Honeymoon Island Field Trip

Much of my job at the preserve is making sure that things run smoothly which usually involves paper work, phone calls, and ordering stuff. On Thursday, I literally got to get my feet wet with the kids.

I went with the Summer Nature Day Camp on their first field trip of the summer to Honeymoon Island State Park to set up their schedule with the staff there and make sure that the payments were going to go smoothly. What a beautiful park! We walked down the beach looking for signs of wildlife, shells, and watching the Least Terns skim the water's surface.

The beach there is great for looking at shells. Many of the kids in camp had been to the beach before, but most of them didn't realize that those shells used to house different kinds of invertebrates.

After our shelling expedition to the beach we ate lunch and then ventured to the other side to look at a lagoon. The lagoon was full of little horseshoe crabs, fish, and wading birds. It was a great place to learn about marine life without the waves.

A great day.... hot, but alot of fun in the water!

Buzzzzzy Week

This has been a crazy week here at the Preserve. Pioneer Camp started on Monday and they are having a blast. Tuesday brought some more rain and filled up our little creek by the nature center. Wednesday the Rangers and I had a staff meeting to discuss volunteer projects and decided that in July we will add 3 more tram tours in the evenings. (It's just too hot out at 1 pm... our regularly scheduled tram tour time.) Then on Thursday I stayed late after the Friends of Boyd Hill meeting to watch the screech owls feed on the crickets that were released in to the cage around 8:15 pm. It took a little while, but the little guys seemed to be making attempts to catch them. Stretch (our adult male) was definitely catching some and feeding them to the little ones while Weezer ( adult female) made sure that we didn't get too close. Then today the maintenance staff accidentally found a huge yellow jacket nest up in a cabbage palm at one of the parks nearby that we also maintain. The nest is just enourmous and beautiful. Here are some of the pictures we took (while trying not to get stung... unfortunately a couple of the staff were stung in the finding of this nest.... but everyone is ok).

This is the nest wrapped around a cabbage palm trunk. The yellow jackets used the old palm fronds to form the nest on and even after the fronds have lost the main part of the leaf, it remains stuck to the trunk. It was about 4 feet across and maybe 2 feet high. Huge.. and a little scary.

This is a close up of the material that the nest is made out of. The yellow jackets eat various types of wood and then make a pulp substance with it in their mouths. The pulp is used in small thin strips to form the papery material you see in the picture below. Under careful inspection the paper material is really beautiful. I couldn't believe all the colors in it. I tried to get a good picture. Tom took this picture and I played with the contrast a little to try to get the colors to stand out more.

The picture below is from the part of the nest that was at the base of the tree. There are definitely two different types of yellow jackets here. Some are larger and darker color than the small ones that I'm familiar with.

Update on the Screech Owl kids

I can't very well call our foster owls babies anymore. They are certainly looking and acting like teenagers. On Friday, one of our volunteers retro-fitted the enclosure to include a feeding pen. The smaller enclosure within their cage allows us to release live crickets in the pen so that they can start learning how to hunt from their foster parents. For a list of other things that screech owls eat click here.

The photo below shows the Foster mom and the kids. You can see that they are much less fuzzy now than they were when they arrived here. Just like teenagers, they grow out of the awkward stage.

After posting these pictures I realized that they were a little fuzzy. That's what you get for using an older camera. I'll try to take some more tomorrow. Till then - hope you enjoy reading!

Florida Butterfly Orchid - Encyclia tampensis

What a treat I had the other day! Syd and Tom showed me the Florida Butterfly Orchid that is blooming in the preserve. I love orchids and I rarely have the opportunity to see the native ones. So seeing this delicate little flower really was such a treat for me. Tom took a few photos for me to post. His pictures are beautiful, but seeing it in person is really the best way to view it.

Encyclia tampensis is the Latin name. It inhabits many hardwood hammocks and swamps in a line roughly extending from Orlando through Tampa and south. The best time for viewing is the middle of June, although some few plants may remain in flower into July or even August. It is illegal to collect this plant from the wild as its existence is protected. The flower is so small that we may have more in the preserve and just don't know it. Let's hope that this one goes to seed and starts more.

Screech Owls on the move

Our Screech Owls are doing wonderfully. This morning I went by the enclosure just to check on the little things and all four were standing in a little line at the back of the cage. Previously the smallest one was always hiding in the corner and wouldn't come out to even say hi to it's siblings. All four are flying short distances which means that it is time to introduce the larger, alive food sources.

The first thing we do is put a plastic sheeting around the bottom of the cage. It won't keep everything in but it will give them a fighting chance to catch their prey. We will start with crickets. They eat all kinds of stuff. Here is a list of just some of the things they have been known to eat:

squirrels
shrews
bats
moles
small fish
small snakes
lizards
soft-shelled turtles
small frogs
toads
salamanders
crayfish
snails
spiders
earthworms
scorpions
centipedes
Birds, including many species of small songbirds

That's quite a variety, but crickets are easy for us to get to feed to them. I have a feeling that they are eating everything they can catch that moves through their cage. Their enclosure will be modified tomorrow or Friday and the new food introduced that night. It's hard to see if they actually catch anything on their own since it is usually almost dark when they eat, but our dedicated volunteers do their best. Wish them luck!

If you want more info on Eastern Screech Owls click here.