30 Days in June: Day 3, Barr Hammock

Educational Bike Rack at Barr Hammock

After all the reports of Phalarope activity on Tuesday, I seriously considered going to the La Chua Trail, yet again. But after thinking about it, I decided that 1) I probably wouldn't find it, 2) I had lots of other parks to hit in my month, and 3) I never have as much fun when I'm searching for something specific, anyway. So I broke with the pack and went to Barr Hammock. This turned out to be a good decision for many reasons, not the least of which was that it appears that the Phalarope has moved on. Along the highway through the Prairie, I picked up the Bald Eagle that I had missed on Monday. It was being mobbed by crows as it flew over. I got a good look at the  white tail, but had to remind myself that birdwatching and driving don't mix well. I also saw a pair of Sandhill Cranes, as well as some ducks that I couldn't identify from the car. They will merit another drive with a brief stop on the shoulder to figure out what they are, maybe on my way to Bolen's Bluff.

Red Shouldered Hawk

It was sunny and hot and humid after several days with afternoon rain and the Barr Hammock parking lot was almost empty. As I unloaded from the car a cyclist came in off the trail, leaving me with the park all to myself. I headed off on the right hand side of the loop. The plan was to walk to my usual turn around spot at the covered bench. I rarely walk the entire loop because it is 6 miles and I get tired, especially in the heat of the day. And there are no bathrooms. My target bird at Barr Hammock was the Common Yellowthroat, which I heard and then saw minutes into the trail, and all along the trail for the entire 4 hours I was out there. Such reliable little dears! After that I was free to see or not see anything I wanted and it felt great. I started thinking that over the years I have developed a pretty good idea where I could go if I wanted to visit certain plants, animals or insects around Gainesville. I wonder how long it will take me to figure that out in Athens?

Giant Swallowtail on Buttonbush (Cephalanthus occidentalis)

I walked slowly, watching for bugs and butterflies and listening for anything interesting. There were huge numbers of Swallowtail Butterflies. I saw Palamedes, Spicebush, Black, Giant and Tiger Swallowtails, as well as dozens of Viceroys. There are Button Bushes blooming on the sides of the dike and they are a terrific nectar plant. There are also Water Hemlock plants growing alongside and they are a host plant for Black Swallowtails, and Willows that are host plants for the Viceroys. I had good photo ops on several occasions when butterflies landed on the wet sand to "puddle"--ingest essential salts and other minerals.

Black Swallowtail Caterpillars on Water Hemlock (Cicuta maculata)

Viceroy Puddling

Palamedes Swallowtail Puddling

Not too far down the trail I came across a wing and feathers from a Red Shouldered Hawk. I have no idea what ate it, but it was gruesomely fascinating to look at. Something had just yanked the wing off. It was pretty fresh, too, but the ants and flies were making good work of it. A little further down the trail I found a dead turtle. I couldn't tell if it had been run over or stepped on. Even with the small amount of traffic on that trail, if an animal is in the wrong place at the wrong time, it can mean disaster. Like the hawk wing, the ants were busy cleaning off any meat from the turtle. I could see white bones inside through the hole in its shell.

Hawk Wing

Crushed Turtle

I kept walking, enjoying the solitude. The sky was a beautiful blue with big, fluffy clouds. A Snowy Egret and Little Blue Heron flew over, adding 2 more birds to the list. Then around the bend I bumped into a family of Sandhill Cranes out for a stroll. I am pretty sure I saw this family a month or so ago and they had 2 colts (crane chicks), so something must have happened to the other. But this colt looked healthy and tall and was well protected by its parents. They were not too concerned with my presence and let me take photos. But they kept an eye on me, nonetheless, as they moved along. There was another, lone, adult crane further down the trail. I don't know if this was a 2nd year juvenile hanging around its family group, or just a lonely crane. But it moved away before I could get a good look.

Blue Skies

Crane Family Feeding

I looked over the bushes for Blue Grosbeaks, but didn't have any luck. I'll have to keep hunting. And I heard a Yellow Billed Cuckoo, but couldn't see it in the bushes. I did see 3 Least Bitterns! They're everywhere! At the turn around spot, I looked up and caught a Hummingbird sitting on a branch, and then heard a flock of common grackles. I think a Red Shouldered Hawk that was flying over had made them nervous. A Green Heron landed on a snag, then flew into the bushes. A Great Egret soared overhead and I saw the sun shining through the layers of its feathers. Red-winged Blackbirds gurgled and chucked from bushes all along the road.

Hummingbird 

Soaring Egret

At the trailhead, I decided to take a short walk the other direction on the loop to see if I could find a snake or a turtle or a Blue Gray Gnatcatcher. There were Northern Parulas everywhere. I'm always hoping to see an otter at Barr Hammock. I've heard them splash and have seen the places where they slide down the banks. No otters or Gnatcatchers this time, but I did see a Raccoon climbing through the greenery, and found some fox or coyote tracks. I saw 2 alligators, too. One was stretched out on a log and another on the path. I was ready to turn around and give up the path to the gator, but it spooked first and I walked on a bit. I scared a Black Racer and caught glimpses of turtles just as they ducked into the water. They are very wary, and understandably so. Everything eats turtles, and turtle eggs. I found a clutch of eaten eggs on the bank of the canal.

Rummaging Raccoon

Green Anole on Cattail

Turtle Eggs

Walking back to the car I considered taking a quick stop at Lake Wauberg to try to catch some more birds for the list. But then I came to my senses and accepted that I was hot and tired. I am not in the June Challenge to win, but sometimes the collector in me becomes obsessed. But what I really want in the coming weeks is to be outside, enjoying and experiencing as much as I can of my favorite places and if I see birds on the list, all the better. I have to keep reminding myself of this when I hear reports of special bird sightings. But then again, if someone reported that Phalarope…

Crane Family

Bird Count: I added 5 today, plus the Black Swans in the my neighborhood Duckpond, for a total of 65 (66). It really was not my intention to write 30 blog entries in the month of June, but so far every day has had enough activity to fill a page and then some. Time will tell if my energy and enthusiasm will last, but I'll ride the wave until then!

Focus on Nature

Spring is Calling! Bees buzzing in the Hog Plums

I've been waiting for March to come and for the cold weather to leave before getting serious in the garden. It's been hard, but I kept telling myself that it was best for the plants, and that after writing for all the world to see that one should wait to trim, I couldn't exactly go out and chop everything down in February. But I have also been preparing to give a talk at a conference, and I've found, for myself at least, that an important deadline is the surest motivator to start a totally unrelated project. It helps me to procrastinate getting to the work at hand. I think I deal with stress by not dealing with it. When I was an English major at UW Madison, I still remember starting and completing a simple quilt for my daughter's bed before I started my paper on the Gulliver's Travels. But I managed to pull off both big jobs, and as I recall, got an A on my paper, too. Not the best strategy, I know, but it's the way my twisted mind works sometimes.

Spring Signs! Carolina Willow (Salix caroliniana)

I was invited, for my first time ever, to present at a conference--the annual conference for LEEF (the League of Environmental Educators in Florida). My topic was "Bringing the Natural World to your Classroom with Photography"and my talk was going to be about the ways that I've been able to turn my love for photography into tools that I use as a Nature Educator. So it's a good thing that I wrote the blog about spring trimming, because that kept me honest (garden-wise) and made me focus on preparing for the conference.

Nature Tools! (Shameless plug--available on my Website)

It worked and I got almost everything ready ahead of time, which is good, because I ended up taking an unplanned trip to Utah a week before the conference. Utah was nice. It was a pretty time of year, pre-spring. The buds were just coming out, the mountains were spectacular, and we even had a light snow on our last day.

The Beautiful Wasatch Mountains

And in those few days that we were away, spring arrived big time in Florida. We came home to azalea bushes completely covered with fuchsia, pink and white blossoms, the yellow and blue of coreopsis and spiderwort in the front path, and everything covered in yellow pollen from the Oak Trees. The Fish Crows had joined the Baltimore Orioles that had been coming to our feeders all winter, emptying the jelly feeders about as fast as I could fill them. The flocks of Cedar Waxwings had settled into the Publix parking lots, snarfing holly berries with gusto. I like that you can hear the sound of their squeaky-door calls back and forth to each other a long time before you can see them. I hope every year to finally get the definitive photo, because they are some of the prettiest birds I know of. I usually don't have my camera when I see them, probably because I see them most often at the grocery store. I didn't have my camera in Utah, either, because it was a short trip. I'm like an addict, and when I haven't been out in nature, walking and taking photos, I feel it. My friend Maralee calls this "Forest Bathing", which I just love. Environmental Educator, Richard Louv, calls it "Vitamin N". Either way, my supply gets low and I need to replenish it. I was feeling seriously Nature deficient after working on the computer so much and being out of town for family visit, sans camera. (Well, to be honest, I actually did have a camera. Two, in fact--a point and shoot, and my phone. But I didn't bring the fancy lenses. So there.)

This was waiting when we got home. Spiderwort (Tradescantia ohiensis)

The Elusive Cedar Waxwing. I hope someday to catch it eating a berry, while showing it's yellow tail tips and red wing spots. Sounds impossible, but I've got to hope. This was shot in a grocery store parking lot, and I was lucky to finally have the camera with me when I went to pick up a prescription.

When I got back to Florida, I felt this yearning desire to be outside, either hiking and photographing, or working in the yard. But I also felt like they would distract me from preparing for this conference, and I wanted to do a good job there, so I only allowed myself small doses of the fun stuff as reward. It was not completely satisfying, though, because I couldn't really focus well without feeling guilty.

Guilty Pleasure--A trip to Paynes Prairie to see the Baby Pied Billed Grebes

In the end, though, I finished my presentation, printed out all my visual aids and had it all ready to go with plenty of time to spare. I practiced working the presentation on my iPad (pretty nifty!) since I don't have a laptop. I used an application called Prezi that my husband recommended. Prezi is almost the same idea as Powerpoint, but the slides come to you from different points on the screen and can zoom in. It feels a little more dynamic than the old slide by slide method, though I'm very new at using it. I used my own photos for everything and I thought it looked fantastic! So off I went to the conference at 4-H Camp Ocala in the Ocala National Forest, about an hour and a half from home. I wasn't able to attend the entire conference, with camping, workshops and the keynote speech, but I was able to stay for the day's workshops. I attended a session from the people at Hobe Sound Wildlife Refuge and Nature Center, called "Bird Brains" and learned some fun ways to teach children about birds, using costumes and props. And I learned about Gopher Tortoises from Florida expert, Pat Ashton. Great stuff that I know I will use in the future.

Prezi slide on my iPad mini. Amazing!

Environmental educators are a great bunch of people. They are fun and creative, don't mind looking foolish doing a turkey dance, can make convincing owl calls, and are able to make neat things happen from a wish and a prayer (like creating gopher tortoises from disposable paper bowls and calipers from bamboo skewers), because budgets for environmental education are sorry, to say the least. Which is sad, since it is so important, and teaching future generations about nature, ecology, the environment, natural history and conservation are crucial for the health of our people and planet. We've had one of the harshest winters on record and weather is out of kilter due to climate change. It seems like every week now we learn about how much better children perform in school when they are active and spend time outdoors. How much healthier they are. How much more empathetic they are. I think Environmental Education is very important and I am just happy that there are people like those who attended the conference who believe the same.

My session went well, except for a few minor technical flubs caused by my inexperience with Prezi and iPads. But I know it will be even smoother in the future, should the opportunity arise. The small group that attended my session was friendly and understanding. They enthusiastically shot questions and suggestions at me throughout the presentation. I think I shared some new, good things with them. And they did the same with me. At the point of the class where we were all going to go outside and take photos to put in a mock-up of a blog, one of the attendees said, "I think I have something that would be fun to photograph if you're interested". And I thought, "hmmmm--I don't know where this is going…". Then she opened the box in her hands and showed us two 10-day old baby armadillos! Wow! Only at an E.E. conference! The person was Leslie Straub, a wildlife rehabilitator from Gainesville. I was so lucky to have her in my photography session! I think everyone got great shots. Hopefully, some of them went home and blogged about it, or wrote a story about "Annie the Armadillo's Big Adventure". I know we all had fun.

Twin Armadillo Baby Girls. They were 10-days old and had been rescued. Two of their siblings died.

This was only the 2nd outing for the babies. They were cute and curious and very skittish! They ran around like kittens, jumping and sniffing.

Armadillos always have litters of 4 genetically identical babies. They will be all girls or all boys. These were girls. After they played and explored for a while, they were tired and got fed and went to sleep.

But that's not all. The session ended and as my kind helper and I were cleaning up and loading things into the car, we saw two Sandhill Cranes walking around the building. They were perfectly at ease with us being there. In fact, they wandered into a campsite and looked at the tents and at things on the table. Then they walked right over to where we were standing and I took some of the best crane photos I've ever gotten. No fences in the way, no crowds. No pressure. They even did a little "dancing", although I think they were trying to chase off the man who was near the tents (in his campsite--how dare he!). It was a spiritual experience standing so close to these magnificent birds.

Sandhill Crane probing for goodies

Curious Camp Invaders

I got my reward for staying focused until I was done with the conference. It was a great experience, and I hope it is the start of a new path for me. Next time I'm calling my presentation, "Focus on Nature". Perfect!