Our Last Week

this season.

I mowed two trails here at the refuge, and it hurt to be mowing all these bluebonnets down. You can see, there are lots of them on the trail.

It was fun to be mowing on the prairie though and it looked really nice...all in preparation for our festival.

As I got closer, there seemed to be more of them...oh no! 

It kept me entertained as I noticed more and more different flowers blooming...all the better for our participants on the "blooming" walk.

Here we are building a protection fence around a nest of a prairie chicken.

We are up to 16 nests as of today...better than last year, and it is still early.

Things are going well!!!

She seems to want to nest far, far away from the road.

The two little dark spots in this shot, are the two men hauling out the fencing...100' of pliable hardware cloth.

We do this four times on Tuesday and three times on Wednesday.

Needless to say, we were pretty worn out volunteers on Friday.

Mike, biologist, would go out first to locate the nest, then he would mark off a distance to put the fence so the nest is centered.

This bird flushed, so we got to get up close and personal...14 eggs!!! What a treat.

Now the eggs are gathered by Rebecca (biologist).

She weighs them, measures them, and can then tell how far along they are to hatching.

She also records where the nest is, the date, and takes a picture using a measurement of the grass.

It is all so fascinating, and we are so glad we were a part of all this.

The eggs are then placed back in the nest and we leave as quickly as possible to allow her to come back.

We have had our volunteer going away meal along with gifts and thank yous from the staff as of Sunday we will all be on our way to other places for the summer. Our place will be in Maine...will you be making the journey with us?

Until next time...