10 Comments Posted on Contests

Name that Bird

There were undoubtedly many photos taken of this morning’s glorious sunrise over Northwest Ohio. I have seen a few already. However, none can compare to the west-to-east view of the Quarry Farm above the oxbow wetland. That’s the cut-off for those of you who are old friends and frequent wild raspberry scavengers.

November 19, 2012, from a vantage point west of the sun and east of the moon

Can you guess which silhouette is not like the other? Here are a couple of close-ups to assist.

Closer and closest

Leave a comment Posted on Educational Ambassadors

When the Frost Is On the Donkey

There was a hoary frost this morning. Donkey and goats were the first to be watered and fed, mostly because Buddy’s braying echoed resoundingly across the fields to bounce off the neighboring homes and farms. Buddy must have been at his post in the southeast corner of the paddock, watching the house for signs of movement for some time since a thick layer of frost iced his back. Once the boys were satisfied with fresh hay and the roosters had their feed, I had to run for the camera.

I figured I would take another photo on my way back for more water buckets. Just one more. The sunflowers still have a few seeds to feed the birds. Almost to the front door at the top of the path that leads to the nature preserve, Gertie’s blankets hung to dry. The bright contrasts of orange, yellow and green struck against the crystal grays, blues and browns of the treeline.

Although there are few this year, the osage orange trees have dropped their fruit beside Cranberry Run. The only green otherwise are the dreadful invasive honeysuckle, but the red berries of the shrub are undeniably jewels for the returning slate-colored juncos and other snowbirds. I made it to the old stone quarry in time to capture the mist and sunrise above the wetland. Photos never do their subject true justice, but there you have it at the top of the post.

The frost layers have peeled away and are snowing to the ground. The sun is high enough that some of the frost is more like cold rain, at least under the trees. The hens have eaten their fill for now and Beatrice is on cleanup. I’m off to the road myself.

Leave a comment Posted on Uncategorized

Signs of Winter Future

Over the past few weeks, we’ve noticed a number of tells that winter is on its way: the goats, Marsh and S’More, have grown rounder and hairier, as has Buddy, the miniature donkey; the gourd vines have died back to a leathery brown, seeming to leave their fruit abandoned randomly in the garden and surrounding grass; the turkey vultures have fled as have most of the songbirds; and for the squirrels and raccoons, play has become a thing of the past, replaced with a mad dash scramble to gather in as much food as possible. Cold is coming, and with it, the potential for trouble.

This means that we, as the mammals responsible for The Quarry Farm, have to follow the example of our squirrel and raccoon cousins.

This time of year excites a flurry of activity. The gardens, vegetable and floral, have to be put to bed and blanketed with the compost so generously donated by the chickens and Buddy. The various coops – chicken and duck and goose – have to be thoroughly mucked out and inspected for any little space that might allow raccoon or rat or weasel an entryway and thereby a free meal. It’s time, also, to go through the paddock and tease loose any pads of hay or straw that may have collected. While we’re all about fostering wildlife, we’d rather not provide nesting under the feet of Buddy and the boys. Not to worry, though. Those same tufts of straw are simply going over the fence into the tall grass, a little extra insulation for the voles and field mice.

In the old chicken coop, a building donated to The Quarry Farm by Mary K. Mack over ten years ago, we’ve stacked bales of hay and straw. In sealed buckets are cubes of alfalfa: not our first choice for the goats (alfalfa can contribute to bladder stones), but a good emergency food source, nonetheless.

It’s our understanding that this winter may well resemble the last. That is, warm for the season. Even so, there’s no harm in a little preventive maintenance, in preparing for the worst.

Just ask the squirrels. They’ll tell you.

3 Comments Posted on Milestones

Made My Day

Even though there are over 25 species of salamanders native to Ohio, and we should be able to find them under practically every rock, rotting log and leaf pile, we frequently don’t in much of Northwest Ohio. And that’s why we’re so excited that Quarry Farm friend, volunteer and advisor Alaina Brinkman Siefker shared this photo today. She captured this little guy’s image in the Quarry Farm north floodplain, aka “Coburn’s Bottom”, this past Sunday. This animal looks to be a Jefferson or Blue-spotted salamander, or a hybridization of those two species.

Salamanders, frogs and other amphibians usually require both aquatic and terrestrial habitats. They are born in water, develop and move onto land. Talk about your primordial creature. Much of their natural habitat has been destroyed. Not just around here, but all over the world. And if that habitat hasn’t been wiped away, it has been disturbed or chemically altered. Top that off with an impaired atmosphere and you get severely declining amphibian populations.

Researchers consider amphibian populations an indicator of overall environmental health. The salamander that Alaina and her family saw this weekend tells us that we are doing something right around here. Next spring, look for announcements for the First Annual Quarry Farm Salamander Count.

For more about Ohio’s salamander populations and monitoring program, visit http://www.ohioamphibians.com/salamanders/Salamanders.html.

Leave a comment Posted on Public Events

A Shoot, a Release and a Puzzle Solved

As the woods back on the quarry develops, the trees that make the forest are changing. Where there were hawthorne and honeylocust and hackberry, now sugar maples are the prevailing tree. In autumn, these maples provide the brilliant bursts of color that make New England the tourist destination that it is. What better time, then, for The Quarry Farm’s third photo shoot and nature walk?

For those of you that missed it – and you did indeed miss it; it was yesterday – it was just about as good a day as we could have asked for: warm, but not too warm; slightly overcast, but just enough so that it enhanced the lighting for photography; and breezy but not windy. Diane Myers, the rehabilitator behind Black Swamp Raptor Rehabilitation, came for the second time and brought a trio of birds. Included in the mix were a screech owl, a short-eared owl and a barred owl. These birds are permanent residents at her facility and as such are more accustomed to people than their wild counterparts, making image captures a whole lot easier.  The shooting of the birds went as expected, with Diane setting up shop on the grounds near Red Fox Cabin, leashing the birds to tree limb perches so as to increase the impression of a more natural environment. As a bonus, Diane also brought along two rehabilitated birds for release, a red-tailed hawk and a screech owl. In addition to the birds, aquatic macroinvertebrates were on hand, as well as a juvenile Virginia opossum.

The walk back onto the quarry proper was beautiful, but uneventful. We did, however, have a mystery resolved. While on last winter’s photo shoot and walk, we discovered a vole skewered in a hawthorne tree. There was a lot of conjecture at the time as to how the vole could have come to such a state and we settled on the idea that something most likely stashed it there. Well, we were right. According to Dr. Biehl, a naturalist and falconer who was along for this fall’s walk, the vole was stashed there by a loggerhead shrike (http://www.allaboutbirds.org/guide/loggerhead_shrike/id.).

1 Comment Posted on Public Events

Long Sleeve Weather

In the upland with Tri-Moraine Audubon

The air was chill but the sun was high on Saturday, October 6 for the “Wetland Wonderland” (see WORKSHOPS AND PRESENTATIONS) Tri-Moraine Audubon Society field trip to The Quarry Farm.  The group was led by Quarry Farm Friend Dave Betts.  All the Thursday rain put water back in the oxbow, enough to yield a sampling of aquatic macroinvertebrates that included a scud. This freshwater crustacean was the first such mini-shrimp seen and held by participants. Got to love that. I did.

Want to know more about scuds? Come to the Quarry Farm in the spring, but check them out here while ice covers the vernal pools: http://www.fcps.edu/islandcreekes/ecology/scud.htm

The water continued to rise in Cranberry Run while the Tri-Moraine Audubon Society walked the trails on Saturday. But by Monday, October 8, the creek had dropped back into its banks in time for 30 Pandora Cub Scouts, accompanied by their siblings and parents, to visit for a presentation and a tour. The “show” consisted of meet-and-greets with Buddy, aquatic macroinvertebrates, a juvenile opossum, a walk to the creek, cabin, and a cider-and-cookies finish around the fire bowl. What are some of the things that we hope the Scouts learned? That fish leeches won’t drain your arm of blood, that baby dragonflies eat lots of baby mosquitos, that opossums are nature’s garbage collectors, and that Northwest Ohio sunsets are the best. What did we learn? That you can cover a lot of ground in an hour. Beautiful night.

After cider fire

Leave a comment Posted on Educational Ambassadors, Public Events

Crow’s Work Is Never Done

This morning Steve was unable to locate Blackie the American Crow’s food dish. Through no fault of Blackie’s, certainly, as his roommate Jo is the crow with the mostest if she has any say.

I took fresh bowls of water in and tried my hand at locating the missing dish. I got down on my hands and knees and looked under the couch, table, cages and under newspaper before giving up. As I cleaned the old newspaper out from the cages, Jo perched on my back for a bit and jumped off when I turned to Blackie. Jo skittered around behind me. When I turned around to leave the room, there sat the missing dish on the floor in front of me.

Crows vocalize at ranges that we can’t always hear. I’m pretty sure that Jo’s subsonic chuckle followed me out the door. Typical.

Being outsmarted by Jo is a frequent occurrence. Not as common are these special events. Come one, come all to:

2 Comments Posted on Uncategorized

Talking Turkey

Five wild turkeys ambled through our yard today, not two hundred feet from our home. We frequently hear them in the morning back on the quarry and occasionally see them in the evening, well behind our house, roosting in the cottonwood and walnut trees. They’ve never come this close before, though, and even though I know that they’re simply wandering to and from the soy bean fields across the road and so are likely to pass close by either here or Red Fox Cabin, it still caused me a bit of concern. I worried that they were becoming less wary, less concerned about our presence and, by association, the presence of other people, as well. I worried about the upcoming turkey season and how they’d prove easy targets if they were comfortable around us.

I worried, that is, until I tried to get a photo.

It was Anne who first spotted them and pointed them out to me. They were walking down a path along the tree line that separates the farm part of The Quarry Farm from the nature preserve side. I grabbed my camera and headed out to where Anne had last seen them. I moved to the far side of the tree line and worked my way up the path on the other side, then down the path on our side of the trees. Then up again. Then down. You’re looking at every photo I was able to get. You see them, right? The photographs, here between the lines of black and white text? Yeah, neither do I. That’s because I couldn’t get any. I can’t say that I didn’t see them. I did, at least in bits and pieces: the glide of a blue-gray head; a bronze-feathered body slipping through brush; a quick flash of red from a wattle. But that was all I got, quick glimpses. They ran me round and round an area about the size of an American football field, always on the other side of the field and always virtually concealed in thick scrub. So, no worries about their growing comfortable with humans. And no photos, either, not of turkeys anyway. But, since a picture paints a thousand words, here’s a shot from the winter before last.

It is autumn, though, and there are plenty of other animals moving about. In the back field, a leopard frog boasted better than average camouflage. If it hadn’t jumped, I never would have seen it. In the woods, the last of summer’s dragonflies are torpid with the cold, allowing for some pretty extreme close-ups. Closer to home, in the crabapple tree some thirty feet from our front door, a wheel bug traveled leaf to leaf, hunting an increasingly rare meal.

This slideshow requires JavaScript.

3 Comments Posted on Milestones, Public Events

Be Our Neighbor

This past Sunday, September 16, neighbors from up and down Road 7L and from various points around the block visited for an open house. All gathered under the red roof of the Seitz Family Pavilion for cookies, muffins, sandwiches and lemonade.

The sky was blue, blue and more blue, the goldenrod positively gilded and the butterflies flitted on cue. Plenty of mosquito repellent was applied to skin, enough to allow for guests catch up with friends, and for others to walk the gardens and the trails of the nature preserve.

Truly was a beautiful day for the local unveiling. The door is open for many more educational programs, photo and sketch walks, family and group meetings, or just a day or an hour away for one or two.

If you haven’t checked out the ABOUT or WORKSHOPS AND PRESENTATIONS pages here at http://www.thequarryfarm.com, I think this photo from Sunday speaks louder than most words. But don’t let that stop you from perusing the menu anyway.

2 Comments Posted on Public Events

Monarchs and More

Yesterday was a gorgeous late summer day, the kind with clear blue sky and clouds so clearly defined that you could almost reach up and pluck one right out of the sky. We were honored on this golden day to present once again at the Fulton County “Monarchs and More” event just north of Pettisville at a wetland/prairie owned by Ed Nofziger.

“Monarchs and More” is sponsored by Fulton County Soil and Water Conservation District and Ed and Carol Nofziger. Presenters yesterday included Pat Hayes, Cheryl Rice, Diane Myers, Black Swamp Raptor Rehab, The Quarry Farm, and Pheasants For Ever. Attendees got to visit with a bald eagle and a red-tailed hawk, tag and release monarch butterflies, learn about raingardens, and check aquatic inhabitants.

Ed Nofziger is a generous, adventurous man who went out on a limb years ago and enrolled some of his acreage in the Conservation Reserve Program (CRP) http://www.fsa.usda.gov/FSA/webapp?area=home&subject=copr&topic=crp in order to establish a pollutant-sponging natural area along State Route 2. Although CRP enrollees do benefit financially from the program, this is still a step from the norm for many farmers. But families and folk from throughout Northwest Ohio benefit from Nofziger’s leap of faith, as do school groups who participate in various science excursions to his property on State Route 2. The county commissioners encourage the annual “Monarchs and More” open house.

Thanks, Ed. And Amanda. And everyone who held a crayfish, dragonfly nymph and/or a leech at our station. Before you say, “ew”, did you know that only 10% of leeches actually suck blood, and that dragonflies continually eat their weight in mosquitoes, even as larva growing up in wetlands and streams? So there.

Videographer Steve Lauber of Lauber Digital captured great footage of the afternoon.