Wildlife Wednesday: April 18th, 2012

This past Wednesday, the 18th, our Wildlife Society Club rallied together for a field trip to our local National Wildlife Refuge: Montezuma. We were able to snag a college van, and headed out mid afternoon. It was a perfect day for birding, which was the theme for the day. MNWR is known for it's migratory birds that take a stop off the flyway during migration. Of course there are resident birds year round, but we're able to see many different water birds that we might not without the refuge.

So under sunny, mild skies our first stop, just outside of MNWR was at a Bald Eagle nest. This nest was naturally made by the birds on top of a utility structure right at the North end of Cayuga Lake at the outlet. As we pulled up, we were excited to see an adult Eagle up there. As we stood and watched we saw 2 brown fuzzy heads pop up, and then another adult off in the distance, perching in nearby trees.

Mom?

Club members checking out the nest, and some of the students to the right are watching the other adult soaring above us.

Kelly and Delicia using the scope John brought for us.

An Eaglet!

TWO Eaglets!

Photo credit: Joe Varga 

I recently bought a beautiful Nikon with a 36x zoom, but that camera did not take this picture. The club's VP, Joe, took this picture with his smart phone lined up to the scope we had set up. A little bit of ingenuity got the shot!

Photo credit: Adriel Douglass

And finally, both adults! The one in flight has a stick that he/she is bringing back to the nest to add to it. I'm sure with 2 rambunctious Eaglets up there, some of the structure of the nest is lost.

After a half hour or so at the viewing site, we had to get going. We headed back to MNWR and stopped at the Visitor's Center to look out over the first marsh flat.

Photo credit: Kevin Skrzynski

As we walked up to the observation deck, we noticed a little Tree Swallow on the railing. It didn't fly away for a few minutes, and allowed us to get some great pictures!

I love the markings on the face, I didn't realize that they had a 'mask' like the raccoon...it makes this little bird look so stern!

We then loaded back up into the van to do the several mile "wildlife drive" through the refuge. This refuge is known for migratory birds using the land as a "stop-over", and that's what we saw!

Photo credit: Adriel Douglass

 Green-winged Teal

Friend, classmates, and students! And our tour guide, John, is in there too somewhere :)

Canada Goose demonstrating a yoga pose?

Great Blue Heron

Trumpeter Swan and an American Coot

Coots! One of my favorites! I would love to handle one someday...

A male and female Mallard

Blue-winged Teals, male and female.

Caspian Terns

Pair of Mallards on a nest, which also happens to be on top of a muskrat lodge.

Yellowlegs

A brief stop at one of the pull-offs.

And some of us are very excited to be at the refuge!

In the background you might be able to pick out a tractor trailer. MNWR is cut right down the middle by Interstate 90. This has been pretty controversial, but human necessity out-won the wildlife and precious ecosystems that were there first.

A panorama from the top of an observation tower at Tschache Pool.

Miscellaneous ducks.

And that was our final stop at Montezuma for the day!

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After we regrouped back at the visitor's center, John invited us all to his house for dinner and a dusk walk. He lives nearby and owns 50 acres of old farm land that has been allowed to run wild. Because it is in the earlier stages of succession, it's brushy and shrubby, but still open more or less, and John mows trails through it. The point of this dusk walk was to look for the Woodcock, which is an awesome springtime bird to look for.

Unfortunately I didn't get any pictures of the Woodcock, but we did see and hear one. The sun was setting, and I didn't even both trying to play with settings on my camera. I didn't want to miss any of the action! The following picture though is one of John's that he got on his property a few years ago.

Photo credit: John Van Niel

How awesome is this? An adult and baby caught at just the right time of year! John wrote an entry about this last year, to check that out visit: Sky Dance: An April Tradition.

As the sun hit the horizon we headed out for our walk to be in place for when the birds came out to do their "dance"...

Two years ago when I started at Finger Lakes Community College, the first class I was in was "Introduction to Environmental Conservation" taught by John. In this course, John intruduced us to Aldo Leopold who writes about the Woodcock and its 'spring dance' in A Sand County Almanac. The read was a hard one, if anyone has read or tried to read Sand County before. I'm a 'reader', always in the middle of a book for leisure, but I struggled getting through that book. Over this past winter I picked it up again and read through it. It's still a tough book, but the content meant so much more to me now being 2 years deep into conservation-minded life. Visiting John's home, and finding the Woodcock performing this annual 'dance', just brought my time here full circle. It was such a fun day with friends, classmates, and a professor that goes out of his way to educate and connect with his students.

This was one of my last events involved with FLCC's Wildlife Society, but I'm glad to have been apart of it and to experience days and nights like this.

Odds 'n' ends.

This is the longest gap between blog entries that I've had for a long while! And it's not for lack of content, I've just been running nonstop with school, work, presentations, meetings, and planning my summer in Alaska.

This is also the second entry I've written using the new interface of Blogger: not a fan. I'm one of those who resists change, I'm a creature of habit. Everything looks different, and I can't access all the features as easily as I did before. But, it is a free service, so I'm at Google's mercy :)

My last entry was on the Northeastern Natural History Conference that I was about to attend. It was held this year at the OnCenter in downtown Syracuse, NY. I've presented at 3 other conferences this school year, on the bear behavior study that I've been apart of. This was my favorite conference though. The other poster topics and presentations were so interesting, I wish I had had all 4 days to spend at the conference.

Myself and my lovely poster, photo thanks to friend and ex-classmate, Erin Lord!

An oral presentation. There were 3 rooms set up with fresh presentations every 20 minutes. We were free to switch up rooms to check out the topics that we were most interested in.

And then the poster session was set up in a ballroom, and everyone was free to mingle and chat. It was a great event!

And then, on Tuesday (4/17), I gave the oral version of the presentation at our college's field station in the evening. This program was open to the public, and advertised locally at the college and in the local newspapers. I really didn't know who to expect: students, local residents...not sure. Well, turns out that there are ALOT of locals that want to learn about bears! I had a full house of 38 people. It was so nice to present to people who came to hear ME specifically speak. At the other conferences, I was part of the group, but here people were interested in learning about the study I've been apart of and about our local bears and what they might be up to.

An older gentleman even gave me a plaster cast of a bear track that was made very close by to the field station. It was very thoughtful and an AWESOME souvenir of all the work I've been doing in a great location with my favorite animal. That track will probably travel with me to Alaska :)

Before the presentation, I stopped down by one of the out buildings to check on my materials that I store there for my camera trap study that's been going on. I was with my friend Leslie, and I was telling her about how last time I was there, I saw a bat on the building clinging to the bottom of the bat house (seen here). And she says to me..."oh, like THAT one?"....and there was yet another (or the same?) bat clinging to one of the canoes laying there. I ran to the car, and was able to get the following picture of the little guy...as he kind of flopped off the canoe into the grass.

I had thick leather work gloves on, and tried to pick him up...he didn't really like that and squealed at me. So I put him back down and he kind of climbed through the tall grass under a canoe. I don't have MUCH experience with bats, but I don't think this one was well.

And then finally, for now, the following pictures are from the field station as well, last Friday the 13th. We often host school groups who want to come out for a field trip, and last Friday (and tomorrow as well) I was able to help out with a home-schooled group of kids.

We did a camera-trap excercise taken adapted from the Taking Action Opportunities camera trap curriculum from Minnesota. For all of you out there using cameras and working with kids (K12 and up), you should check this out. It's really neat, and all the "hard" work is done for you!

Myself, Sasha and Nadia...the team for the day :)

And that polar bear is a WHOLE other blog entry waiting to be written...

Anyway, I wish I could post pics of the kids and us working, but to ensure privacy of the kids I'm refraining from doing so. But, on our way to checking a camera, we walked past a Bluebird/Swallow box. There were a pair of Tree Swallows actively collecting materials to build a nest and I had my personal camera at the ready.

One of the TSs...

The other...

And both!

I could have stood there ALL day watching them dancing around, bringing in dry vegetation and happily existing. Someone found a downy Goose feather, and we put the birds to the test. In one of my college classes, Conservation Field Camp, we're given feathers and then told to stand in a field ringed by nest boxes and let them fly in the breeze. The Swallows dive bomb for the feathers to line their nests. It's so cool to watch. So, we had the child who found the feather (and we were standing probably about 20 feet from the box) hold that fluff up and let it fly...and true to our word, one of them swooped down and grabbed it! The kids LOVED it, and then wanted to hunt for more feathers...but we were on a schedule so we had to move on. BUT, maybe that little moment inspired them to try at home!

That's all for now :) I have probably 3 or 4 entries backed up in my head waiting to be written and for photos to be sorted. Stay tuned for bear bites, a field trip to Montezuma National Wildlife Refuge, and camera trap results from the East Hill Campus!