It’s a first! The first ever video featuring Beargrass Creek State Nature Preserve and  oneforestfragment, is now on the Beargrass Thunder show.

     https://www.beargrassthunder.com/

          Beargrass Creek State Nature Preserve: An Epic journey

Thanks to my new friends Jody Dahmer and Richard Stottman, I agreed to do an interview style video about the forest, little realizing what this meant. Though I’ve taken great care to keep myself out of the limelight, the opportunity to share what’s been happening in our “urban wild” was not to be missed. There are two videos – a short one  that introduces the work of the Forest Stewards, and a longer one about the preserve.

Richard and Jody are working to revive an area along the South Fork in Beuchel, and have recently created the podcast to highlight environmental and nature related issues in particular. I hope you’ll check out all their great videos, and subscribe to the show.

 

As we race toward the summer solstice, life is busy in this little fragment. Though I keep planning to work on the next epic blog post, my images are documenting lots of (seemingly) little stuff. How to tie it all together? It occurred to me recently, the role of the forest stewards is akin to that of a financial planner – helping this forest “grow” its biological assets (pun intended). From what I’ve been seeing lately, we’re doing a decent job of it. Our client is working much harder though – survival is a great motivator. Read More

This is not my picture, but I was this close to a wild turkey today. I didn’t have a choice in the matter, since she burst out of the trailside undergrowth and confronted me. Apparently I had once again come too close to her chicks – if indeed this is the same momma turkey whose nest I stumbled upon two weeks ago, and who I startled with her chicks in a heavy rain last week. She had every right to be upset with me for the repeated disturbances, and it showed. Unnerved by her flapping and clucking and the look in her beady eye, I backed up but did not flee. She slowly retreated up the hill, and positioned herself atop a tall stump where she could see my every move. Read More

It’s shaping up to be a very busy summer in the forest for this blogger, which helps explain the scarcity of posts lately. So much going on, and so little time to write about it! But I can’t resist sharing yesterday’s birdy encounters, as well as the fact that my life is increasingly dominated by birds (more on that below).

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Sweat bee, that is. As a kid that’s what we called them, for their habit of landing on a sweaty arm to get salt. We thought they would sting us, and the females can if riled up. Little did I know they were just one of 4000 species of bees native to North America. But Augochlora pura, the Pure Green Sweat Bee, has to be one of the loveliest of the bunch – and it’s common in this forest. Read More

Apologies for the long gap in posts, but I’ve been waiting for just this moment. 2019 will be my seventh year collecting data on the Box turtles of this forest, and yet the first one spotted each spring still gives me a thrill. Read More

Growing up as a city kid in the ’60’s, bluebirds seemed like faraway mythical creatures. I’d never actually seen one, but read that people built special trails for them with boxes to nest in. Once while hiking we came across just such a box mounted on a fence post -but alas, no bluebirds. Years later, living on the west coast, I came to know both western and mountain bluebirds and to recognize their calls. So when I finally heard that distinctive little “cheery-we” call in this forest, I knew Eastern bluebirds were about. Read More

There is a plant that interests me as much in the depths of winter, as when it’s green and juicy. One of the last weeds still standing, gangly Pokeweeds’s bleached skeletons rear up along the forest edge, offering a few shriveled berries to animals sheltering there.

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One of my favorite times to explore this little fragment is when it’s very cold. Last Tuesday’s daytime windchill reading was about 5 degrees, and I wanted to see how the forest birds were faring. Except for the creaking of trees and the occasional call of a woodpecker or wren, it was amazingly quiet down in the woods, as if all humans but me had suddenly departed the planet. Even more than usual, I marveled that I was in a forest in the middle of a city. Read More

I don’t know how many times I walked past this strange looking object before recognizing it as a living creature. It resides near the trail, attached to a small Spicebush at a height of two feet, looking most intentionally like a clump of dead leaves. It’s actually the winter survival capsule for one of North America’s largest giant silkmoths, the Cecropia, Hyalophora cecropia. And like many insects, it’s in a state of “diapause”, the pupa slumbering secure in its silken bag till spring.

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