (if you are

not familiar with iNaturalist, see the piece in the January, 2016 issue of Frog Calls). All those volunteers recorded a

total of 3,477 observations, documenting 700 species, according to the June 1st issue of Prairie Notes, Don Young’s

monthly publication from Tandy Hills Natural Area. Crosstimbers Connection was among the numerous organi-

zations and individuals who walked the trails and searched out the different species in this remarkable place.

In my ramblings up and down the

hills and across the fields, I was

accompanied by some wonderful

TCU students who helped find a

number of species. One of the

high points for me was when one

of the students flipped a rock and

discovered a Texas blind snake

(now called a “threadsnake”).

When you first see them, these

small, pinkish or silvery snakes

might appear to be some sort of

worm, but they are actually

snakes with backbones and scales.

Their eyes are covered by scales

so they are nearly blind, and they

THE TANDY HILLS BIOBLITZ

By Michael Smith

Texas blind snake, or Texas threadsnake

Frog Calls June, 2016

Page 7

The Tandy Hills BioBlitz, continued from page 6

spend their lives searching through colonies of ants or termites, eating the larvae. This first blind snake got away,

but amazingly we found another at this same spot and got a photo to document this cool species for Tandy Hills.

Michael Perez, with Fort Worth Nature Center & Refuge, went with us on one of our walks and found a rough

earthsnake as well as a flat-headed snake. Both of these are small, rather plain-colored snakes that are usually

found under rocks, boards, or logs. The earthsnake is a plain brown serpent

with a narrow head, while the flat-headed snake has a blunt head and a salmon

-colored belly. It has enlarged teeth and mild toxins that help it subdue the cen-

tipedes and other invertebrates that it eats. A flat-headed snake’s mouth and

teeth are so small that these enlarged teeth and toxins are not relevant to hu-

mans – they are completely harmless to us.

On one hillside, the students and I discovered an old mattress. How it got

there, we’ll never know, and it certainly should not be there. However, we were

certainly not going to pass up such a potential shelter for herps, no matter that

the thing was an unwanted eyesore. We flipped the mattress, imagining any

number of cool snakes that could be underneath. What we found were several

little brown skinks (in older field guides these are “ground skinks”), which are

small lizards that are common in leaf litter and underneath logs or rocks, where

they find small insects and other invertebrates to eat. I caught one for a photo, Little brown skink

Frog Calls June, 2016

Page 8

The Tandy Hills BioBlitz, continued from page 7

and we left the old mattress on the

hillside, out of sight of most visitors.

There were lots of other species, includ-

ing a great variety of grasses, wildflow-

ers, and other plants, most of which I

cannot reliably identify. However, I did

find and photograph a low-growing

cactus that resembled a species my

friend John Chmielewski had pointed

out in a Crosstimbers Connection field

trip last fall: the nipple cactus. The nice

thing about iNaturalist is that an aver-

age guy like me, who knows little about

cacti, can post a photo and the experts

will step in and help confirm what it is.

In this case, TPWD Urban Biologist

Sam Kieschnick identified it as a Mis-

souri foxtail cactus. There you go: A

Missouri foxtail cactus observed at Tandy Hills Natural Area!

I had a great time, and Crosstimbers Connec-

tion was proud to participate in this effort to

better understand the many species at Tandy

Hills. Once again we can be delighted and

amazed at the diversity of life that is held in

trust for all of us by preserves such as this one.

Wikipedia. Entry for “Bioblitz” (Internet:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BioBlitz)

Young, Don (2016) Prairie Notes #114

(Internet: http://www.tandyhills.org/notes/

sense-pairie)

Three members of the amazing TCU herping team!

Missouri foxtail cactus

We take people out into the woods and prairies, looking for reptiles, amphibians, and other wildlife. We also give presentations to bring the woods and wildlife to the people with slides, stories, and animals. Additionally, we publish Frog Calls and the Post Oak & Prairie Journal to bring the natural places in north Texas to life in print and photos. We do all this without charging anything (but we gladly accept tax-deductible contributions to keep us going). We are a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization. Please visit us on the web at www.crosstimbersconnection.org, and on Facebook at www.facebook.com/CrosstimbersConnection.

Connecting people with nature in north Texas