the eight major habitats of the llano estacado

The Llano Estacado is an amazing place. Thousands of species of plants and animals are adapted to extreme conditions of drought, wind, heat and the cold of winter. The wildlife intensely celebrates the irregular rains with phenomenal fecundity. The Llano Estacado has eight major habitats. Specific species are associated with a specific habitat.

Playas and toads

Rain brings us three of the most marvelous sights. From May to October, when rain fills the thousands of playas that dot the Llano Estacado, toads emerge from deep underground and steadily hop (sometimes as far 2 miles) to a filled playa. For the next two nights the songs of six species can be heard for miles. Each species can only hear the song of their species, and each species clusters at a specific depth of water to mate and lay eggs.

Within 24 hours the eggs hatch. The tadpoles grow at an incredible rate — in one species, the Couch’s Spadefoot, the tadpole becomes a toadlet ready to hop away from the playa in 11 days. Other species take up to a month before they can leave the water. The toadlets leave the playa in a mass dispersal. Sometimes a million toadlets can be found hopping away from one playa during one morning.

Playas are found everywhere on the Llano Estacado. Texas Tech professors produced a map of the more than 20,000 playas found in the region. Every Llanero rural road passes by or through a playa, and every town has at least one nearby or within the city limits. After the next big rain in the growing season, take a drive in the country after dark. When you see toads hopping across the road, stop and listen.

Prairie to mesquite brushland and velvet mites

After every rain from May to September, thousands of velvet mites (also known as rain bugs or Santa Claus bugs for their red and white coloration) will emerge in the morning hours from underground in search of their prey. They eat termite alates, the winged reproductive stage of the grassland termites that swarm by the billions after a rain. After eating their fill, the rainbugs circle dance.

Four or five males parade around a female, and after a still unknown set of dominance behaviors one male creates an almost invisible line of silk with tiny droplets of sperm in a circle. He herds the female around the circle until she has picked up all the packets.

Every pasture, vacant lot and even many backyards will have the rainbugs present for a few days after a rain. Newcomers to the oilfields want to know if the rainbugs are baby tarantulas, ticks or something else which should be “controlled.” Every child should pick up a few and experience their silky soft texture.

Salinas (salt lakes) and sandhill cranes

After fall rains fill the salt lakes of the Llano Estacado (also known as salinas) the sandhill cranes will spend every winter night standing in the shallow water, safe from coyotes. Every morning and every evening during the crepuscular (twilight) hours, cranes leave or arrive in long lines numbering a hundred or more birds. Their incredible trumpeting calls can be heard even when the birds are out of sight.

During the day, the cranes visit farm fields where they eat sorghum and other grains left behind after harvest, or visit pastures where they catch mice and insects. While on the ground, mated pairs will often dance to reaffirm their pair bonds. After eating their fill, flocks sometimes take to the air where they will circle and perform aerial maneuvers that may be group social bonding behavior.

There are 35 major salinas (and dozens of smaller ones) on the Llano Estacado. The best place to see cranes on public land is the Muleshoe Wildlife Refuge, 150 miles to the northwest of Midland on Highway 214 north of Plains. Go up the telephone road (Farm-to-Market Road 1788) to Seminole, go northwest on 214 until you reach the refuge north of Morton. When our local salinas are full, the cranes can be seen east of Stanton or in Big Spring.

Sandunes and Lesser Prairie Chickens

Highway 214 is another place to see and hear another one of the marvels of the Llano Estacado. A dozen miles north of Plains the road traverses a band of vegetated sanddunes. During March and April, if a person stops along the road during the crepuscular hours the booming of the Lesser Prairie Chicken can be heard, and if you are lucky, one may fly across the road. Lesser Prairie Chickens gather in groups called leks, where the males inflate bright orange air sacs on their throat. When the air is expelled, a humming noise, then a gobbling noise, and even some cackles is the result.

The rest of the year the birds are almost invisible as they forage among the shinoaks and sandsage of the region. Sometimes a bird will fly across the road, and when grain crops have ripened in the field, some birds can be found foraging. Only 5,000 are left in Texas, and less than 30,000 in its range from New Mexico to Kansas.

Do not cross the fences. Trespassing is against the law. Another nearby location might also be visited for roadside listening. The same band of sandhills also crosses FM 1780 10 miles to the east. The Texas Nature Conservancy owns a preserve for the prairie chickens there, but access will be limited to invited groups.

Milnesand, N.M., has a prairie chicken festival every year in April, and participation is limited to 100 individuals. The guests are taken to blinds at leks on private land before daybreak and have to remain until the display is over.

Shortgrass prairie and pronghorn

West of Plains on U.S. 380 on the road to Roswell, N.M., is the best place to see pronghorn, especially west of Bronco and all the way to the edge of the Llano just past the Caprock store. Pronghorn are the fastest animals in the world. They can run 60 miles an hour in short bursts, but they can maintain a 45 miles an hour speed for several miles. They are usually found in small family groups.

Pronghorn have bony horns with black sheaths that drop off in the winter. The white hair on their rumps is used in long-distance communication between individuals and groups. When alarmed, the animals make the hair stand up and it flashes in the sun. Pronghorn are not true antelope, although Llaneros often use that name.

Draws and porcupines

As a traveler speeds along the roads of the Llano Estacado, they may notice the draws. These shallow watercourses rarely run with water except after the heaviest of rains. Scattered along the draws are “pocket forests” of hackberry and soapberry. Near towns the draws also will feature species of trees that have “escaped” from cultivation. Seeds of mulberry, osage orange, Siberian elm and others will be mixed in with the native trees. In these forests are porcupines.

Porcupines only arrived on the Llano Estacado in the last 50 years. They came from the west, unlike the raccoons, opossums and white-tailed deer that came up the draws from the breaks and canyons to the east. The best place to look for porcupines is the Comanche Trail Park in Odessa, just north of Interstate 20 and west of the Crane Highway. Midland has a public forest to look for porcupines, too, the I-20 wildlife preserve. Look up into the trees, and what looks like a bird’s nest might not be.

Breaks and canyons and roundtailed horned lizards

When the draws leave the Llano Estacado they become the headwater canyons of many of the major rivers of Texas. The Red, Brazos, Colorado and Concho Rivers all begin as draws on the Llano Estacado. When visiting these canyons at Palo Duro Canyon, Caprock Canyons and San Angelo State Parks or at White River Lake, Lake Alan Henry or Lake Spence, walk on the gravelly hillslopes and watch for Round-tailed Horny Toads.

This species is smaller than the Texas Horned Lizard common in most Llano Estacado pastures, has short equal length horns on its head and is usually much paler.

Sometimes both species can be found living together, but it is thought the Round-tailed Lizard specializes in eating smaller species of ants than the big harvester ants the Texas Horny Toad eats. Depending on the color of the substrate of rocks and gravel, the Round-tailed may be pinkish, whitish, or grayish. One of the few predators of horny toads (besides roadrunners) are foxes.

Urban forest and foxes

Four species of foxes live on the Llano Estacado. Swift foxes live with prairie dogs (and are most common in the Panhandle). Kit foxes live in the sanddunes and eat kangaroo rats. Red foxes mostly live at the edge of town in vacant lots and in farming areas with barns and other outbuildings. Gray foxes live in town (but also can be found in the pocket forests of the draws) in people’s backyards, and are often seen on top of houses and fences.

Gray foxes are the only species of canid (doglike animal) that can climb. They spend most of the daylight hours above ground, draped over a tree branch, sleeping the day away. Foxes specialize in mice and rats but also eat juicy plant fruit, including backyard peaches. Foxes rarely, if ever, attack cats and small dogs. Instead of worrying about potential dangers, homeowners should celebrate and admire the foxes of town.   

Every citizen of the Llano Estacado should be familiar with the eight major habitats of the region. Every Llanero should try to see each of the eight marvelous animals discussed in this essay. This is our home, and for us to truly love our home, we should know as much as we can about our home. Love grows and deepens by the enrichment brought by a depth of knowledge.