My summer with the Friends of Blackwater: June 23rd -- Goodbye Red Run Day!

I started off today by opening the snares on Yellow Birch and checked the snares on Canaan Loop Road -- I usually close them on the weekends since I don't check them on the weekends. On Canaan Loop Road I pulled the SD card from the camera we have out, and on one of the other snares there were some interesting hairs! It wasn't squirrel hair or bear hair...Judy and I were thinking possibly some species of weasel. If it is weasel this would be bad, because weasels eat flying squirrels!! I was also very sad today when I checked my dark-eyed junco nest...the eggs were gone, all 3 of them!

On Yellow Birch while I was walking down the trail all of a sudden there was a bird acting very strange...walking in circles, making lots of noise and flapping its wing...then I realized it was doing what killdeer do...killdeer are ground nesters and when you get near their eggs they act injured and make lots of noise to distract you from the eggs. Well, I made note of the birds characteristics -- small in size, short tail, dark brown back, creamy belly with dark brown streaks, and a bold white "eyebrow" line -- to look up later, and I found out that it is a northern waterthrush, they are in the warbler family.

Today I also finally met up with Kurt -- the volunteer who was going to help me pull the snares from Red Run. I was getting worried because it was starting to look like rain, but we managed to finish just in the nick of time, because as soon as we got back to the van and started driving, it started to POUR! We got all the snares, pulled all the flagging, and I grabbed the trail camera.

When I got back to the office I checked the SD cards from both the Canaan Loop Road camera and the Red Run camera, and what should I find on both of them?? BEARS!

Also, I keep forgetting to mention this -- if you click on the photos it will make them larger and easier to see!