Family Visit

I woke up to find our bird feeders empty this morning (thank you squirrels!!) so added some fresh black oil sunflower seeds to them. In a matter of minutes a group of four Chestnut-backed Chickadees was hard at work trying to get as many seeds as they could.

We see Black-capped and Mountain Chickadees in the nest boxes that we check, but never the Chestnut-backed. Looking at this group I am pretty sure that they are breeding successfully as they seemed to have a couple of the kids along.

The adult birds look smooth and seem to have their feathers sorted out nicely.

The youngsters look a bit scruffy. I suppose that they are still getting their adult feathers.

They whole family whirled around the feeder for about ten minutes and must have grabbed 100 sunflower seeds. And then off they went to do whatever chickadees do. I wonder how long the fledglings will stay with their parents?

Here's looking at you!

Mark

Round Lake State Park

We are spending our second summer at Farragut State Park. At 20,000 acres with over 200 campsites, it is a big, busy operation. Just 15 miles away is Round Lake State Park, which couldn't be more different.

Round Lake is a 58 acre lake formed by the last remnants of a glacier melting in that location. With 142 acres of land surrounding the lake, this state park totals a whopping 200 acres. We have visited the park twice and have enjoyed the quiet and the wildlife. The lake is shallow with a muddy bottom, and supports lots of submerged and shoreline plants. Along with the plants come frogs, turtles, dragonflies, and birds.

Round Lake

A shoreline plant with huge leaves got our attention on our first visit. It is called "Skunk Cabbage" and is named for the pungent odor that attracts gnats and flies which pollinate the flowers. Unfortunately (?) it wasn't blooming during our visits so we didn't get to experience the aroma.

Skunk Cabbage

There are several trails along the lake, and on the Swamp Loop we saw this strangely pigmented American Robin.

Leucistic American Robin

On our second visit we hiked around the lake and along the outlet creek on a 3.5 mile trail. Much of this trail is out of the park and on other public lands, but it is all very natural and shaded.

Bridge over Cocolalla Creek

There are several beaver dams forming ponds along the outlet creek.

Beaver Pond

We enjoyed good looks at many butterflies and dragonflies, including this handsome Twelve-Spotted Skimmer.

Twelve-Spotted Skimmer

Our favorite bird on this visit was a Three-toed Woodpecker that poked at a fallen log for a bit before flying off. We've not seen this woodpecker species back at our park, so were surprised to find it nearby.

American Three-toed Woodpecker

We are pleased to have found another beautiful area to explore here in Northern Idaho.

Mark

Hot, Dry, and Fire!!

This summer has been much dryer than last, and we've had record high temperatures for much of the month of June and early July.

Teri and I were enjoying lunch at our favorite Mexican food restaurant on July 5th when we heard a big commotion out on the patio. We stepped outside to see smoke pouring off of the adjacent mountainside and down into the town of Bayview. Bayview is immediately adjacent to Farragut State Park, so we headed home to see what they needed us to do.

View from South Road in Farragut State Park

It was a dry windy day and there was concern that the fire might blow down into the park. Park staff decided to evacuate the two large campgrounds on the east side of the park nearest the fire. I put the trailer hitch back on the truck and we did some packing up just in case we had to make a run for it. 

Taken from a boat on Lake Pend Oreille

Since this area has been under a fire watch for some time, there are a lot of firefighting resources staged locally. Tanker planes, helicopters, fire boats and Hotshot crews were brought into the area within hours and the fight was on. The entire north side of the park is being utilized for the fire camp, with the radio-controlled airplane field used as a staging area for helicopters. All told there are about 400 people here fighting this fire.

Dropping Retardant

In the first couple days of the fire we volunteers were assigned to man checkpoints to let emergency personnel through but turn back the sight-seers. Teri and I worked the 1 a.m. till 4 a.m. shift that first night, and it was eerie to see the fire burning on the mountainside, with occasional flare-ups as large trees would ignite. It was also strange to see how many folks drove down in the wee hours of the morning "just to see what was going on...".

Overall the fire has burned 1300 acres and destroyed six homes. They have a good fire-line around the fire and the weather has cooled some. We've had a light drizzle today, so we all feel like we've turned the corner. The campgrounds re-opened yesterday and we are back to our normal program schedule. 

We are all looking forward to a return to normal, and hope that this is the end of our fire experience for the summer!!

Mark

Who Pooped in the Park??

Teri and I have developed a couple of new Junior Ranger programs this summer, and "Who Pooped in the Park" may be our favorite!! We borrowed the name from a book series that describes using scat, tracks, and other signs to learn about the different animals in the park. 

First we needed some poop, and luckily several nature supply stores sell authentic looking rubber scat, cast from the real thing.

Red Squirrel Scat Replica

To go along with the scat, we printed out the tracks of various animals, and then had the kids match the scat to the tracks. They did remarkably well!!

Squirrel Tracks

Our best prop is this lovely replica of Black Bear scat. Kids just love it.  You can tell them it is rubber, but they each had to touch and smell it, and most ended up trying to pull it apart as well.

Black Bear Scat Replica

After our "Match the Scat to the Track" game, each of our Junior Rangers chose a few track templates and made themselves a Nature Book that included tracks and facts about the animals that they had chosen.

Teri had made up Fact Sheets for each animal that the kids referred to for information.

Fact Sheet and Scat for Little Brown Bat

We are getting excellent turnout for these programs, with 30-40 kids and their accompanying adults. The adults seem just as interested as the kids, and often will participate in the craft projects as well. 

Another Successful Junior Ranger Program

Mark

Weeks Go By So Quickly!!

We haven't been doing a very good job of keeping up with our blog. It seems like we have plenty to blog about, but day-after-day we simply don't get around to doing it. Sorry about that!!

One of our favorite activities is the weekly monitoring of Bluebird Boxes here in the park. Most of the boxes have fledged their first brood already, and many have second nestings underway. So far most nests have been successful, but we have seen a few problems this year.

A first for us occured a couple of weeks back, as we approached a nest box that we knew was full of young hatchlings the previous week. We expected to find six two-week old babies, but found this instead:

Pole, but no Box!!

Box on Ground

These are sturdy boxes, attached to heavy poles with two long screws. Based on the damage and the teeth marks on the box, we knew that a Black Bear had visited the area and had a bluebird snack!

Just two poles over, we came across this one:

Bear Damage

We've rebuilt and replaced these houses, and so far haven't seen any additional bear damage. Fingers crossed!!

In another area of the park we have had a couple of spots where the eggs have been broken and eaten in the box, with no damage to the box itself. At one box location the same predation has occurred with two different clutches of eggs.

Broken Eggs in Nest

We suspect Long-tailed Weasels in these cases. They are small enough to enter the holes without having to enlarge them, and we know that the park has a population of these little carnivores.

One ongoing task is repairing damage caused by woodpeckers and squirrels. These guys find the carefully sized holes to be too small, and work tirelessly to enlarge them. 

Enlarged Hole

When we find an oversized hole we use sandpaper to smooth the edges, and then attach a "critter guard" to return the hole to the correct size. We end up having to do this a couple of times each week. 

Adding Critter Guard

 

Good as New!!

As we check each box Teri carefully records our findings, and then compiles a final report at the end of the season that goes into the park records and is forwarded on to the Bluebird Society of America. 

Teri Recording Data

We'll see what we find tomorrow morning as our Bluebird Monitoring Project continues...

Mark

At Last - A Day Off!

Today is the first day we have had completely off in 36 days.  Most of our days aren’t 8 full hours, some of those days were 1-2 hours.  But, it’s nice to finally be finished with some extra projects that we picked up.

We finished painting all the disc golf baskets in the park (55 total baskets).  Two of the courses have baskets very close together so we painted one course yellow and one course orange.  Each basket has 3 coats of paint.  There was a lot of drying time with this project!

We had to make a few new bluebird houses.  More on that later!

Our weekend programs have started.  We have evening programs on Friday, Saturday, and Sunday evenings.  We also have a Jr. Ranger program on Saturday morning and some kind of program on Sunday morning.  Last year our Sunday morning program was a 1 mile hike.  This year we are going to change it up a bit and do other things.

Dissecting owl pellets continues to be one of our most popular Jr. Ranger programs.

One of our new programs for this summer is an introduction to disc golf. 

We've spent a lot of time putting together several other new programs that we'll try out soon!

Stay tuned for more summer fun.

Teri

Latest Batch In The Mail

It’s been a while since I’ve shown any of my afghans.  I haven’t bought yarn since we left Florida!  (Well, I think I did buy 1 skein that I had to have in a certain color to finish an afghan I was working on). 

As I’ve mentioned before, I donate all my afghans to Linus.  This is the last bunch I boxed up and mailed to my mother-in-law last week.  She will take them to the next Linus meeting for me.

You can probably tell I found a new pattern I like.  I've already made it in 3 different color combos!

These are from the last batch I mailed from Florida:

I'm working on 3 more now and have plenty of yarn for the next batch!

Teri