Howdy! I'm back in northeast Missouri after two months of adventures in Central America. Wow, did I see great nature there! Exploring all those new and exciting creatures and habitats definitely revitalized my love of the natural world. Plus it was fun to see some of our summer resident and migrants in their winter home. But I was also really glad to come home and see my familiar neighbors-- human and otherwise.
My winter seemed very short, and before long there were flocks of geese heading north overhead. I saw my first flock on Groundhog's Day. It seems like they are arriving a little earlier every year. According tot he research I did, it turns out that's true. Birds are shifting their spring behavior earlier due to climate change, at the average rate of 5 days a decade.
Shortly after the geese started appearing, I saw the first flocks of male blackbirds, moving north to claim their territories before the females arrive. Soon the fields were populated with robins, meadowlarks, and killdeer, where before there seemed to be hardly more than raptors.
The woodcocks made an especially spectacular appearance this year. These little ground birds look awkward with their fat bodies, big eyes and incredibly long beaks. But their courtship display is most interesting. Males gather in fields and announce their presence with a nasal "peent" call. One will then fly up two to three hundred feet in spiraling motion, making a twittering sound with his wings. When he reaches the top of his spiral, he sings his way on a zigzag down to the spot where he started. They display at sunrise and sunset, but continue all night when the moon is full. I was biking one evening and came upon a vista where 4 or 5 were displaying at once. It was an impressive sight, especially considering their short wings and big bodies. If I were a female woodcock, I'd be wooed.
Suzanne, our newest member, rakes the fireline for our first prairie management burn of the year
I'm back in school, and this semester I'm taking a class in Field Mammology. I get to learn about and practice studying mammals in the field, without having to participate in the bloodshed that occurs in a typical mammology class. We are learning how to capture or otherwise find the signs of local mammals including bats, rodents, "meso-predators" like raccoons, and more.
Bobcats are of particular interest. These small cats' populations are recovering, but they are notoriously secretive. Folks from school have been trying to trap them, either in a cage or on camera, for years. I got home from school one day after talking about how we might go about obtaining proof of bobcats at our study site, to learn that Laura had seen one on our land at Dancing Rabbit! I was ecstatic to hear that we provide habitat for a bobcat, though they range over many square miles.
With the help of this class, I'm learning to interpret some of the signs I've been seeing around Dancing Rabbit for years. Those runways through the grass stems are made by voles and the several inch diameter piles of tiny poops are vole latrines! It's fun to try and puzzle out what sort of animal made a burrow, or inhabits it currently. And I have been getting a lot of practice with tracks. It's getting easier to look at a track in the mud of the creekbed and say it came from a possum, raccoon or mink. Now I'm trying to get better at interpreting what that track tells me about what the animal was doing.
Here at DR, we have big plans for land management this growing season. This winter, we received funding from the Missouri Department of Conservation to do a timber stand improvement (TSI). For us, that meant thinning trees in our woods, to encourage desirable species. Sara, our resident forester, went out and marked trees to cut or girdle. Then teams of folks went out with chainsaws and hatchets to try and reduce the ranks of the thorny honeylocusts and osage-oranges. We interplanted trees in the spots opened up, to encourage a more diverse forest ecosystem.
Our native grass plantings are starting to look quite well-established. We hope to try and burn a few this year. The native plants are adapted to fire, and burning those fields allows them to keep the upper hand against non-native plants. Invasive plants are always a struggle in this kind of work, and we plan to have a few work parties to keep notorious invaders like garlic mustard and sericea lespedeza at bay.
This is the time of year when each day seems to bring another seasonal change. I hope you also get a chance to get outside and visit with the sprouting plants and returning birds.
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