July 16th -- Bear Track Day!

Today Lon came and helped me open up the rest of the hair snares at Pendleton Lake, Yellow Birch and the Blackwater River Road Trail.  We started with Pendleton Lake and I found some bear tracks right on the trail!  Shortly after that we started finding the hair snares had been knocked down by bears!  There were 3 in total that were knocked down and then one that was still on the tree but the bear bent it.  Thankfully I brought tools with us so we were able to fix and re-hang all but one of the snares.  I had to bring one back into the office so I could re-wrap it in the black plastic because the bear shredded it!

The other two sites were fine, and not very exciting since we were just opening them.  I did however find a rhododendron with a weird blister-looking blob on its leaf.  I'm not sure what it is, but on the bottom side of the leaf it looks like a blister and on the top side of the leaf it's hollow so it looks like a bowl.  I'm wondering if it is some sort of plant disease.  I'm going to research it and find out exactly what it is.

I looked all over today and could not find any salamanders -- I think they were hiding from me today.

Tomorrow Lon is going to go with me again and we are going to check the Canaan Loop Road sites.  I've worked out a snare rotation because I was informed that the snares do not need to be checked every day.  So I'm splitting them up into 2 sections to be done on 2 separate days -- the Canaan Loop Road snares and the Blackwater Falls State Park (BFSP) snares.  So tomorrow we will check the Canaan Loop Road snares and the day after tomorrow we will check the BFSP snares, so on and so forth.

We are also currently looking for volunteers to come help me out!  If you're 16 and older and want to go out in the field with me come by our office in Davis, WV or e-mail me at Briana@saveblackwater.org

 Black bear track at Pendleton Lake

 Snare that was bent by a black bear

Rhododendron blister thing...