Beyond the Blossoms: Where the Wild Things Hide

Most visitors to the Lady Bird Johnson Wildflower Center are attracted by dazzling fields of wildflowers, seasonally inspired gardens, miles of scenic trails and the rich tapestry of the native wild landscape – all representing the natural beauty and bounty of Texas.

But there’s a unique set of visitors making weekly pilgrimages to the Center’s fields and gardens, and they look beyond the obvious. Armed with cameras and commitment, these explorers are on a hunt – peeking beneath leaves, scanning ground cover, peering under rocks, examining water edges, inspecting blooms and looking skyward to see what living creatures may be lurking. So far, this 15-year expedition has resulted in the discovery of nearly 4,000 animal species living within the complex ecosystem of this little corner of Central Texas.

The Fauna Project has brought keen-eyed volunteers to the Wildflower Center weekly since 2010 to see what others don’t – from ant-like flower beetles and barklice to miniscule leafhoppers and thousands of other insects, moths, bees, butterflies and spiders. Their mission is to photograph and document the myriad animal species that live within the Wildflower Center’s 284 acres and are vital to the delicate balance of this ecosystem.

Val Bugh points out a parsley hawthorn (Crataegus marshallii) during a weekly survey. Participants often share knowledge about plants as well as wildlife. PHOTO Carly Aronson

Many of the survey team’s most striking photographs of insects and animals interacting with native wildflowers at the Wildflower Center, were the subject of a photo exhibit earlier this year at the Old Bakery & Emporium Fine Art Gallery. Nearly 2,000 people attended the “Wildlife Amidst the Wildflowers” exhibit, says Herlinda Zamora, culture and arts program manager at the gallery.

“We are in a climate where attention to our environment is more vital now than ever,” says Zamora. “We need to save and preserve what we have and draw awareness to the public about what places like the Lady Bird Johnson Wildflower Center are doing. I wanted to educate our visitors about the program. I have a great appreciation for photography, so it was an honor to showcase such amazing work in our gallery.”

The exhibit was composed of 36 photos from 12 survey team photographers – including David Cook, who curated the exhibit.

“It’s eye-opening what you experience and what you see as you participate in this,” says Cook, who has been a part of the survey team for the last three years. After retiring from a 30-year career in information technology, his goal was to become a certified Texas Master Naturalist, and the Fauna Project was one of the ways to satisfy the community volunteer hours required by the Texas Master Naturalist program.

Visitors explore “Wildlife Amidst the Wildflowers,” a photo exhibit at the Old Bakery & Emporium Fine Art Gallery showcasing work by the Wildflower Center’s fauna survey volunteers. PHOTO Tico Mendoza

Besides being successful at completing the certification, he says he has gained so much more than expected. As an avid hiker and walker, he wanted to learn more about what he was seeing through his camera lens. Not only has he become more knowledgeable about the natural world and improved his photography skills, but he has also found a way to share the excitement of discovery inspired by the Fauna Project by curating the photo exhibit at the Old Bakery & Emporium gallery.

“I wanted people to leave not only seeing the photos but learning something more about the insects, because it is mostly insects that we’ve grown to appreciate in the Fauna Project,” says Cook. He’s had several photos included in other exhibits and a photo he took last year is featured at the Glasgow Gallery of Photography in Scotland as part of the current “Nature” exhibit.

From a science perspective, Dr. Sean Griffin, the Wildflower Center’s science and conservation director, says the data from the weekly surveys is “super useful” because it provides a standardized sampling week after week, year after year.

“The Fauna Project builds up a really good understanding of animals showing up at the Wildflower Center,” says Griffin. “We are using the data to understand the shifts in overall species, especially native species, and the broader patterns and timing.”

The uniqueness of the study isn’t just its frequency and longevity but the fact that its being conducted by a set of such well-informed volunteers, Griffin notes. After having worked with these dedicated volunteers and reviewing their data, he says confidently, “They know their stuff.”

FROM LEFT  Volunteers set out for a morning of surveying at the Wildflower Center; a queen butterfly rests on blazing star; Volunteers observe insects on frogfruit (Phyla nodiflora) around the stock tank in the Theme Gardens. PHOTOS Carly Aronson

More than 100 volunteers have logged 21,000 hours to the project over the last 15 years, resulting in 600-plus surveys conducted while walking the grounds of the Wildflower Center. Usually about a dozen volunteers meet every Thursday morning year-round except a six-week break mid-December through January. Within such a long-standing research project, volunteers come and go, but the constant is the Fauna Project’s founder Valerie Bugh, who is first on the scene each week, just after daybreak.

“There’s quite a big nature group in Austin,” says Bugh. “We all love to look up close at nature and we’re not afraid to be nature geeks. We may stand around focused on a wall because there’s some kind of insect on it. It’s fun to be with people like that.”

Bugh’s creation of the Fauna Project was prompted by several factors – retirement from her 30-year career as a music teacher, a love of the outdoors, a passion for taxonomy, a strong curiosity and the acquisition of a digital camera.

“I no longer had to wait for summer break to explore the habitat around Austin,” she says. The study is a significant time commitment not only for the weekly group explorations but for what happens afterwards. Bugh meticulously catalogs the photos and species they find each week on a website she created that details every animal that has been surveyed since the first survey in March 2010.

Val Bugh records notes on a cardinal feather (Acalypha radians) as fellow survey volunteers look on. Careful field observations like these add to the Fauna Project’s long-term study of wildlife at the Wildflower Center. PHOTO Carly Aronson

Her comprehensive data includes thousands of animals spotted from 2010 – 2024 . The cumulative species list includes 112 butterflies, 959 moths, 626 beetles, 172 spiders, 179 birds, 267 wasps and 74 bees, among many other animals such as fish, reptiles and mollusks. She uses the annual six-week winter break in surveying to update the cumulative list of animals they’ve seen. 

“We record everything from the most familiar animals, such as bees and millipedes, to the most obscure, like symphylans, barklice and owlflies,” notes Bugh on her website.

In 2008, Bugh joined the biodiversity surveys at Zilker Nature Preserve and found delight in being with others that were keen to observe and understand their surroundings. She found her interest and knowledge in finding and identifying insects and other bugs was a way she could contribute to the surveys and became a regular member of the survey teams.

Surveyors look for activity among the trees. PHOTO Carly Aronson

She also began visiting the Wildflower Center for her outdoor forays and soon was volunteering at the Center’s Insectary, used for rearing and exhibiting caterpillars. Although there was lots of information available about plants, she found that visitors’ questions outstripped the resources available for answers about the wildlife found at the Wildflower Center.

She decided she wanted to do weekly surveys and spent several months working out the details of what she decided to call the Fauna Project. She used her self-taught skills to create the website housing the database that tracks the surveys and photos.

While identification of species is the bulk of the project’s focus, the survey teams also take note of pollination, animal behaviors, predation, plant and animal relationships and survival strategies. Bugh includes data that tracks the fluctuating populations of garden inhabitants and records species not noted previously.

Griffin says the data that Bugh and her survey teams have gathered is valuable to the conservation work of the Wildflower Center and, in fact, has contributed to an ongoing study examining population shifts in bumble bees. As noted in the weekly surveys, the American bumble bee (Bombus pensylvanicus) has become less common at the Center with a more western species, the Sonoran bumble bee (Bombus sonorus), becoming more common.

“It’s a really interesting phenomena,” says Griffin. “The Sonoran bumble bee was here but very rare. In the last two to three years, it has gradually become our most common bumble bee. I was asking myself ‘am I imagining this?’ but looking at Val’s data, which is repeated and careful, the first time we saw a shift was in the fauna survey in 2018.”

Griffin says his team is now building a study comparing the emergence of the bees – and what differences there are in the two species – to understand what may be driving the change.

“The weekly fauna survey holds a lot of untapped potential in understanding species’ shifts,” he says. “It’s very useful in understanding what’s happening at the Wildflower Center.”

Bugh welcomes novice naturalists to join the weekly surveys to walk the Wildflower Center’s grounds with them. The only tools needed are curiosity, sharp eyes, binoculars, cameras and note taking. Often, visitors to the Wildflower Center are curious about what they’re doing and join the group to ask questions and see what they’re seeing.

LEFT “Do you see that?” A volunteer zeroes in on a red paper wasp (Polistes carolina) on an American beautyberry (Callicarpa americana); RIGHT Survey volunteers develop an eagle eye for the tiniest signs of wildlife, sharpening their skills to identify what others might easily overlook. PHOTOS Carly Aronson

Bugh says they’ve witnessed behaviors and relationships that are helping to create a more complete picture of how gardens work as ecosystems, as well as witnessing exceptional phenomena such as baby birds fledging, rattlesnakes mating, insects laying eggs and all manner of predators hunting their prey.

Cook, the same survey team volunteer who curated the Old Bakery & Emporium gallery show, says he will continue participating in the weekly surveys, taking more photos and doing his part to help educate others about biodiversity and what happens in a garden. “More people are learning that by understanding the natural world around them, they see how it’s connecting back to them.”

Cook and Bugh exemplify the commitment and ongoing wonder that has motivated the 100-plus volunteers who have participated in the Fauna Project since 2010. Carrie McDonald, the Wildflower Center’s manager of volunteer service says the Fauna Project volunteers are a bit different than most of the Center’s volunteers who primarily enjoy making connections with people and plants.

Alongside the science, the Fauna Project is a chance for volunteers to connect, swap stories, and celebrate their shared love of nature. PHOTO Carly Aronson

“I see the fauna surveyors driven by exploration,” she says. “They cover the most ground, they range far and wide across the hundreds of acres of this campus. They venture deeper into the research and natural areas than most guests and volunteers.”

And when the Fauna volunteers are onsite, they attract attention. “We know many guests visit the Center for recreational, touristic or aesthetic reasons – over 275,000 people annually. If a group of fauna survey volunteers is gathered around – observing a bee in a yellow prickly pear blossom covered in pollen or a dragonfly dipping into water repeatedly laying eggs – our guests will slow down and look, too.

And that is one more of the many benefits to having the Fauna Project and its survey team at the Wildflower Center weekly, McDonald says. “Those moments are very powerful in fostering wonder, and inspiring inquiry and engagement with nature. I see it happen here all the time.”