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Wildlife Management Notes

Wildlife Management Notes and Observations
June 10, 2004

Woodland pond at Birdsong.

WILDLIFE MANAGEMENT NOTES

Weather

Daily summer rains, so familiar a few years ago, have returned. Peter Wright has recorded 8.12 inches since May 1^st. Prior to that it was terribly dry; all the springtime plants were looking thirsty. Now it is unusual if we don’t get a good rainstorm by mid-afternoon. The effect on our vegetation has been dramatic – everything is growing like a weed!

The drought really cut into our late winter/spring burning. Permits were not being issued, and conditions were really not ideal for our prescriptions. Several areas just did not get burned. Betty never liked to burn during May and early June so as not to harm any turkey nests. We may try some experimental late summer/early fall burning once it gets a little drier, because with humidity over 80% each day we couldn’t burn if we tried. There are plenty of mowing projects we can do, however. The trails seem to need it almost every week now, and there is the terrace mowing and selective mowing of patches of sumac and blackberry in the Gin House and other places. Vegetation along the steep slopes of our dams is getting very tall and dense. If you need to take out some pent-up energy in a constructive way, you can help us chop away at the dams.

Gin House Field

The Gin House is a very busy place this time of year. The Bluebirds continue singing, courting and nesting prolifically; there are many Blue Grosbeaks, Orchard Orioles and Kingbirds defending territories and feeding. The field is full of grasshoppers, great bird food, that emerge in a spray with every footstep we take.

This year the winged sumac has taken over with a vengeance. Usually at this time the Gin House is a sea of daisy fleabane, but right now it is a sea of sumac. This is likely a result of over twenty years of a November-December burn prescription. We just can’t burn it hot enough then to really kill the sumac back. We just scorch it at the top and it comes right back, so we’ll need to figure out how to handle this. The Gin House prescription is very specific in order not to burn up the winter crimson clover crop.

On the other hand, Big Bay Field is a solid sea of fleabane – it is gorgeous. We mowed it last year to control shortleaf pines and we burn it very hot in the winter. What a difference a prescription can make. It’s worth seeing – very, very pretty.

Water levels are starting to rise thanks to all the recent rain. The Spring Pond, Frog Pond and Big Bay Pond were nearly dry for several months. Now there is a Little Blue Heron fishing in the Spring Pond, and once again we have pink knotweed in Big Bay Pond, plus the usual beautiful band of green grass encircling it. Big Bay Swamp is flowing again and aquatic plants such as Utricularia and fragrant waterlily are blooming and abundant. The Upper Pond is full of yellow spadderdock and Cabomba. The Farm Pond, our one body of water that is not covered with surface vegetation, is open and being patrolled regularly by its resident alligator.

As always, the Listening Place is a delightful place to visit. Betty really knew what she was doing by placing it there and designing a structure so conducive to taking time out to rest, listen, and enjoy one’s natural surroundings. I never fail to learn something new every time I go there. A few days ago the Great Blue Herons were still putting on a performance. When an adult returns, likely coming back from fishing on the Ochlockonee River, pandemonium breaks out at the nest. The young are full-sized now and very excitable. What a wonderful, odd din they make. All those legs and necks and beaks going all directions, greeting a fish-laden parent. They make such unusual sounds, too – barking and growling and clapping their bills. We had fewer Anhinga nests this year, or perhaps they are just not within full view. The frogs and insects were in full chorus last week as well – a marvelous drone one only hears in the summer. Other lovely sounds were being made by Bobwhite Quail, Blue-gray Gnatcatchers, White-eyed Vireos, Mourning Doves, Carolina Wrens and Red-Winged Blackbirds. An Indigo Bunting put in a special appearance. I encourage everyone who needs a moment of serenity to walk out to the Listening Place. Just being there will make you feel better.

On a recent, (rare) walk around the property I saw a mother Wild Turkey with twelve partly grown babies, a number of white-tailed deer, several pairs of Bobwhite Quail, and Eastern Bluebirds everywhere, lots of them on the far side of Birdsong no where near the Bluebird Trail. They must be very successful at finding natural cavities to nest in. Our Gopher Tortoise Neighborhood continues to be inhabited. All three gopher holes have clean porches and are obviously being used. There are quite a few typically shy fox squirrels on the east side ranging from almost black to silver in color. We are now seeing lots of different kinds of mushrooms cropping up everywhere thanks to the weather, although it’s not quite chanterelle season yet. The chanterelle is one of our favorite and most easily identified edibles. The place is also full of blackberry patches with lots of ripe fruit – more than I can recall for many years. Blackberries are a great wildlife food and are enjoyed by Turkeys and Quail as well as raccoons and foxes, among others. We just don’t want all of Birdsong to turn into a blackberry patch. There can be too much of a good thing!

We can’t get over how many young longleaf have seeded in naturally on the east side of Birdsong. There are hundreds of them, easily viewed from the trail. Many of them have shot up, some to six or more feet, in just the last two years. They show seasonal growth of up to 2.5 feet since January. Beautiful. For those of us with land management inclinations, the sight makes our little hearts beat faster! Years from now, after we’ve all gone, there will be a beautiful longleaf forest here, hopefully providing a home for a colony of the now-endangered Red Cockaded Woodpecker. It is one of our deeply-felt desires for the long-term future of Birdsong. Betty, Ed and Roy would be so pleased.

A few weeks ago a friend brought a few people out to visit Birdsong and served them a lovely lunch on one of the picnic tables. It was a beautifully set table; such elegance in such a rustic setting. A little later, I was called out to observe something on the ground nearby that from a distance just looked round. Close up it was obviously a good-sized white oak snake, in a very tight ball, all wound around an animal. All we could see was a furry tail and a little foot. Only because of the shape and color of the tail we could tell it was a flying squirrel. Apparently the snake had captured and constricted the squirrel, which is normally nocturnal, while it was in its nest overhead in a tree, and they had fallen to the ground below. The snake proceeded to stay tightly wound around the squirrel searching for its head, all the while completely focused on its task and oblivious to six people standing a couple of feet away. It took five full minutes for the snake to find the squirrel’s head, it had it so tightly wrapped up. It then proceeded to swallow the squirrel head-first. It seemed impossible for that slender snake to open its mouth wide enough to get the squirrel in, but it did it and kept moving the squirrel along till only the tail remained. Its entire gullet and neck area expanded. We then escorted the otherwise occupied snake into a container and he or she was re-located off the property.

White oak snakes are our most abundant bird-eating reptile and we have plenty of them. They play an important and role ecologically as predators. Alice Honea happened to have her camera with her and documented the occurrence very well. If you wish to see the photos next time you are out, just ask. It might not be the most pleasant subject for us anthropomorphically-inclined humans, and we may not squeeze our prey and swallow it whole, but everyone has to eat.

Here comes another heavily - laden big black cloud, ready to give us more rain. The thunder is rolling in the distance. It does help cool the air and give us some relief from the humidity (for about a half an hour). It actually feels good to get caught out in the rain. It takes one back to one’s childhood, when such experiences happened so spontaneously and were such fun. Not a bad thing.

Please come enjoy Birdsong, heat and all, and maybe you’ll get to walk in the rain too!

~KDB

Copyright © 2002, Birdsong Nature Center
Revised -- June 26, 2004