Attracting Birds in the Texas Hill Country

Attracting Birds in the Texas Hill Country

Austin Chapter of the Native Plant Society of Texas
Title: Attracting Birds in the Texas Hill Country
Rufus Stephens and Jan Wrede presented an overview of their book, “Attracting Birds in the Texas Hill Country,” to the March 19, 2019, meeting of the Austin Native Plant Society.
W. Rufus Stephens is the Texas Parks and Wildlife Department’s district leader for the 25-county Edwards Plateau Wildlife District. Jan Wrede is former director of education and citizen science at the Cibolo Nature Center in Boerne and the author of Trees, Shrubs, and Vines of the Texas Hill Country.

Rufus Stephens and Jan Wrede

   Birds are charismatic. As such people are interested in having birds on their property. Birds represent diversity and can be helped by habitat improvement. When birds flourish, so do other species. Birds depend on and prefer native plants.
   Habitat is where birds find food, water, shelter, and space to live. Habitat is where birds breed and nest.
   There are three types of savannahs in the Hill Country. The most common is the live oak savannah with its moist and dry wooden slopes. Generally the north and east slopes are wet and the west and south slops are dry. There are post oak and shin oak savannahs. A savannah is between a grassland and a forest.
   Grasslands include the plateau grassland with its short and dry grasses. Then there’s grasslands close to a river valley. There are also pocket prairies that are tiny openings in the savannah.

Scrub-Jay

Woodhouse’s (Western) Scrub-Jay

Wooden Slope
   The wooden slope is home to the Woodhouse’s (Western) Scrub-Jay.
   The Western Scrub Jay is around all year. The bird needs 5.5 to 8 acres per nesting pair. They need plenty of understory and plant diversity.
   They need a balance of cedar and other evergreens. They like insects on the ground and live in dead trees and shrubs.
   What people can do for the bird is to keep snags (a standing, dead or dying tree, often missing a top or most of the smaller branches) and some cedar. Control the deer and provide water.
   As urbanization continues, scrub-jays are leaving and being displaced by blue jays.

Roadrunner

Greater Roadrunner

Live Oak Savannah
The live oak savannah supports the Greater Roadrunner. The bird is around all year. The bird needs 60 to 250 acres per nesting pair. They need shrubs and small trees in mottes as well as low to medium grasses and forbs. They eat insects, lizards, snakes and small mammals.
The bird needs prescribed burns of its habitat and cut cedar. The deer overpopulation also needs to be controlled. Leave or construct brush piles. The roadrunners like to eat what lives in the brush piles. Control the red imported fire ants. Avoid using broad spectrum insecticides. It kills the road runner's food. Insects are the primary food of roadrunners. Insects are also the primary food for other birds including cardinals.

Black-capped Vireo

Black-capped Vireo

Shin Oak Savannah
   The Shin Oak Savannnah supports the Black-capped Vireo. In the savannah, there are bell-shaped mottes with a shin oak in the center with brush around it. The shin oaks are shorter.
   The Black-capped Vireo is around in the spring and summer. The birds fly south for the winter. The birds need 7-12 acres per nesting pair. The need scattered, dense, shrub mottes. They eat insects in small branches.
   Avoid any nest disturbance during the March through August period. Conduct a burn or cutting every five to seven years. Control regrowth cedar. (Cedar that comes back after it has been cut.) Control red imported fire ants but don't use any broad spectrum insecticides. Control the deer population. They like to nest in door-knob height areas.

Ladder-backed Woodpecker

Ladder-backed Woodpecker

Post Oak Savannah
   Post Oak Savannah is host to the Ladder-backed Woodpecker. The Post Oak Savannah has taller trees with more space between them. There is not as much shrubbery around the trees.
   The woodpecker is here all year long and needs 16.6 acres per breeding pair. The pair may need more depending on the health and quality of the habitat. The woodpecker needs large trees and a diverse plant community.
   To help the woodpecker promote snags and dead trees. Woodpeckers make several holes in trees. They must have right sized hole to nest. The extra holes the male pecks out are used by other birds to nest. The extra holes are used by other birds to nest. Do prescribed burns. Control red imported fire ants and do not use broad spectrum insecticide. Control the cedar and the deer population. Add nest boxes.

Summer Tanager

Summer Tanager

River and Creek Habitat
   Summer Tanager makes its home in the River and Creek Habitat. They need 22-27 acres per nesting pair. They need diverse understory plants and diverse canopy plants with a fairly closed canopy. They need many insects.
   Exclude livestock from their habitat. Trap and dispatch cowbirds. Control deer and cedar. Control the red imported fire ants and do not use broad spectrum insecticides.
   Grasslands are home to the Lesser Goldfinch. The birds breed in the spring, summer, and early fall. The ones we see in the winter are coming from north of us and are on their way south.
   The Lesser Goldfinch needs 7-15 acres per nesting pair. They like an open grassy habitat. They need insect and plant diversity. They do need some perches to use during their hunting.
   Control the woody plants with prescribed burning. You can mow or bale the field, but that leaves too much material on the ground and that's not really good for the bird.
   Avoid pesticides but kill the red imported fire ants. This bird's population in declining.    King Ranch Bluestem is a problem in the grasslands. This invasive species is taking over and that mono-culture is not helping the birds.

Vermilian Flycatcher

Vermilian Flycatcher

Tanks, Ponds, and Lakes
   The tanks, ponds, and lakes need vegetation around the shore. The bird that lives in the area is Vermilian Flycatcher which is in the area all year long. They like being near water because they mainly eat insects.
   The size of their nesting territory is unknown, though it is believed to be a widely spaced bird. They need a plant diversity including a mix of woody plants and grassland. They need an understory with perches near the water and lots of flying insects.
   Control the deer and cedar. Control the red imported fire ants and don't use broad spectrum insecticide.
   This bird is on the decline, but not as bad as the Lesser Goldfinch. But their decline is not good.
   The problem with deer is that they eat forbs and that's a major source of food for many birds.

Painted Bunting

Painted Bunting

All over the Hill Country
   The Painted Bunting is in the Hill Country during the spring and summer. The bird lives in all kinds of healthy habitats.
   It needs 5 acres per breeding pair, maybe less. The bird likes a bushy thicket. It likes grasses and forbs plus some open ground. The bird eats seeds and some insects.
   To help the bird, people can do controlled burns and control cedar and deer. Also trapping and removing cowbirds is a good idea. Control those red imported fire ants. It nests three to six feet off the ground. It also needs scrubby habitat. Remove outdoor cats, both feral and household.    The numbers of Painted Bunting is declining.
   House cats that venture outside are killing more wildlife than all other mammalian wildlife combined. Cats will kill anything from ducks to hummingbirds.

Black-crested Titmouse

Black-crested Titmouse

Back Yard
   The Black-crested Titmouse is a backyard bird. It needs about 10.5 acres per nesting pair.
   They like diverse understory and overstory. Keep snags in their habitat. Add bird boxes. Keep cats indoors. Control deer. Avoid using broadleaf herbicide and insecticides.
   Most of the population of the titmice are in the Texas Hill Country and Edwards Plateau. They have a very small range. 50% of the world's population is in the Texas Hill Country.

   Dangerous animals to birds are fire ants, rats, feral hogs, and cowbirds.
   After it rains, fire ants move their mounds above ground. They move the queen and the eggs up there and then they are vulnerable. He pours boiling water on the ant bed. Individual mound treatment is best.
   The brown-headed cowbird is a parasite. It never makes its own nest. It kills baby birds and even dumps eggs of the parents out. So the cowbird eggs hatch and the parent of the nest ends up raising the cowbird young. The parent's young that remain in the nest don't get fed well because the cowbird young have wide mouths and the parent bird feeds the young ones that are the most aggressive. And that ends up being the invading cowbird young.
   Birds that are subject to invasion by the cowbirds are: Bell's Vireo, Black-capped Vireo, Blue Grosbeck, Disckissel, Lark Sparrow, Northern Cardinal, Orchard Oriole, Painted Bunting, Summer Taniger, among others.
   The best way to get rid of cowbirds is to trap and euthanize them. There are TPW regulations concerning trapping of cowbirds that mainly deal with the other birds that might get trapped, too.
   Cowbirds don't like interior woodlands, so keep those blocks of interior woodlands. Cowbirds don't like going deep into wooden areas.    Starlings and House Sparrows can be controlled by hunting.

Cedar Management
   Old-growth cedar is important habitat on steep slopes. Cedar is often part of healthy plant diversity. Cedar provides escape an protective habitat. Cedar berries are eaten by many birds. It is overstated how much water is consumed by cedar.

Deer Management
   There are 3.5 million deer in Texas. In the late 1950s, the screw worm was controlled and that's when the deer population took off. The deer population needs forbs and browse plants. Deer also need many low branches on trees and shrubs.
   Hackberry is a good habitat tree. Other good ones are elm, Carolina Buckthorn, and Spanish Oak.
   Don't feed deer or exotics. Become a conservationist hunter. Work with neighbors on harvesting. Harvest does (i.e., shoot does as much as bucks). Practice urban trap and removal. The plan for deer contraceptives doesn't work.
   The old thinking was that deer need 3 acres each. In the country, that's still true, but in the urban setting, it's only one deer to a half acre. That's because there's better habitat because of what people plant and the deer eat it. Also the deer in an urban setting are smaller and have fewer fawns. Conservation gardeners use deer exclosures to protect plants.
   If a landowner uses a deer feeder, the deer will stay in the area and browse down all the plants.

Quail
    It was once thought that quail population was declining due to fire ants killing the young. That's not right. Fire ants don't kill the baby birds. The fire ants eat the insects that the tiny quail eat so indirectly, fire ants reduce the quail population.

Priority plants

Carolina Buckthorn for wrens
Hackberries for Eastern bluebird
Passion flower for Yellow-billed cuckoo
Escarpment black cherry for woodpecker
Hawthorn for Rio Grande turkey
Blanco Crabapple for sparrow
Rusty Blackhaw for thrushes
Virginia Creeper for vireos

Exotic plants that damage bird habitat

The following plants decrease bioversity. A wide biodiversity helps the wildlife.

King Ranch Bluestem
Johnson Grasslands
Bastard Cabbage
Pyracantha
Ligustrum
Chinaberry
Chinese Tallow

For more information about the Austin Chapter of the Native Plant Society of Texas please go to their web site at www.npsot.org/austin.

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