20 December, 2024
By Alexander Trifunovic
Dan Brooks poses at an exhibit at the Houston Museum of Science exhibit. Photo by Johnny Hanson, Houston Chronicle.
The busy metropolis of Houston, Texas with a human population of over 7.5 million people may not initially seem like the best place to study wildlife. But a closer look reveals a curious array of native and exotic species that make their home in the slivers of habitat surrounded by concrete and steel. Dan Brooks, Curator of Vertebrate Zoology at the Houston Museum of Natural Science, has made it his mission for the last 25 years to better understand how wildlife interacts with Houston’s urban environment. This work has since taken the titles of the Houston Urban Wildlife Project and the Texas Invasive Bird Project, and it has generated several publications on the peculiar ecology of urban wildlife and invasive birds. From introduced parrots and exotic waterfowl in city parks to native Mexican Free-tailed Bats and beavers just outside downtown, Houston’s fauna is surprisingly diverse. I sat down with Dan to speak about invasive species, urban wildlife, getting people interested in nature, and his plethora of experience as a museum curator, field biologist, conservationist, and coordinator for citizen science.
Mexican free-tailed bat (Tadaria braziliensis). Photo by USFWS/Ann Froschauer via Wikimedia Commons.
How did you first become interested in birds and conservation?
DB: There were several chapters of my life that lead that direction. My maternal grandfather had a chicken farm in south New Jersey. I visited when I was probably around 10 years old, and I would just get lost in these big chicken houses, fascinated by biology. Also, when I was 3 or so, my birthday fell close to Easter, and my parents bought me a duck as my first pet. So, those were my very first experiences with birds, and the older I got, the more I enjoyed being outside. My father and I began to raise poultry, and that evolved into dozens of exotic birds. I also began volunteering at the local zoo when I was 14.
Chickens and rancher at Letterbox Farm. USDA/FPAC photo by Preston Keres via Wikimedia Commons.
Two episodes set me on the path of field work and conservation. My best friend in high school would go birding with his father a lot. His father passed away when we were about 16, and I wanted to help him feel better. So, I started birding with him, and I got into it and had a good time. Then, because of the work with the exotic birds and the volunteering at the zoo, I decided I wanted to work with reintroducing captive-bred endangered species. I got a pretty cool gig right after my undergrad, and it sent me to Paraguay working with the Chacoan Peccary. We learned a lot about how to raise them in captivity, and then it came time to release them back into nature. We realized we knew very little about these, so they sent me into the Chaco to study these. That’s when fieldwork and conservation really took off for me. I changed my trajectory to do that instead of captive breeding for reintroductions.
Chacoan Peccary (Catagonus wagerni) was the focal species for Brooks’s work in Paraguay. Interestingly, this species was first described from subfossil remains in the 1930s and then discovered alive in 1972. Habitat loss remains a threat as much of its former range across Boliva, Paraguay, and northern Argentina is being converted into large ranches. Photo by Daderot via Wikimedia Commons.
2. Do you have a favorite bird or group of birds?
DB: I’ve been very interested at one time or another in waterfowl, pigeons, doves, and Australian parrots, but the one that keeps coming back is gamebirds, Galliformes. Part of that may be tied back to my grandfather working with chickens and with my father with exotic pheasants. When I worked at the zoo, there was a family of birds called Cracids (curassows and guans) that we did quite a bit of work with, and the Cracids were a very early gateway to what I ended up focusing on for a long time. Around the same time that I was shifting gears, I was beginning to lead birding tours in Peru. I got really involved in Cracid surveys, and that took off and led to me becoming very active in Cracid conservation. That culminated in 1996 when I was named the associate chair of the BirdLife IUCN Cracid Specialist Group, then Chair in 1998; I did that for about 17 years. Even today as I am winding down, I’m still involved in camera trapping gamebirds in tropical regions (e.g., Southeast Asia, South Sudan, and Peru). So that’s my focus right now with gamebirds, and we’re getting some interesting data on species with major knowledge gaps in their biology. For example, the Bornean Crestless Fireback had major knowledge gaps, but we’ve now answered questions about habitat preferences and territoriality.
An adult male Great Curassow (Crax rubra) parades the grounds of the Arenal Lodge in Costa Rica. This is one of several species in the Neotropical family Cracidae, and it is listed as Vulnerable due to hunting and habitat loss. Photo by lwolfartist, CC BY 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons.
3. What are you currently doing with your work at the museum?
DB: It can be divided into three main areas: specimens, exhibits, and outreach. First, we have the specimen collections. We have good series of species from the Gulf Coast of Texas where we’re located, and then we have synoptic series of Latin American African, and endangered species of birds, and a collection of mammal study skins and skulls; along with taxidermy mounts of birds and mammals. We also bring things in for exhibition, which is one of my main contributions to the physical museum. We try to create large dioramas that look how it may have been before people settled this region. On display are species like the Black-footed Ferret, Attwater Prairie Chicken, and Bison, and we even have extinct species like the Ivory-billed Woodpecker and Carolina Parakeet. The other part of the exhibits category is coming up with ideas that we can do in house. So that’s two parts of my job, bringing in specimens and creating exhibits.
Carolina parakeet (Conuropsis carolinensis). Photo by James St. John, CC BY-SA 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons.
The third area is research and outreach. One of the things I've been involved in is collaborating with multiple colleagues describing new species that were previously unknown to science. Half of the 10 tropical species were bats, along with a rodent, and several species of birds. Many of these species are considered quite rare and threatened in nature, so there is a conservation component as well. Part of the reason I developed outreach and community science projects is because I would bring specimens into schools and talk about them to the students. Some kids didn’t know what a raccoon or a Blue Jay was, and it was eye-opening to see that not everyone was as interested and educated in nature as myself or my kids. So, that made me want to shift my focus to more local projects in getting kids interested and aware. Basically, finding ways to get people outside. The biggest challenge we have ahead of us as conservationists is getting people outside.
Blue Jay (Cyanocitta cristata). Photo by Nico Arcilla.
4. How do you acquire specimens for the collections?
Mostly from wildlife rehabilitators, animals that did not make it. We’ve gotten birds of prey and Brown Pelicans that arrive with lead shot. So, lots of the local stuff is from there. The foreign stuff we get mostly from zoos and game farms, or from retired research collections. Compared to some other institutions, we have a relatively small collection. Traditionally, museums collected everything but it's harder to do things that way now.
Brown Pelican (Pelecanus occidentalis). Photo by "Mike" Michael L. Baird, CC BY 2.0, via Wikipedia Commons.
5. Can you tell me about your urban wildlife projects? What are you looking at and what have you found?
DB: We have a couple different things. The invasive bird work began in 2008, and we picked six focal species that were not as abundant as Rock Pigeons or starlings, but they were up and coming. Monk Parakeets, Scaly-breasted Munias, Egyptian Geese, and Red-vented Bulbuls are all established, have survived multiple freezing events, and they aren’t going anywhere. The other two, Northern Red Bishop and Mute Swan, have not continued like we thought. Mute Swans diminished in popularity on private ranches (full-winged offspring were the source for most feral swans), and the numbers in Texas declined. The bishops were released from some ceremonies and survived for a while, but they all died during hard freezes. I got a report for a bishop about a month ago, and it was the first one in a decade.
The Scaly-breasted Munia (Lonchura punctuata) is native to southern Asia, and as a popular cagebird, escapees have established populations in several other areas, including Houston, Texas. Photo by Satdeep Gill, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons.
There’s a form people fill out and report information on these species, and then we use the data to publish articles and manuscripts. One of things we found is that most of these birds use foliage from their native range to perch or forage. After a while, we realized we did a lot of work on birds and mammals in Houston, and that’s when the Houston Urban Wildlife Project was born. We’ve recently been working with another organizations looking at camera trap data, and it shows beavers, otters, and coyotes just half a mile from downtown. There is a print that John Woodhouse Audubon painted just west of what is today downtown on the banks of Buffalo Bayou, and it’s of a Red Wolf sniffing a buffalo horn. So, that tells you not only were there Red Wolves here but also bison. I find it very wistful and sad, but then to find beavers, coyotes, and otters in that same place almost two hundred years later is pretty cool!
Mexican Free-tailed Bats emerging in swarms as the sun sets at Bracken Bat Cave in San Antonio, Texas. A similar sight can be observed as bats emerge from under bridges in Austin and Houston. Photo by U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service via Wikimedia Commons.
There are some big bat roosts that have become quite famous. We’ve done a lot of work there, as we’re interested in the bats, but also the bird species foraging on the bats. For example, with the two Night Herons, you can see the differences in how the two species forage on bats. The Black-crowned are much more aggressive and will fly into the crevices to pull bats from the roosts, and the Yellow-crowned will sit quietly and wait for a sick or injured bat to fall on the ground before cautiously picking it up and drowning it before consumption. We did a study on Swainson’s Hawks foraging on bats and looked at optimal conditions for successful hunting.
Monk Parakeets (Myiopsitta monachus), also called Quaker Parrots, are originally from Argentina but have made their homes in several US cities, including Houston. Photo by Greg Schechter from San Francisco, USA, CC BY 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons.
6. Have you looked into the parrots that have been introduced to Texas?
DB: Since we started, there have been several colonies of Monk Parakeets that have disappeared. We have an upcoming project researching that species. Then there’s the Budgerigar, which can show at feeders in groups up to ten or fifteen, but we have yet to find hard evidence of them breeding. The other parrots show in ones and twos here and there. Another thing that got me interested was a Red-masked Parakeet I found when I would ride my bike in the morning. This individual hung out with the pigeons and enjoyed eating pecans the most, and I took some notes on its diet and behavior that I ended up publishing as a note. I ended my notetaking when he started being fed by a lady that fed the pigeons. As for the parrots in south Texas, the Green Parakeets and Red-crowned Parrots are totally native, there are just so many. Some researchers were sure they were escapees, now they think they’re supplemented by dispersers from Mexico, but it’s hard to know for sure without genetic sampling. But the numbers are just so high. You’d have a hard time hearing me at normal speaking volume at some of the parrot roosts.
Green Parakeets (Psittacara holochlorus) coming into an evening roost in McAllen, Texas. These small, verdant parrots are native to Mexico, and many parrot researchers believe them to be native to Texas as well! Photo by Melissa McMasters from Memphis, TN, United States, CC BY 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons.
7. How does the Urban Wildlife Project feed back into conservation?
DB: There’s the whole thing with invasive species not being great for the environment and outcompeting other species. We’ve tried to document what we can, and so far, we haven’t documented many bad things going on in Houston. But we need to keep an eye on these things because that could change very fast. I was in Cuba recently, and the last day we went to the rice fields. At the edge of the rice fields in the sawgrass were thousands of Tricolored Munias in huge flocks reminiscent of the cartoons showing huge hordes of grasshoppers descending onto crops and mowing vegetation. They’re a tiny finch-like bird, but there were so many you could hear them fly around. Then it dawned on me, seeing these birds in person, there’s no doubt in my mind they were eating rice too. The more important thing to me is finding ways to get more people involved and get more people outside. Staff will ask me while I’m training them to do tours at the museum, “what is the most important thing to convey to our guests about wildlife conservation?” As a museum, we do a happy dance on a rainy day when the visitors come, but to me the most important thing is getting people outside to appreciate nature. One of the sad things is our summer camps have been totally inside. When I was a kid going to camp here, we went outside every day. So, it’s a way to get people involved and outside.
Tricolored Munia (Lonchura malacca). Photo by Tejas Natu, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons.
8. Since you have been to so many places, what was the most surprising thing that happened while doing field work?
DB: I’ve never done well in small towns. I’ve done well in cities or in the middle of nowhere, and a lot of my work was landing in the city and then being in the middle of nowhere in less than 24 hours. A lot of places I worked there weren’t roads and we had to fly in. I remember being really disturbed in Guyana when I was there in 2000 for a conference. I had a couple of mornings to go birding and I could feel hungry desperate people watching me... then in Paraguay, I was stalked by a jaguar. That made me feel alive! The pumas in Argentina look so much bigger than the ones in the US. They are so inquisitive and will watch you. I’m just fascinated by how intrigued they are by people. It’s hard to rile me; I’ve traveled so much and seen so much that I’m not very easily excitable. Also, most of the time when I go somewhere it’s with someone that knows the area.
Puma (Puma concolor). Photo by Luís Miguel Bugallo Sánchez, CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons.
9. What are your priorities for future work?
DB: I have really enjoyed the camera trapping and gamebird work. We’d like to develop a website like we have for the invasive species project since we’ve learned a lot about gamebirds. We used to have a big website for the Cracid group that’s gone away, so I’d like to bring back a good go-to gamebird site for researchers and everyday people to use. And then just continuing the work I’m doing now with the camera trapping in Southeast Asia and the urban wildlife. I was also one of the people that got really into birding during Covid. I’ve always been into birding, but during Covid it evolved. I got my kids outdoors at a young age, and both kids really love the outdoors and nature.
Kalij Pheasant (Lophura leucomelanos). Photo by Tisha Mukherjee, CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons.
10. What would your advice be to young people looking to start their career in research or conservation?
DB: Some of the best advice given to me is to stay persistent! Take my own career as a curator in a large museum, for example. There might be one opening in a good year, and it’s crazy competitive. You have to be persistent, and you can’t give up hope. When you’ve done all the work and finished grad school, you’ve got to stay persistent and not lose faith that a job opportunity or your dream job will become available. I’ve also seen a lot of people become successful because of side projects. The focus of their research may not have been what an employer was looking for, but their side project is. For myself, as a postdoc I was coordinating a citizen science project called Project Prairie Birds looking at wintering sparrows on the Gulf Coast. That was when community science was in its infancy, before eBird and iNat, and a lot of people didn’t know what it was. This museum that I work at does a lot with public outreach and education, and we have more classrooms than any other museum in the world. I had to go through three interviews, and in the second one I mentioned my citizen science work and the search committee immediately perked up. Ultimately it gave me an edge and they hired me. Don’t stay too center-focused, because other things you enjoy might lead where you want to go.
Horned Lark (Eremophila alpestris). Photo by Dan Marks.
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