Persimmons and weasels

Oops, I was wrong! After a little bit of research we now think the weasel is a mink, which is still in the weasel family. I actually find it very fascinating that a mink would be on our property, considering that it really doesn't have large bodies of water. It must of been following the east branch in search of some water during the drought. The east branch does eventually hit the Patapsco, maybe that is where it came from.

Today hiking with the school's out children we ran into several persimmon trees. Not quite ready to eat, leaving a very dry feeling in your mouth. The word persimmon is derived from putchamin, pasiminan, or pessamin, from Cree, an Algonquian language of the eastern United States, meaning "a dry fruit". No wonder - if you ever tasted an unripe persimmon you would understand.

Bird Club Field Trip

A lightly-attended Howard County Bird Club field trip yielded a nice selection of seasonal birds:

Canada Goose
Black Vulture: 1
Turkey Vulture:
Sharp-shinned_Hawk:
Cooper's_Hawk:
Accipiter_species:
American_Kestrel: 2
Mourning_Dove:
Belted_Kingfisher: 1
Red-bellied_Woodpecker:
Yellow-bellied_Sapsucker: 1
Downy_Woodpecker:
Northern_Flicker:
Eastern_Phoebe: 4
Blue_Jay:
American_Crow:
Northern_Cardinal:
Carolina Chickadee
Tufted Titmouse
White-breasted Nuthatch
Carolina Wren
Golden-crowned Kinglet - 3
Ruby-crowned Kinglet - 15
Eastern Bluebird - 20
Hermit Thrush - 3
Northern Mockingbird
European Starling
Cedar Waxwing
Yellow-rumped Warbler - 19
Palm Warbler - 12
Eastern Towhee - 5
Chipping Sparrow
Field Sparrow
Song Sparrow
Swamp Sparrow
White-throated Sparrow
White-crowned Sparrow - 4
Red-winged_Blackbird:
Eastern_Meadowlark: 2
Common_Grackle:
House_Finch:
American_Goldfinch:

Kurt
Conservation Chair
Howard County Bird Club

Weasels!

We always said that a weasel killed our chickens, and now we have proof that they live on the property. On Saturday, I was leading a birthday hike focusing on slithery, slimy creatures. We were down by the stream, and I had the children go into the dry stream bed to turn over rocks and logs to see what was under them, when a parent told me there was a "dead thing" up the hill. Of course I immediately went to check it out! It was the size of a squirrel with a long furry black tail, but not as bushy as a squirrels. I tried to get the skull (with my bare hands - which the kids loved!) to take it back to the center, but the darn thing just was not participating. I told the children that it was OK and I would get it later. There was plenty of things to capture their attention - I had them suck on some spice bush, dye their hands with some walnuts, a dad passed out some wild grapes, and we checked out a box turtle that was crossing the path!

Today, as I was retelling the story, one of the staff members decided to go get the carcass for me (I have a horrible chest cold). She brought it back to the center - and it is definetly a Weasel! We will try to preserve the skull and tail. So come on over, take a hike, you never know what you are going to discover!

Mt. Joy Update

More pictures of Mt. Joy. It should be all ready by our Fall Festival!

Question of the day

Can anyone tell me what is happening to these leaves?

During the naturalist training on September 27, a few of the things we saw were:

Praying mantis ootheca eggsack
Brown Praying mantis (fortune teller) eating a small brown butterfly with 1 inch spotted wings.
Monarch butterflies
Cabbage butterflies
Webworms on tips of branches

Trees
Sassafras and Dogwoods turning color
Catkins on musclewood/hornbeam trees
American beech full of beech nuts
White oak full of acorns
Black cherries with ripe fruit

Vines
Virginia creeper turning red with blue berries
Fox Grapes with ripe fruit
Poison Ivy

Grasses
Red top
Little bluestem
Big bluestem with turkey foot seed heads
Deer-tongue

Flowering plants
goldenrod
knapweed
chicory

Bluebirds and Hawks

During the walk for the volunteer naturalist training, we noticed some bluebirds hanging out on the railing of the bridge. The bird expert in our group thought they may of been a little tipsy from eating too many ripe cherries. But low and behold there was a coopers hawk sitting right above them! They weren't drunk, just scared!

Fall Birds

Look up! The birds are migrating. An American Kestrel has been hunting over the meadow below the barn for two days now. Northern Flickers are exploring for tasty worms and bugs. This one disappeared in tall grass for a while and then looked things over from a handy log.





Scott

Volunteer Naturalist Training Session Three

It is pretty amazing what you can see when you just stop. During the trainings we tell the naturalists that they are not tour guides. To teach what they love the most, and to make the most out of those 'serendipitous moments'. Well this was a perfect example. Even though the class was about weather, we couldn't help but be amazed at this moment - a praying mantis eating a milkweed bug.

Mt. Joy Barn

I know this isn't nature oriented but I love this picture. This is the progress of the Mt. Joy Barn. Hopefully it will be completed sometime in October. Please visit us on Fridays or Saturdays from 9:00 - 4:00 during our open hours and check out the barn yourselves!

Volunteer Naturalist Training

Volunteer Naturalist training started on September 6th. (If you wanted to learn more about our education programs please visit: http://www.hcconservancy.org/) This is a great opportunity to hike around and learn about the natural history of Mt. Pleasant. Today we walked the grassland loop and found many wildflowers and grasses (yes I know most of these are non-native) but they are still pretty.





Goldenrod - usually blamed for allergies, which is not true. Their pollen is heavy and falls to the ground. It is the ragweed that is to blame.

Knapweed - Grows in disturbed areas.

Chicory - It has many uses, but one of the most popular is as an additive for coffee.

6ft. bunch of grass - None of us know what it is, but we will have fun researching it!

Pears from our pear tree (not in the grasslands, but the orchard). They are hard and really good for pies, as they don't break down. But beware, add lots of sugar as it is not a sweet pear.

Of course you can find more information on various websites like wikipedia and enature.org.

Peace,

Martha

Animal mayham(fun filled week of animals)!

By Katie
On Monday,we went on a hike and saw a fox hole. After that we saw bones.On Tuseday we found a toad by the creek. It was brown with golden spots.On Wednesday Tabby`s group found a baby garden snake. It was hanging from a spiderweb and we saved it.

A Home in the Woods

By,Enya

This week(Strive to Survive) Mrs.Tabby group helped build a shelter with big sticks and grass(stilt grass and grass). I never would have thought that it could take 2 days to build a basic shelter made out of sticks and grass. Maybe you could come and see what we did? See you next time

Butterfly Hike on Saturday

The butterfly hike on Saturday was a big success. 37 people attended. Dick Smith helped the group find and identify 17 types of butterflies.

Species sighted:

Silver-spotted Skipper
Horace’s Dusky Wing

Swarthy Skipper
Least Skipper
Fiery Skipper
Peck’s Skipper
Zabulon Skipper, Male

Black Swallowtail
Tiger Swallowtail
Spicebush Swallowtail

Orange Sulphur
Cabbage White

American Copper
Red-Banded Hairstreak

Pearl Crescent
Red-spotted Purple

Monarch

Really Really Muddy

By R

Enough said!

Down and Dirty

Does your lunch come from dirt, or the shirt you are wearing? The campers will be discovering why soil is important for everything we do, while getting down and dirty in our soil pit or making dirt soup! On Tuesday, the campers will be visited by the Howard County Soil Conservation District staff in which they will take a hike around our property to discover why all of our topsoil is down by the stream (do you know why?) Wednesday is the big mud day, where they are making mud castles, mud tosses and other fun mud activities. Thursday is our water day, (we were supposed to go to the Patapso, which we are not allowing due to the swarm of last week.) Overall - it is definitely a down and dirty week, where the campers should get nice and muddy!

The Birds of Prey

The above pictures are a screech owl, barred owl, kestrel and a red tailed hawk.

This is just a sampling of some of the birds that Mr. Heacock from Hashawa Outdoor School brought with him. It was a great program, and I think the kids really enjoyed seeing them up close! Don't worry, none of these birds could survive on their own, and Mr. Heacock really stressed the importance of not taking in any animal from the wild to be a pet.

One interesting fact: most owls get hit by cars because someone threw their leftover food out the window of their car. A mouse comes to eat the yummy morsel of food, then the owl comes to eat the mouse. Then you guess it: the owl goes to a place like Hashawa and lives the rest of its life in a cage. I think we all learned to keep our food with us, and to compost it if possible.

All about plants and birds and streams

by K and R

Yesterday we went birdwatching. We built a shelter for them with sticks. Some people found two salamanders. There were down near the stream, one under the log in the mud.

On Monday we saw hiked to see the sassafras tree. It has three different shapes of leaves and the leaves smell like froot loops. You can kind of chew on the stems.

We ended up in the stream and got all dirty! It leads to the Patapsco and the Patapsco brings it to the bay.

Ants and snakes

by E and E

Today, when we went to feed the goats I saw a colony of ants and they were eating this food but I don't know what it was. It looked mushy and orange. Here is a picture, but the food is gone:


On Monday, my class was looking for ants and we needed to see how much time it took the ants to find food. It took 4 1/2 minutes. They picked up yogurt-covered raisins! They left some behind.

Yesterday Miss Martha or someone else found a baby rat snake. I wonder how it sprayed that odor onto Miss Martha's hand. It really smelled bad! There was a tree near the house on the hill, near the barn. There were snake eggs in it. One of them hatched. That may be where the baby snake came from.

"Bee" Cautious

Ryan and Eli

On July 31, 2007 our group was on a hike to Patapsco Forest and a camper stepped on a ground hornet nest hidden in a log. After someone got stung we all tried to run up a hill to get back to the trail. The hornet's chased us all the way up to the path. When we got back to the building everyone was fine except for a few bumps and bruises.

Eco-Detective Week (July 30-August 3)

We have a very exciting theme this week. Of course I think so, I came up with them! Anyway the kids will become mini-detectives and look for clues of what calls Mt. Pleasant home. Along with this, I was able to get Mr. Heacock, the principle of Hashawa Outdoor School, to come and bring some of his feathery friends. The educators have plans for diseccting owl pellets, along with an archaeological dig and doing the Mentos and soda experiment. We are ending the week with tye dyeing, either their own shirts or camp shirts -(if they are new this week).

It is going to be fun, to find out everything that they see this week.

Assasin or Wheel Bug

I was showing one of the campers yesterday a cone flower that had two cones attached with pedals that were growing around the middle, when I came across this really cool Assasin Bug (or Wheel Bug). It was in the coneflower bed behind the carriage house, along the sidewalk. As you can tell it is using its rostrum to pierce then suck out the insides of the bee. This is a really cool web site to go to: http://www.ivyhall.district96.k12.il.us/4TH/KKHP/1INSECTS/assassin.html for the people who want to learn about the mechanics of it all. I just found it awe inspiring, we usually just see them hanging out on a leaf or the buildings.

The fun friday at camp!

By Enya

Ms. Tabby had a pet ferret, his name was Apple Jack a.k.a AJ. AJ is very cute and in the morning he was very squirmy when we brought him to the stream. Then after that he slept for the rest of the day.
When we went to the stream with Ms Tabby, we looked for different kind of larva. We found something with pinchers and legs that curved out. After that we made a book about the different kinds of animals that live at the East Branch and Davis Branch streams.

My last day at camp

by Bryce

Today we did tye dying after lunch. I made a spiral with orange, yellow, dark green, and maroon. I don't know what it looks like yet, because it is still drying. My favorite type of tye dye is the spiral. Whenever I do tye dying I mostly do spiral.

In the morning my group went to the Honor's Garden and checked the filter so that we could make sure there was nothing in there, but we found a gray tree frog. We put it into the terrarium that we built for it. Then we went back to the Honor's Garden to go to a stream and we made an amphibian habitat for our stewardship project. Then we went back to the building and got some butterfly nets to catch some bugs for the frog to eat.

Animals

by Erik

Today I saw a turtle and a toad. I saw fish and crayfish in the Patapsco River. Yesterday I saw two salamanders in the stream closer to the building. I tried to catch one of them and I missed. They were black with two yellow lines on the back.

The Wierd loking SNAKE!

By Enya

On the hike to Patapsco I was walking and a snake slitherd right in front of me(I almost stepped on the snake). It was about 13 inch. and it had green and yellow stripes down its back.

Turtles and frogs

by Sophie

On the way back from the walk to the river, Miss Kayla found a turtle and then Erik passed it back to Miss Virginia so they could see, then somebody put it back in the grass. It was little about the size of a small wall clock. A couple days ago I saw a leopard frog and it was sitting on a rock in a little stream and we saw it while we were crossing the bridge.

a walk through the woods

By Ryan

At the conservancy we see all kinds of animals. At the Patapsco river we saw box turtles, ground hogs, fish, different birds, grass hoppers, and water striders. Earlier in the week we saw fox's in there dens and a raccoon.
One kid even found an injured Owl and saved it by taking it to the sanctuary.
Today we saw what i thought was a rock i went to pick it up to throw in the water but then it leaped into the bushes. Turns out it was a well camouflaged toad.
We played fun games some to learn about wetlands called "float that boat", "eat it", and "winged migration".
we also played like "black magic" and "a blind man needs eye's to see" just for fun.

The Davis Branch Stream

By Bryce

The waterstriders found in the streams and the rivers at the Conservancy, are fast. To catch them you need to find a big group and scoop your hands in and with your fingers apart and close them as soon as you touch the water, and it will trap the waterstriders in between your fingers. The crayfish range from about the size of your middle finger to the size of your thumb fingenail to your first thumb joint. One girl had a baby crayfish stuck Croc (a shoe). On a plant stem we saw a dragonfly case, that was like a cicada shell, and it was when a dragonfly got its wings (when a dragonfly larvae comes out of the water and gets onto a branch like a cicada and sheds out of its skin to get its wings.)

On the way back my teacher saw a huge fishing spider with an egg sac. She said she almost had a heart attach. There was a lot of ticks.

The second fun day at the Conservancy!

By Enya

This morning I went with my group to see if we could find the fox. That we saw yesterday. The den was active. We knew that it was active because we saw scat all around it. When we looked inside we saw the mother and it's babies. Then one of the camper's looked on the other side and saw a raccoon. Yep one of our lucky day's!

Praying Mantis molt

by Bryce and Shane

We saw the shell of the praying mantis that was our teacher's pet. It was in the terrarium in the bank barn. The shell is the exoskeleton of the praying mantis that is like a dead layer of skin falling off. It shedded off in one piece. Only insects can do that or things with scales like snakes.

P.S. Unfortunately the molt blew away in the wind so we couldn't take a picture.

Aquatic Adventures Week (July 23 - 27)

During the Aquatic Adventures Week of camp the campers will play in the many streams on and around the property, explore how many critters live in or depend on the streams for survival and learn what they can do to help the Chesapeake Bay. Environmental Concern from St. Michaels is coming on Wednesday to teach them about wetlands with a program called Shrek's Swamp.

One of the staff brought in a bowl full of these tiny black wiggly things, thinking they are tadpoles. We are going to let them age a little and find out exactly what they are. One of the fathers (a stream ecologist) thinks they may be leeches!