If plants are your special interest – you would have loved our Week 6 training class on botany. Dr. George Diggs taught us about coevolution and using a dichotomous key. We’ll also never look at flowers the same way.
Heard
Class of 2025 Week 4 – Topic: Mammalogy Speaker: Bryon Clark
Cali Bakker, Class of 2024 – What a great class! Our Topic for week 4 was Mammalogy taught by our chapter’s own, Bryon Clark.
Class of 2025 Week 1 – Topic: Ecology Speaker: Sam Kieschnick
Cali Bakker, Class of 2024 – And we’re off to a fantastic start for the 2025 training class! On Wednesday, we met for our first class of the year – Ecology, taught by Sam Kieschnick.
Outreach Event – Heard Museum Homeschool Day
The Community Engagement team unveiled a new education tool at the Heard Museum Homeschool Day created by Adele Bourget as part of her 2024 New Class project.
Our Tribe’s Fortune – Gold: 1000 Hours – Leah Justice
Leah Justice, Class of 2021 – “Being outside is my happy place. One day, I came across a conversation on social media about quails in Connemara where someone mentioned Texas Master Naturalists.”
Heard Paleo Lab cleans Mosasaur remains collected by SMU
Deborah Canterbury, 2011 – Several months ago the paleo lab members who had been involved for at least 6 years in preparing fossils at the Heard were assigned a tricky preparator duty. They were asked to clean sandstone, a challenge for the most advanced of preparator, from the Mosasaurus remains collected by SMU at a site in Angola, Africa.
2022 Heard Plant Sale
Deborah Canterbury, 2014 and Past President – More than 10,00 plants unloaded, cataloged, labeled and placed according to scientific name in 4 days for this years’ 36th Heard Plant Sale. It is one of the longest-running, largest, and best native plant sales in the state. BPTMN members play a big role in the pre-sale preparation and in helping customers choose the proper native plants for their gardens.
‘Dem Bones Update
Deborah Canterbury, 2014 and Past President
Master Naturalists in the Heard Fossil Lab recently laid out Colombian Mammoth bones that have been prepped just to see how they may go together. More exist and they are trying to decide how to best display.
Heard Sanctuary Fall/ Winter Volunteer existing projects
Tom Shackelford, 2018; President The Heard Sanctuary is seeking volunteers to assist in the restoration and preservation of multiple sanctuary projects at the Heard. This is an existing project that has been in place for some time and there is now a renewed effort to address opportunities. This is available to any interested individual and is a great way for interested Master Naturalists to earn volunteer hours. Specific projects follow below.
Author praises our Blackland Prairie Chapter Contribution.
Amy Martin, NTMN I want to share with the Blackland Prairie chapter my gratitude of the “loan” of several naturalists for Wild Dallas-Fort Worth: Explore the Amazing Nature of North Texas