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

Yellow, Yellow, Everywhere!!

We are in the midst of thousands of acres of beautiful pine and fir trees and we love it. But for a couple of weeks each spring, the pines pollinate and everything gets covered with the yellow powder.

Teri and I take loppers out with us on our bird box monitoring days to trim back limbs that are too close to the boxes or extending into the trails. Here are a couple of pictures of what that looked like this week.

Cutting a Branch.

Holding my Breath!!

So Much Pollen...

Are your eyes itching yet??

We even take a broom to our evening programs to sweep off the seats before folks arrive. This will all be over in a couple of weeks, and then (maybe) I'll wash the truck!!

Mark

A One-of-a Kind Project

Teri and I are working on a project that I'll bet is unique in all of volunteering. This park has four different disc golf courses, and the baskets are showing some wear and tear. When we got here the ranger in charge of the courses showed us paint that he had bought to "freshen" the baskets up, and we volunteered to do the work. I don't know what it is about us and painting...

Marked-up Basket

For some reason, disc golfers like to put stickers and other graffiti on baskets. And when they get an ace, they either sign the basket with a permanent marker, or use a knife to "carve" their initials into the paint. And the original decals on the baskets are peeling as well. After giving some thought to prepping and painting the baskets in the field, we decided to remove them a few at a time and take them back to the shop.

Basket Removed

In order to keep the courses playable during the work, we found some extra new baskets and put them up. We'll sort of hop-scotch through the courses, replacing six baskets at a time with the set we've just painted.

Brand New Top

As is so often the case when painting, 95% of the work is in the prep. We scrape off the old decals, use "Goof-Off" to remove the adhesive, and then sand the old paint down. 

Scraping Decals

Removing Adhesive Residue

Sanding

Finally, we are ready to paint. The paint is a high quality enamel that takes about 12 hours to dry and takes three coats to cover all of spots. So it takes us a total of three days to pull baskets, prep and paint them, and return them to the course. 

New Yellow Paint

The top assemblies weigh about 35 pounds and have a set of chains that have to be fed over the top of the pole. We found that taking a small stool out there helped with this part. I hold the assembly while Teri installs the hardware.

Setting the Newly Painted Top

We are about halfway through with this project, but with school groups coming and our programs starting, we'll be going slower on the rest. 

I doubt that we'll ever find another volunteer job that includes cleaning and painting disc golf baskets!!

Mark

We have Baby Birds!

We conducted our first monitoring of Bluebird Boxes this year on April 28th, and found that several boxes already had nests and eggs in them.

Western Bluebird Nest

The next week we found even more nests and eggs, but also found that this nest had been destroyed by something small enough to get in and out of the box without widening the hole or damaging the box. What do you think? Perhaps a weasel or another bird?

Damaged Nest

We have learned that the Chickadees bury their early eggs down into the animal fur that lines the nest, so I need to gently feel around to see if there are eggs. Once they finish laying all of the eggs they seem to form a little cup and the eggs are more obvious.

Black-capped Chickadee Nest

This past Monday we found our first hatchlings of the year, including this pair that had just hatched. They look so completely helpless that it is hard to imagine how they survive!

Freshly Hatched

A couple of nests had hatchlings that were a bit older.

Western Bluebirds - About 3 Days Old.

We are looking forward to another banner year for the nesting birds of Farragut State Park.

Mark

The School Trips Have Begun...

The last three weeks of May were some of our busiest last year, as area schools schedule field trips during that period of time. We got a little burned out last year as some schools show up with huge groups (like 150 2nd graders) and no matter how you divide them up that is just too many.

We worked with our Ranger (Errin) last year to draw up guidelines for more manageable group sizes, and we'll see how that works this year.

We had our first school group of this year on Thursday. There were 75 second-graders and things went better than any of the trips last year. They divided into two smaller groups, and the teachers handled one group with activities while we led the other on a nature hike.

Starting the Hike

Our hike is about a mile long, and follows a trail that runs along the edge of the lake. We cover topics like the trees in the park, the lake itself, some park history, and animals that live in the forest. With second graders we don't get into much detail on any of this, but they are very enthusiastic to share all they know about everything!!

Talking About Trees

One neat prop that we have this year is a thin section of an 85-year old pine tree. We use it to talk about tree rings, factors that affect growth, etc. But an odd thing happened. After our first hike we left the section next to the trail to be used on the second hike. But someone came across it and moved it up to the parking lot. we think with the idea of taking it home. We found it in this different spot at the beginning of the second hike. I thought Teri had moved it, and she had no idea what had happened. It wasn't until after the hike that we compared notes and figured out what had happened.

We have six school group coming in the next two weeks, and our "normal" interpretive programs will start next Friday as well. So we hope to get to the end of May with our sanity intact and then transition into our regular routine.

Mark