Off and on all winter, there have been tadpoles concentrating along the shore of the Wetlands between the end of the boardwalk and the main Wetlands Overlook. Some days the tadpoles are still, but often the water boils with their squirming bodies. Every so often, I catch some of our winter resident mergansers in the area, no doubt taking advantage of the concentrated mass of “food.”Read more
Posts filed in: Winter
Herpetological Report from The Wetlands
A lone Yellow-bellied Slider was out basking on Friday January 28, and again the next day, 29 January. The yellow-bellied Slider (above) was up and about due to the unusually warm 60? weather. The temps slid down to the near normal 40?s for the next several days and the turtles went back under cover. – – Today (2/2), it’s supposed to climb to 70 degrees. There are currently half-a-dozen or so turtles basking on rocks and logs of the Wetlands.Read more
Quiz Bird!
This bird was perched in a Loblolly Pine in Explore the Wild. What is it? Does this help? The first person to reply with the correct identification will win a special prize! Note: Participants must claim their prize in person.Read more
What’s he looking at?
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Bluebird Report
A handful of Eastern Bluebirds were seen visiting the bird feeders and, more importantly, inspecting the nest boxes placed in Catch the Wind last season. It won’t be long now…. Spring’s just around the bend!Read more
Hard Work Pays Off For Sap Sucking Bird!
The Yellow-bellied Sapsucker that drilled the wells, which flowed of sap, which in turn fed the ants of the very last post, was at it again. This time, it was the sapsucker that was sipping the sap from the wells. Hard work does pay off!Read more
The Return of the Honey Ants
On Tuesday January 18, I noticed that the sap was flowing from a Carolina Maple in Catch the Wind. The tree is six feet or so off the path between the Vapor Rings and Mist Garden Exhibits. This tree has been the topic of previous posts. Two new sapsucker wells have been drilled into the tree and sap was flowing from the wells, covering the bark below them. There were perhaps two dozen ants crawling up and down the sap.Read more
Live Eagle Cam
For those interested in raptors, large raptors, there is a live feed to a nesting Bald Eagle at Jordan Lake (Chatham County, NC). The camera is directly above the nest. I was just now (9:17 AM, 1/22/11) watching the adult tend to the chicks. At this time there are pieces of fish on the edge of the nest. The adult just now sat down on the two very small, downy, but nearly naked chicks (must be cold up in thatRead more
Dino Quiz Answers Finally Revealed!
The long wait for the answers to the Dino Quiz is over! Congratulations, all of you are winners!! However, not all of you identified all of the dinosaurs correctly. Everyone had at least three of the IDs wrong. Six was the highest number of incorrect answers. The most commonly misidentified dinosaur was #15 which is a close-up of the eye of the Stygimoloch and not Edmontonia as most of you suggested. I’m assuming that most of you thought that thisRead more