A New Assignment

We have been asked to find every geocache in the park!

Mark looked on the geocaching website he uses and found that there are about 50!  That’s a lot for a state park.  Hummm.... maybe we should have started this quest a little earlier.

One of our special projects is to work on the new Educational Backpack Loaner Program.  There will be 6-7 different themes such as birding, geocaching, hiking, etc. 

The way the loaner program works is a family will check out a themed backpack while they are staying in the park, do the activities that are in the backpack, then the kids will receive a Jr. Ranger badge.  The backpacks will be geared toward 8-12 year olds.

We haven’t had a lot of time to work on this project but after our interpretation programs wrap up next weekend we’ll get going on it full time. 

A medium size cache in an easy to find location.

We’ll work with the volunteer coordinator (Errin) to decide what items to purchase for each theme.  The park received a small grant for this program so we’ll have to put a lot of thought into each purchase.

For the geocaching backpack, Errin was hoping we could use geocache’s already in place here in the park.  After finding several geocaches, we’ve decided it would be better to place about 4 geocaches, and pre-load the GPS with the coordinates.  

A micro cache hidden next to a high voltage box.

When we go geocaching, we typically don’t bother with the “micro” caches.  They are usually very hard to find and we just don’t enjoy searching and searching for something that is only about an inch in length.  Unfortunately, a lot of the geocaches here in the park are micro and would be very discouraging for children to find.  

A micro. That tiny little gold dot next to Mark's right leg is the container!

So, we’ll get 4 large waterproof containers, fill them with fun trinkets and hide them in interesting spots in the park. 

A typical cache, easy to find right off a trail.

With the decision to place our own geocaches, we no long have to go looking for all the other caches.  Although, I’m sure we’ll find a few more before we leave.

Another micro.  Attached to the underside of a plastic snake!

Teri

Another Project Completed

Our little birds have been out of the nests boxes for a while and we’ve cleaned out all the boxes.

We have several boxes that need to be replaced or repaired.  We enjoy working on this project in the evening after the staff has left for the day.  We have a very nice maintenance shop that’s equipped with everything we need.  

After repairing several boxes, we started building brand new ones. 

These bird boxes have been here for over 20 years.  Last year we repaired and replaced several boxes until we ran out of wood.  This year we have had to repair and replace several more. 

Some of the boxes we replaced are too small or have a hard-to-clean top opening.  A lot of the boxes are just old with too much rotted wood to repair.

I hope the birds enjoy their brand new homes next year!

Teri

The Beginning of the End

Even though we won’t be leaving here for a few weeks, our interpretation programs will end on September 6th.

Every week we print out very colorful flyers and tear-off quarter sheets to post on all the bulletin boards around the park (about 15 total).

 This morning we put out the last flyers for the year!

 

We’ve had a wonderful time with the interp programs. 

We’ve created some new programs this year that were very popular and brought back all the programs from last year that were the most popular.  We’ve had a lot of positive feedback too. 

Even without a final count, our participation numbers are way up from last year.  This year in addition to folks camping in the park, we’ve also had a lot of local residents that have come in, just for our programs.

We’re wrapping up the summer - the end is near.

Teri

I Notice You Have Cheese

Recently we drove to Oregon for a quick, 4 day trip.  We’ve visited Oregon once before in 2009. 

In 2009 one of the places we didn’t have time to see was the Tillamook Cheese Factory.  We made sure to stop by this time. 

I have always liked factory tours and this one was just what I expected.  Lots and lots of cheese!

We saw gigantic hunks of cheese and the smaller, more manageable hunks like you buy in the grocery store.  

It was a fun self-tour with lots of free samples.

I usually don’t buy the Tillamook brand because we like the Walmart brand just fine.  But, after we got back home, I decided to do a taste test to see if we could taste any difference.  Final result,  hummmmm we kind of liked the Walmart brand better.  I was a little disappointed in the results.

Teri

Final Count Is In

All our little birds have grown up and left the nests!  Considering the fire and drought conditions this year, it has been a good year.

We had a pretty bad fire close to the park that started July 5th.  The whole area the bluebird houses are in was closed to house the fire camp.  With several hundred firefighters camped out, a heliport, caterers, water trucks and other assorted personnel and equipment, we weren’t sure how that would impact our little birds.  For one week we were not able to check the houses at all.  The next week we were allowed into most of the area but there were still a few houses we were not able to get to.

Luckily our little birds (and our flying squirrel) came through it okay.

Final count: 113 Western Bluebirds, 50 Mountain bluebirds, 55 Tree Swallows, 27 Mountain Chickadees and 6 Black-capped Chickadees.

These numbers aren’t too far off from last year. 

With all the houses empty, we’re able to start cleaning and repairing.  We have 53 houses of which many need some kind of repair.  We are going to replace 8 of the houses because they are the wrong size or are getting so old they are falling apart.  Several houses need new critter guards (entry holes) because they have been enlarged by squirrels or woodpeckers.

It’s sort of a fun job to inspect each house, get it all cleaned and sanitized and ready for next year.

The first thing we do is --

Check for wasp nests: 

We are finding a lot of wasps nests this year.

Then, of course, spray the wasps nest: 

Extract the wasps nest: 

Scrap off the old poop and stuff:

Brush the house out real good:

Disinfect with bleach water:

 

Check to see if any repairs need to be made then close it up for the winter.

You might have noticed Mark wearing a jacket.  We are finally having some cool mornings.  I'm sure all the animals are enjoying the cooler temperatures.  We have been seeing a lot of turkeys this year. This is the largest group we have come across so far - 20!

 

We’ll spend a few evenings making new bluebird boxes then gathering them all up and getting them back out on the poles.

Another fun, successful Bluebird year!

Teri

What do you do with 2000 tongue depressors?

You put on your thinking cap!

We’ve created a lot of fun, new interpretative programs this year.  The Jr. Ranger programs have continued to be very popular.  Having a lot of resources to use makes it a lot of fun for us also.  We have a wonderful volunteer coordinator (Errin) who is happy to get us pretty much anything we ask for.  We also buy supplies on our own, especially if we know what kind of program we want to create but are not sure exactly what supplies we will need.

Another interesting thing that happens to us is when staff and volunteers find something they think we would be interested in.  Several times we have had a volunteer come up to us and say “Here’s a skull/bone I found while I was out walking, I picked it up for you.”  Sometimes there is still a little hair and "ripeness" left.  But that’s okay, it’s nice of them to think of us!

Recently we were gifted with 2000 tongue depressors that one of the staff bought at a surplus sale.  We knew they would be useful for something, we just had to figure out how to incorporate them into a program.

We have a really fun Jr. Ranger program we call “Bring an Insect.”  We tell the kids to bring an insect and we will help them identify it.  Of course, we get a lot of ants and grasshoppers but the kids are always very proud of their bug (even if it’s not an insect). We bring a bunch of insects in jars and try to catch a few butterflies the morning of the program. Mark has been putting together a very nice insect collection that is still in progress.  Lately, with the hot dry weather we have been having, it is getting harder to find insects, or any critter for that matter.  So .... we decided we could just make our own.

Dragonflies!  Tongue depressor dragonflies to be specific.

A few hours and a lot of hot glue later, 80 tongue depressor dragonflies:

We’ll be doing the “Bring an Insect” program again soon.  We’ll bring all the crayons and markers so the Jr. Rangers can decorate their own insect.

Even after making all these dragonflies we still had a bunch of tongue depressors.  So, we came up with another project - bird feeders.  This one takes a lot more tongue depressors and also a lot more time.  It goes faster with two people.

One person lays down the hot glue:

The other person positions the tongue depressor and presses it in place:

(You might notice my tree slice necklace.  More on that another time.)

 We have quite the production going!

We’ll make 50 - 60 of these and take all the rest of the supplies with us to the program in case we don’t have enough made up.  We still need to add the string for hanging.  We’ll also give each kid a little baggie of sunflower seed to take home with them.

We’ll bring out the crayons and markers and let everyone decorate their very own bird feeder.

Here is one we hung at our place.  It didn’t take long at all for the chickadees and nuthatches to find it!

Red-breasted Nuthatch enjoying our hand-made feeder.

Teri

A Bird in the Hand...

We have a few bird feeders here at our site in Farragut State Park, and the local chickadees and nuthatches scold us if we don't keep them full. I went out to add some seed yesterday and was amazed at how quickly the birds appeared when they heard the sound of a feeder being filled.

Black-capped Chickadee on Feeder

Even as I held the feeder to fill it the first Black-capped Chickadees and Red-breasted Nuthatches began to use it. 

Just for fun I decided to pour a few sunflower seeds into my hand, and sure enough a chickadees decided that was just as good as a feeder and hopped right on. 

Can I Help You??

It is amazing how tame these birds have become. They are probably so used to us being outside within a few feet of the feeders that they don't notice we're not part of the landscape.

Mark