Bluestem Chapter of Texas Master Naturalist

06/05/2026

05/26/2026

You've seen most of these twelve species in your yard at some point. The box turtle crossing the driveway. The toad under the porch step. The barn swallow on the beam. The fireflies in June.

The numbers next to each one on this chart are how much of the population is gone.

🌿 The one that got me: the little brown bat — down ninety percent. She weighs a quarter of an ounce, eats thousands of insects a night, and returns to the same roost every year. One fungal disease collapsed entire colonies across the eastern US in less than a decade.

Every species on this list has a single action step next to it. A nest box. A brush pile. A pool escape ramp. Lights off after dark. No rodenticide. Most of them cost nothing and take an afternoon.

The twelve species on this chart aren't disappearing from wilderness. They're disappearing from backyards. The fix is in the same place 🐾

05/26/2026

Most gardens have two good months and ten months of nothing. That's not a climate problem. It's a planning problem.

Walk your garden on the first of every month. Count what's blooming. Any month with zero flowers is a gap you can fill.

The fix doesn't require a redesign. One plant per gap:

Hellebore blooms in the dead of winter when nothing else will. Daffodils carry spring before the perennials wake up. Zinnias cover summer and keep going until frost if you deadhead them. Chrysanthemums carry fall alone if nothing else shows up.

Four plants. Four seasons. That's the minimum that eliminates the worst dead stretches — for you and for every pollinator trying to find food between March and November.

Count the gaps first. Fill the worst one. Then the next.

05/26/2026

Prescribed fire is a highly coordinated application of fire to reach defined land management goals and benefit Texas' diverse ecosystems.

05/26/2026

While some bats drink on the wing (by lapping water with their tongues as they fly over a water source), others hydrate by wetting their bellies in a body of water, then licking it off. This is known as belly dipping -- and requires incredible precision to avoid getting water on their wings 💦

🦇 Grey-headed flying fox
📸 Lawrence Hylton, iNaturalist