From the Field - Mariton Wildlife Sanctuary

Ready For Take-Off

The nest box activity has really slowed down.  There are still 3 young bluebirds in Box #9; here is their photo.  I expect them to be gone next week when I monitor. 

Butterflies Galore

Right now the wild bergamot (Monarda fistulosa) is blooming in the meadows.  It is very attractive to butterflies.  I saw lots of eastern tiger swallowtails, spicebush swallowtails, monarchs, silver-spotted skippers, and other butterflies visiting these blossoms.  Now is a great time to look for butterflies in the meadows.

I also saw several hummingbird moths (Hemaros thysbe) visiting the bergamot.  These are so named because they feed while hovering, and their wings beat so quickly; like a hummingbird.  If you have been wanting to see one, now is the time to visit Mariton.  I was unable to capture a photo of these quick moving insects.  I did, however, find several websites with good photography. 

Bluebirds Hatch

One of the bluebird nests now has 3 young.  They look like they are only  a few days old.  You can see some feathers developing, but their veins are still visisble under the skin.  Unfortunately, the second nest was empty when I checked it.  The three eggs were gone, and there were no young.  It is too soon for the young to have hatched and fledged.  This second pair also had problems with their first brood of young.  I can only guess that there is an adept nest predator living in this meadow.

Day Camp - Friday

Nature Day Camp came to a close on Friday.  We began the morning with a walk to review.  I was plesantly surprised that kids pointed out things that they had learned.  When we returned to the Nature Center, the kids mounted the plants we had pressed on Monday.  I really like these pressed flowers and ferns.  It is simple, but it is really beautiful artwork. 

Friday evening, the kids returned with their families for a picnic.  Following the picnic was a very special program.  Dr. Ned Heindel set up a science lab in the Nature Center and then proceeded to make plant extracts from mint, pine needles, cinnamon, vanilla bean, etc.  While working with the different extraction methods, he talked about plant materials that are used in modern pharmaceuticals.  He discussed how companies are now revisiting Colonial and Native American plant remidies and re-discovering medicines, or finding new cures for ailments from old medicines.  It was a wonderful mix of chemistry, botany, history, and pharmacology.  I found it fascinating, and so did the children and their parents.

Photos by Carole Mebus.

Day Camp - Wood Products

It is too easy to take for granted the wood products we use every day.  You walk into a home center and see stacks of 2 x 4's to the ceiling.  There is an aisle of dimensional lumber that seems to stretch for miles.  The average house today takes a truck load of studs just for the walls; let alone the lumber used for floor joists, rafters, etc.

On Thursday, we tried to give the kids an idea of how much wood actually comes out of a tree.  Using Natural Lands Trust's portable sawmill, we milled up one hemlock log.  This came from a tree that had died in the yard and threatened to fall on power lines.  Joe Vinton, an NLT Stewardship Assistant, worked with me on this project.  The mill uses a band saw mounted on a carriage that rides along a rail to cut boards.  So the saw moves, instead of the log as would be done on most saw mills.

The log yielded about 92 board feet.  For perspective, that would be about 17 - 2 x 4 studs.  That would not be enough to build the partition of a small bathroom; and that was from ONE good sized log.

The lumber for this log will be used for scaffold planks and bird houses, or other odd jobs.  It is nice to have a supply of lumber on hand from mill projects.  Otherwise, I would need to run to the lumber yard every time I need a board for this or that.  In fact, we used lumber from a past milling project to make planter boxes for the kids.  They then planted sunflower seed in the boxes.

Photos by Carole Mebus.

Day Camp - Ferns

Wednesday the focus was on ferns.  These ancient plants don't have flowers, but reproduce with spores, similar to fungi.  We generally are able to find 8 - 9 species at Mariton.  Virginia did a great job of showing the kids how to tell the different species apart.  It seemed especially poignant to be searching for ferns when the atmosphere was so tropical.  The humidity was so high, that the rocks sweated with condensation.  Glasses steamed up when we stopped to look at little treasures.

One of the wierdest finds was this fiddlehead.  Normally, I only find fiddleheads in the spring, and have no idea what caused this fern to send up a new shoot now.  The fiddlehead is the unfurled blade.  (Much like a leaf bud is an unopened leaf.)  It definitely provided a great teaching opportunity, because the kids would never get to see a fiddlehead at this time of year.

Photos by Carole Mebus.

Nature Day Camp - Vegetables

Tuesday, we took a field trip to Trauger's Farm Market, in Kintnersville, to learn about all the different vegetables, flowers and herbs that Myron Kressman grows there.  Trauger's was impacted by the recent flooding along the Delaware River.  Myron's family was evacuated and many of his crops were flooded.  Myron showed us some of the impact.  He has already plowed under some crops that were damaged and replanted.

Fortunately, the flood didn't reach everything, and Myron has some great sweet corn that he picked for the kids to try.  Most had never eaten raw sweet corn, and it was quite comical to see their reactions.  (They didn't expect it to taste so good.)

We returned with a better understanding about the origin of green beans that show up in cans on supermarket shelves.  We learned how important it is that honeybees visit the flowers that grow on cantelope plants; otherwise we don't get cantelopes.  And we learned that you can help protect open space by buying directly from the farmer that grows your food.  We greatly appreciate Myron taking time during this especially hectic time to help the children better understand what is involved in growing the food that we eat.

Photos by Carole Mebus.

Nature Day Camp - Wildflowers

Monday was the first day for Day Camp with the 1st - 3rd graders.  Keeping with our theme of Plants, Virginia Derbyshire presented a slide show on wildflowers.  We then took a walk in the woods where we saw many of the plants in the slideshow, but without the flowers.  Plants in the woods have to bloom early in the spring before the leaves come out on the trees.  They need all the solar energy they can get to produce flowers, that will develop into seeds. 

As we walked into the meadows we found many wildflowers.  There is still butterfly weed in bloom.  We saw many butterflies sipping nectar from flowers and probably laying eggs on plants.  We also found the St. Johnswort pictured here.

During our walk, we collected some of the common plants and brought them back to the Nature Center.  We then pressed them to be used later this week in an art project.

Photos by Carole Mebus.

During and After Flood Photos

Last week, Riegelsville and Easton suffered the fourth worst flood since record keeping began.  I took a series of photos of the Delaware River from Mariton's River Lookout.  The photos on the left were taken at 1:00 p.m. on Thursday, June 29, shortly before the river crested.  On the right, are photos taken on Tuesday, July 4 at 2:00 p.m.  While the river has returned to its banks, you can see that it is still very brown, and very high.

Starting on June 22, it rained every day until the end of the month.  A frontal boundary basically parked over the Delaware River and dumped a lot of rain over the entire watershed for serveral days.  At Mariton, we received 3.13 inches of rain from the 22nd to the morning of the 27th.  Soils were saturated and creeks were high.  Then, we received 3.89 inches in the next 24 hours.  In these photos, look at the utility pole.  It is the same pole in both photos.

When the month ended, Mariton had received a total of 10.93 inches of rain.  For some perspective, the average for June  for the period of 1997 - 2006 is 5.00 inches.  During that period the least amount of rain received in June was 1.36 inches, and the most was 7.34 inches (before this year).  In these photos, there is another utility pole to give you some reference.  The pick-up truck in the photo on the right would have been completely under water during the flood.  If you click on the photos you will be able to see them enlarged.

16th Annual Butterfly Census

The Butterfly Census was held this morning.  We counted 18 different species and 152 individuals.  Both of these numbers are about average for the count.  Virginia Derbyshire deserves most of the credit for such a good count.  Everyone on the count contributed, but it is Virginia that recognizes the difference between a banded hairstreak and a hickory hairstreak.  I was quite pleased with myself when I identified a cloudywing (I needed Virginia to tell that it was a southern cloudywing).  Carole Mebus took this stunning photograph of a slightly faded American Lady Butterfly.

We use binoculars to study these insects.  Nets are sometimes useful for difficult species, but you can generally see the important characteristics with binoculars.  Butterflies often return to the same blossom to feed if disturbed.  Skippers are notorious for not staying still, but this morning they seemed pretty docile.  The milkweed was a little past prime, but the butterfly weed (another milkweed) was perfect. 

The most numerous species was the great-spangled fritillary at 45 individuals.  Usually cabbage white butterflies are in close contention, but we only saw one this morning.  I have no idea why there were so few.  The silver-spotted skipper was the next most common with 34 individuals.  Eastern tiger swallowtails, spicebush swallowtails, and dun skippers were tied for third with 14 individuals each. 

Much thanks to Virginia, Elsa and Carole who helped count this morning.  Without volunteers, we wouldn't be able to conduct this census.