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.

 

Stuff I Saw On My Walk Today

Walking around Lake Winona today I, for the first time in my life, found some Dutchman's breeches. I have looked for these before but never found them.

I also found a leucistic robin too.

Usually when I walk around the lake I see up to a dozen turtles. Today, because the trees haven't leafed out, I saw a grand total of 87 turtles. Some were painted turtles and some were map turtles.

 

Blazing Star And Lead Plant

This morning and part of the afternoon I traveled to the Nature Conservancy office at Weaver Dunes to collect prairie seeds for a new section of land that is being converted from farm to prairie. The weather was foggy and cool and I started out with a sweatshirt and two fleece jackets. When I left I had just the sweatshirt on.

We had about 25 people helping. We had five priority species to focus on plus ten secondary species. I decided to focus on two priority species.

I filled a quarter of a paper envelope with lead plant seeds. The orange is my water bottle. The blue are my shoes. Lead plant can have roots 10 to 15 feet in length. Lead plant prefers dry and sandy soil. Lead plant is in the legume family so it secures nitrogen in the soil.

We collected a couple of gallons of blazing star. I started out putting the seeds in an envelope but quickly dropped that idea and put the blazing star seeds into a milk jug I had attached to my pants. Monarch butterflies and other butterflies appreciate blazing star. While we were working a half dozen bald eagles flew over our heads-a good omen, not? One guy found the shell of a map turtle.

 

Kayaking

 

I had a hard time getting my kayak out of storage but now it is out.

The lovely lotus blossoms are abundant on Lake Winona. The only other places I have seen them are at Como Park and on the Mississippi in Cottage Grove.

Today was a fine day to be out on the water. I saw Canadian geese, bald eagles, tree swallows, a great blue heron, a muskrat, two turtles (one was a rather large softshell turtle), many fish. As I kayaked along I could see people walking or biking on the path.

The boat sticker says 2023 so I had better get that updated pronto.

Nearly Stepped On This Little Creature

Slightly larger than a quarter.

 

Walking In Sunshine

Today I went for a walk around Lake Winona. The weather was perfect. This walk took a couple of hours.

I think this is a northern map turtle.

 

Vereen Historical Memorial Gardens

I walked a couple of miles to the Vereen Historical Memorial Gardens. 

They have a mile long paved road lines with azaleas that are in full flower. On either side of the paved road are sandy paths wandering through the woods. This was a lovely place to visit.

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I walked up to a bale of turtles.

This turtle charged up to me. What, was it expecting a free handout of hamburger?

 

Audubon Swamp Garden

I spent a couple of days in Charleston, South Carolina. I met an old friend. She took me out for lunch, gave me a tour of her town home, and drove me around town for a couple hours and went shopping together. The next day I visited the Audubon Swamp Garden. Look at these lovely knees on the cypress.

At this nature preserve they build sunning platforms for the gators.

I watched this American bittern hunt for 5 minutes. As he moved on his or her log, the log turned and the bittern had to keep moving to keep it's balance. Soon another bittern flew in and they hunted together. I was lucky to get this view of a bittern.

A great blue heron made a nest on top of a tree out in the lake. This must be a very safe place for a heron nest.

This tree had a dozen  great egrets perched in it's branches.

Woah, maybe I shouldn't proceed on this path. When I came back 30 minutes later the gator had moved on. Another smaller gator was ten feet away.

Turtles don't share the same sunning ramps as gators.

Here is the tree with the heron nest and a couple gators sunning on a ramp.

I like Charleston, it's a cute little town.

 

Sea Turtle Rescue

We toured the sea turtle rescue operation on Jekyll Island in Georgia. If turtles get too cold they loose all energy and wash up on shore. This organization examines them, gives them IV fluids, warms them up and sends them on their way.

We also biked around the island mostly on a very nice bike trail. Biking through all these live oaks with Spanish Moss (which is neither Spanish nor moss) blowing in the breeze and grazing the top of my helmet was a lovely experience. 

 

Tortoise Strut

I love walking the beach with the sanderlings. I think they are just the cutest little birds dashing in and out of the waves as they roll into shore.

Later, on a bike ride, we found this gopher tortoise walking along the edge of the parking lot.

Just a tortoise doing tortoisey things.

This tortoise has places to go and people to see.

OMG, this tortoise has such a cute strut.

 

Highlands Hammock State Park

We visited Highlands Hammock State Park. We camped there. They had an awesome CCC museum. Did you know Walter Mattau was in the CCC?

This is a firecracker plant. Did you know that down in here in Florida a hammock is a cooler, shady place? We took a tram to into restricted areas of the park. The tram tour took a couple of hours.

We saw lots of gators on the tour plus turtles, red shouldered hawks, anhingas, herons and egrets.

This is a fossil found when the CCC built the building. This turtle shell is as big as the ones in the Galapagos Islands. I had no idea we had turtles that big here.

 

Lettuce Lake Park

A couple weeks ago I met my cousin's friend who lives in a gated community outside of Tampa. She took us to Lettuce Lake Park where she had been on a bird tour with the Audubun society. We ate a quick lunch. She had a nervous puppy who couldn't be left alone so we went on the boardwalk tour first. We saw a turtle.

And a gator.

And a snake.

The puppy knew my cousin so was content to wait with her while I did the board walk tour again with the friend. She spotted a roseate spoonbill, a great blue heron nest, and a wood stork nest. Cool beans.

The lettuce is actually an invasive species in this lake. How odd to name a park after an invasive species. The friend also identified the name of  bird we were hearing that howls like a banshee; it's a limpkin.