Weaver Dunes

Today I volunteered to collect seeds at Weaver Dunes Scientific and Nature Area which is run by the Nature Conservancy. The location is near the town of Kellogg. I was the first  person to arrive. On the driveway I spotted this mature Blandings turtle. I stopped the car and approached the turtle. I waited a few minutes. I talked to it. I explained the danger of waiting in the road. I touched it with my foot. The turtle wouldn't move. Another car approached. A man got out. Together we went to see the turtle which had decided at that point to move off the road. We followed the trail of it's tail and found it waiting in the tall grass on the way to a pond. The female Blandings turtle are sexually mature at age 14 so seeing one this size was very satisfying. This is turtle nesting time.

This is a hairy puccoon.

Our goal was to collect porcupine grass. I put a bungee cord around some belt loops and ran the handle of a milk jug through the cord. I think I gather a little more than half a cup of seed. Porcupine grass has sharp seeds. Seriously sharp seeds. You could remove a splinter from your skin with one of these seeds. One seed even punctured the plastic of the milk jug. The seed tips are heavy and have a long attachment called an awn. We removed the awns so the seeds wouldn't get all twisted together.

The prairie was very pretty. I have never seen so much healthy and lush poison ivy in my life. I washed my clothes and took a shower when I got home. This delicate beauty was all over the hills. This is called a larkspur which is in the delphinium family.

Besides our leader from the Nature Conservancy, four other men made up our group.

This is called goat's rue.

Our leader said they found a new species of milkweed on an east facing hill. She spent an hour looking for it. Last week it was knee high and had a flower bud on it. She found it but most of the plant had been eaten. This is a clasping milkweed. The leaves attach to the stem in a different way that other milkweed.

I always thought of this as goat's beard but the actual name is salsafy. Salsafy sounds much like satisfy. Salsafy is how you feel after you eat a tasty taco.

Our three hours were almost up when we found this fawn lying next to the roadway. I thought one older man in our group would really enjoy seeing this fawn since he seemed to love nature so much. I point out the fawn and wait for his reaction. He pretends to shoot it with a gun. You can never tell with some people.