We had a walk on January 25th that was so good that we wanted to go on and on. There were seven people, not counting me, and we had a partly cloudy and somewhat breezy day, with the temperature in the 50s, fairly mild for midwinter. Three of the folks were not very familiar with the preserve, while several of us (including Jan Miller, Jim Domke, and Karen Harden) were active in Friends of Sheri Capehart Nature Preserve and/or the Native Plant Society of Texas.

To plan this particular “Know Your Nature Neighbors” walk, I initially planned for us to watch for insects and talk about the ability many of them have to survive cold weather. Shorter days and colder weather triggers diapause in many of them, slowing their activities and cueing them either to burrow into protected places or migrate. But on our warm winter days, we often see grasshoppers, a few butterflies, and some dragonflies. We have had a couple of very cold spells, so maybe they are burrowed deep or, in some cases, killed off. We did not find insects today.
We did, however, find a paper “nest” that our familiar paper wasps make. Lifting a large piece of fallen wood, I uncovered the comb hanging from the underside of the wood by the pedicel (like a stem stuck to the wood). An older one was nearby, half-buried in soil. So often we see “wasp nests” under the eaves of our houses or hanging from the branches of trees, but our social wasps may make a colony under an overhanging rock or, in this case, in a partly hollow log.


Nobody was home, but had I turned the piece of wood last summer I probably would have regretted it. I teach young naturalists never to put fingers or hands under things where they cannot see, and this was one more reason. Many of our wasps – like the big red and black ones or the red wasps – will tolerate our presence up to a point, but if you use your hand to disturb a nest, prepare to be stung!
A little further up the trail, looking at the blackjack oaks near the top of “Kennedale Mountain,” we found more evidence of wasp activity. On a small oak branch there was something resembling a stringy dead flower, dry and gray. We already had found a small, rounded gall on an oak leaf, and Jan identified this as a sort of gall, produced when something (usually a small species of wasp laying an egg) disturbs the tissues of the plant. This causes those tissues to swell and form galls of various sizes and shapes. The egg develops and the larva feeds on plant tissues until it matures and emerges from the gall. This is a simplified description of an interesting subject – for more information about these tiny wasps, read Eric Eaton’s excellent account of the natural history of wasps in Wasps: The Astonishing Diversity of a Misunderstood Insect.

That was it for insect or spider observations on our walk, but there were plenty of great conversations about plants. We took a good look at mosses and a liverwort plant among the rocks of the bluff, and we talked about the farkleberry (aka sparkleberry) that grows there, even though it’s outside of the area where it typically lives, east of here.

We also talked about the exotic and invasive plants that threaten the preserve. In places, Chinese privet grows, and left unchecked it would take over much of the preserve. The ornamental plant Nandina also does not belong in the wild here, and its bright red berries are toxic to wildlife. We cut off clusters of these berries and put them in the trash. You cannot just drop them on the ground, as they might grow into more of them.
We saw plenty of the beneficial native coralberry plants. We saw green leaves from new growth of the native Englemann’s daisy which will produce yellow flowers and frilly, fern-like leaves in the coming year. We talked about our Glen Rose yuccas, a species that loves deep sandy soil and is found only in a small part of North and Central Texas.
The enormous Caddo oak was on part of our route, following the blue loop trail. We saw much of the preserve and had a great time, and I’m grateful to everyone who walked with us. Ultimately it was a little after 12:00 noon when we returned to the parking lot. If you’re reading this and considering coming along on a walk, please know that we will check with everyone before running overtime, and we can stick with the time limit if anyone needs us to. But today we had such a good time, and everyone was ready to walk a little further, so we did.
