Instead of teaching today, my boss and I went out to the park and restored wood duck boxes back into our park's wetland habitat. Wood ducks prefer to nest in areas that are elevated above water, so these boxes simulate that experience. We removed them a few weeks back to protect them from a prescribed burn, so we were anxious to reintroduce the boxes back into the wetlands so the wood ducks could find and use them to lay their eggs.
For those that haven't seen one before, this is what they look like.
After the installation, we visited the other boxes that were not near the prescribed burn to see if any wood ducks had moved in. We happened upon one that was hard to see into, so I had the idea to point my camera down into the box and take a photo so we could see what was inside. Imagine my surprise when this is what turned up in the photo!
Thankfully it was just a black rat snake (harmless to us, but not the poor wood duck eggs). However, not knowing a snake would pop up into the photo did make me do a little jump. ;-)
After that adventure, we hiked along the river to find great blue heron nests. We were successful and saw a lot of other cool aquatic birds along the way. Unfortunately my camera's zoom only goes so far, so I thought I'd include this photo to give you a general idea of the river view we had.
I also took some photos of some blossoms - thought you'd enjoy these pretty flowers. :-)
No comments:
Post a Comment