Seasons – September 2023

Almost every other day, Charlie Flatten gets a call about another local water well gone dry. Last week, he tried to help one woman find a water truck to fill her home cistern. But all the hauling companies had suspended service amid a deepening shortage in Central Texas. “She’s got to go find somewhere else to live,” said Flatten, general manager of the Hays Trinity Groundwater Conservation District in Dripping Springs. “This is extremely serious.” Here in the booming Hill Country southwest of Austin, Flatten said, the Trinity Aquifer is at its lowest level on record. Across the region, iconic natural springs are dwindling or drying up, victims of extreme heat, persistent drought and ever-growing demand for water.

High temperatures and drought conditions have persisted throughout the summer months in Texas, with little rain to provide relief. While tropical storm Harold brought some relief along the coast of Texas, according to the Texas state climatologist, much of the state has witnessed above average temperatures — 4 to 8 degrees above normal and in the triple digits. “The coast of Texas and the West Texas mountains were able to find temperature relief from recent rainfall, but most of the state has experienced triple degree weather with no relief expected in the near future,” said John Nielsen-Gammon, Ph.D., state climatologist and Regents Fellow in the Texas A&M College of Geosciences Department of Atmospheric Sciences.The Texas drought monitor map showed increased drought conditions during the last three months and the previous year overall…

Dripping Springs will be the next location of a research and conservation site from The University of Texas. The Hill Country Field Station, recently announced by the university, will be located at Mirasol Springs, a development on the Pedernales River from Steve Winn, founder of RealPage and CEO of Mirasol Capital, companies focused on the real estate industry. In addition to the field station, the property will consist of a hotel, cottages and homesites, according to Mirasol Springs’s website. An exact address for the Hill Country Field Station has not yet been announced as the project is still in its early stages, said Christine Sinatra, director of communications for the UT College of Natural Sciences. The 340-acre site was funded in part by the Winn Family Foundation, which donated over $50 million to the site, as well as by $150 million in additional university donations…

Many Texans are excited to see summer transition into fall, but this time period also comes with a warning. Each year between late summer and early fall is when eggs laid in the spring have hatched and live-bearing snakes have given birth, meaning more encounters with the young limbless reptiles—venomous and non-venomous alike—are more likely. Recently, a 10-inch-long baby rattlesnake was spotted in the grass outside the National Weather Center in Midland, Texas. Texas is home to more than 115 different species and subspecies of snakes—the highest number in the U.S., according to the Texas Parks and Wildlife Department (TPWD). Most snakes in the state are non-venomous and completely harmless. However, 15 percent are venomous, and can be grouped into four categories: coral snakes, copperheads, cottonmouths, and rattlesnakes.

Have you seen any waves of migrating birds lately? The blazing yellow that stretches through the middle section of the above map shows us that heavy nighttime migration is expected through the central U.S. after sunset this evening. That could make tomorrow morning a birding bonanza from Texas to Michigan. Check out the three-night Birdcast migration forecast, or use the Migration Dashboard to see what happened last night in the skies above your state or county. Forecasts come from models trained on the last 23 years of bird movements in the atmosphere as detected by the US NEXRAD weather surveillance radar network. Models use the Global Forecasting System (GFS) to predict suitable conditions for migration occurring three hours after local sunset.

At first glance, this giant winged insect recently spotted in Texas might look and behave like a hummingbird, but it’s actually a moth. All around the Lone Star State, hummingbird moths are getting confused with the small, fast-flying birds due to their similar size and movement. The Cornell Lab of Ornithology Bird Cams recently filmed one of the insects, known as a white-lined sphinx moth, stopping by one of its bird feeders in west Texas with several hummingbirds. “One of these things is not like the other!” read the caption of the video shared on Facebook. Balaji Devarajan of Frisco, Texas also recently photographed one of the insects drinking nectar from a thistle as a hummingbird approached the same flower in Montgomery, Texas…

The stars at night do not just shine big and bright for humans here in Texas; they are also a vital tool for navigating migratory paths for almost two billion birds across North America. However, our feathered friends face a new challenge as they travel back to their homes and breeding grounds – light pollution that leads to building strikes. Migratory species traveling long distances face the most challenges, especially when traveling over or near large cities where light pollution is most common. An estimated 1 billion birds are lost to collisions with buildings and structures, according to a study in Annual Reviews. Since the 1970s, various threats to the U.S. bird population have led to the loss of one in every four birds, according to a study published in Science. Lights Out, Texas!, an initiative that seeks to enlist Texans to curb bird losses to building strikes during spring and fall migrations, hopes to reverse those trends.

Bumping over cattle guards and cruising down a dirt road on a hot September morning, I can see a narrow, shimmering band in the distance that looks like a gentle stream catching the early light. That can’t be right, I tell myself. Seasonal streams all over the Hill Country have long since gone dry. Here in Williamson County, as in most of Central Texas, the U.S. Drought Monitor has declared a state of exceptional drought—the most extreme category—after hardly any rain at all during some of the hottest months in Texas history. But I’m not seeing a mirage. Soon the road dips into a shallow valley and passes by a scattering of massive hardwoods—pecan, bur oak, live oak—and it becomes clear that I am seeing a rare holdout: a glassy ribbon of cool water, straight from the Edwards Aquifer.  “There are three different spring areas on the property, and all three of them flowed the entirety of last year….

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Deep in the thorny brush of a South Texas cattle ranch, an ocelot is quietly and casually padding over fallen mesquite leaves when it suddenly freezes mid-stride, prey in its sights. Then, with a flick of its tail, the spotted cat shoots through a maze of gray-green thicket with such stunning quickness that the camera has a hard time catching it. El Sauz Ranch, near Port Mansfield, is an ocelot haven, and the cowboys who steer cattle over the land, kicking up great clouds of dust, have become unlikely allies of the rare, exceedingly elusive feline. The vast majority of Texans will go their whole lives without seeing an ocelot in the wild, even as the entire United States population of the endangered cat is found in our state.  Lucky for us, though it’s hard to catch one of the roughly one hundred remaining Texas ocelots on camera, it’s not impossible…