Top Photo: Groundhog (Marmota monax). Groundhogs, or woodchucks, are members of the squirrel family, a ground squirrel. The one shown here lives under a large oak stump that lays on its side in Wander Away opposite the Sailboat Pond in Catch the Wind. If you’re quiet while passing through Wander Away you might get a glimpse of the large rodent. Can you spot the Canada Geese in the photo below? We currently have three pairs vying for territory in theRead more
Posts tagged: #wetlands
Handsome Ducks and Pond Sliders
Top Photo: Ten hooded mergansers that showed up in our wetlands the first half of February. A handful of photos of a modest raft of hooded mergansers and a small bale of sliders on a warm February day. All it takes is a few days of sunshine with temps in the fifties and the yellow-bellied and red-eared sliders will be out basking. Have a good one! Ranger GregRead more
Nest Box Final Count 6.18.24/6.25.24
Top Photo: Eastern bluebird eggs. The last nest with birds has emptied, all the birds have fledged. There are new berry baskets in each of our six nest boxes in case a bluebird, chickadee or even a house wren decides to give it another go. But, it’s late in the season and though we’ve gone into August in years past, it doesn’t seem as though it will happen this year. I see no new nest under construction, though one nestRead more
Cicadas and Other Things Around the Campus
Top Photo: Magicada tredecim, one of two species of periodical cicadas emerging this spring in the Central Piedmont of North Carolina. You’ve most likely heard about the emergence of two broods of cicadas this spring, Brood XIII and Brood XIX of seventeen year and thirteen year periodical cicadas, respectively. Here in Durham and surrounding counties there is no overlap of the two broods but there are two species emerging at the same time from Brood XIX. Magicada tredecim and MagicadaRead more
Nest Box Update 5.7.24
Top Photo: Eastern bluebird eggs. We now have four newly fledged chickadees getting lessons in survival in the woods and airspace of the museum. There are seven eastern bluebird eggs being incubated. — The Cow Pasture nest is all bluebird. The nest looks clean and although the two eggs in the nest are a bit mismatched they’re being incubated by a female eastern bluebird. She hopped off the nest as we arrived. The more round of the two eggs inRead more
Nest Box Update 4.23.24
Top Photo: Eastern bluebird eggs. We have one empty nest box, one with a nest sans eggs (chickadees), two with 1 egg each (chickadee and bluebird) and a total of eleven nestlings (4 chickadees and 7 bluebirds. — After having been raided by a house wren and emptied of its five eggs, the bluebird pair has apparently rallied and started a new nest. The Cow Pasture nest box has come back to life and so far holds one bluebird egg.Read more
Spring Appearances
Top Photo: Fatsia japonica or Japanese Fatsia, fruit. Not native but planted on the Dinosaur Trail to enhance the sense of a long ago tropical realm, fatsia is in fruit, but going fast. The plant’s name is derived from the fact that fatsia, in an old Japanese language, means eight, presumably referring to the number of lobes on the plant’s large palmate leaves. This, even though the leaves never have an even number of lobes, or points. I’ve consistently countedRead more
Immature Plumage
Top Photo: Adult male hooded merganser. The next time you’re down in our wetlands, scrutinize the female mergansers. One of them may be a male. Adult male hooded mergansers (photo above) are easy to pick out in a crowd. Their chestnut sides, black back, black and white breast, black and white crested head, and amber eye stand out, for sure. Females are a bit more cryptically plumaged. They’re the ones who will be incubating the eggs inside a tree-cavity nestRead more
October Color
Top Photo: Ashleaf maple, or boxelder. On a walk around the Explore the Wild/Catch the Wind Loop I photographed some of the fall color during the last week of October. Here’s some of those images.Read more