By Brandt Mannchen
On April 25, 2026, the Houston Sierra Club (HSC) visited Attwater Prairie Chicken National Wildlife Refuge (APCNWR). Seven folks enjoyed a cloudy but hot day with occasional prairie breezes and great company and camaraderie. The best people come to HSC outings, and this one was no different.
The first birds to greet us were Mourning Doves and Red-Winged Blackbirds. Then a delightful scene played out where Bob White Quail, which have become rare in the past 30 years, positioned themselves on fenceposts or called from prairie grasses that gently swayed in the wind. Eastern Meadow Larks put in their appearance along with Dickcissels and Black and Turkey Vultures which lazily, almost hovered, overhead.
It was great to meet David Rosen, a wonderful botanist and his family, who happened to visit APCNWR the same day as the HSC. David has done great work describing vegetation of the Columbia Bottomlands and other areas for years. The HSC has supported acquisition of Columbia Bottomlands for wildlife for over 30 years.
After a brief introduction to the refuge and a reminder to let folks’ U.S. Representatives and Senators know that APCNWR and other public lands need protection and funding for management, we set off on a wild adventure.
We first hiked the 2.1-mile Sycamore Trail. This trail begins near the visitor center and crosses undulating prairie, passes some potholes and swales that have Eastern Gama Grass, snakes along the San Bernard River, heads uphill, and returns to the visitor center.
We ranged over the prairie with Michael occasionally pointing out a bird of interest like a Red-tailed Hawk. Sometimes we found raised linear mounds that told us that gophers or moles were busy underground.
Above the ground, butterflies, beetles, flies, bees, wasps, grasshoppers, and other insects either flitted from blossom to blossom or dug deep into the flower head and lazed about in pollen and nectar ecstasy. A few places had small clumps of yucca on raised areas of the prairie.
After we crossed the prairie, we walked alongside the San Bernard River. I told people there were American Alligators here, which surprised several folks. A minute or two later someone shouted, “There’s an alligator!” It’s nice as an outing leader to be clairvoyant occasionally.
We saw in the San Bernard River Floodplain, exotic Chinese Tallow and Trifoliate Orange. These non-native invasive plants push out other important native riparian species. We enjoyed seeing Cedar and American Elms, Green Ash, American Sycamore, grape vine, Sugarberry, Yaupon Holly, and Black Willow growing in the floodplain along with aquatic vegetation floating on top of the San Bernard River.
We then stopped for lunch at the covered picnic tables next to the visitor center. In an hour we amazingly solved many of the problems of the world with friendly, but passionate, discussions about what could be done.
After lunch we visited the Horseshoe Lake Trail. It was getting much hotter as the clouds burned away in the sunlight and we headed straight for the covered and shaded wildlife blind that overlooked the lake.
There was a lot going on at the lake. We saw several small alligators, which either cruised the water or laid near the shoreline. Feral hogs had totally decimated the soil along the shore. We did see Snowy Egret, Little Blue Heron, Blue-winged Teal, Killdeer, and Common and Purple Gallinules. Blackberries were starting to ripen, which got us all to thinking about how good they would taste. Vultures and a Red-tailed Hawk flew overhead.
We beat a hasty retreat to the cars as the heat got more intense. We then took the auto-tour and drove through the prairie. Seeing the prairie landscape of 10,000 acres was amazing but thinking about how the prairie landscape used to be 5-6 million acres was awe-inspiring and sad because it’s gone – plowed and developed for the past 180 years.
Wildlife that we saw or heard included:
Blue-winged Teal, Little Blue Heron, Common and Purple Gallinules, Black and Turkey Vultures, Northern Harrier, Red-winged Blackbird, Mourning Dove, Northern Mocking Bird, Eastern Meadow Lark, Brown-headed Cowbird, Red-tailed Hawk, Northern Cardinal, Bob White, White-eyed Vireo, Killdeer, Barn and Cliff Swallows, Crested Caracara, White-winged Dove, House Sparrow, Carolina Wren, Downy Woodpecker, Common Yellow-throat, White-faced Ibis, Black-bellied Whistling Duck, Scissor-tailed Flycatcher, Chimney Swift, and swallow-tail butterflies, sulfur butterflies, Velvet Ant, grasshoppers, beetles, flies, bees, and American Alligator.
The wildflowers that we saw included:
Texas Dandelion, Mexican Primrose, Texas Thistle, False Indigo, Spiderwort, Queen’s Delight, Queen Anne’s Lace, Plains Coreopsis, Lanceleaf Coreopsis, Evening Primrose, Common Sunflower, Butterfly Weed, Texas Bluebonnet, Dayflower, Sensitive Briar, Yellow Powderpuff, Brown-eyed Susan, Gumweed, Goat’s Rue (Tephrosia), Eastern Gama Grass, Prairie Gaillardia, Dwarf Dandelion, American Basket-flower, Blue-eyed Grass, White-eyed Grass, Prickly Poppy, Scarlet Pimpernel, Berlandier’s Flax, Coralbean, Texas Ragwort, Fire Wheel, Wine Cup, Wild Onion, Virginia Plantain, Texas Phlox, Drummond Phlox, Spatterdock, White Water Lilly, Bull Thistle, Bull Nettle, Wine Cup, Yellow Wood Sorrel, Larkspur, Old Plainsman, Toadflax, Pepper Grass, Herbertia, Doc, Canary Grass, Texas Verbena, Indian Paintbrush, Sow Thistle, Silky Evolvulus, One-Seeded Croton, Venus Looking Glass, Rattlesnake Flower, vetch, and Dog Sunshade. Too many to count and identify, for sure!
Before we left, we went to the visitor center and saw some of the displays about prairie ecology. At the visitors’ center there was a great mural on the walkway between the bathrooms and the visitor center which depicted the Attwater Prairie Chicken’s original range from Corpus Christi to Bayou Teche in Louisiana. Amazing!
We finally had to bid farewell to APCNWR. It was a great time, with Houston far away. We breathed in Nature, which soothed our souls and rested our minds. Hope springs eternal when you visit APCNWR.