Where does the time go?

Holy Cow! How did six weeks go by so fast?!? I'll tell you how. It went by in a flurry of boats and coats, rain and snow, and oohs and aahs. Time flew by as lessons on worms, owls, deer, habitat, fish, bears, and lions. The time was spent stalking sleeping deer in the rain with 4th graders, turning over rotting logs with 6-year-olds, and sneaking up on a sleeping owl in a snow storm with the most ninja-like kindergartners I've ever seen. If I wasn't teaching, the time was spent planning lessons, feeding and caring for animals, and greeting visitors to the Nature Center for impromptu lessons about whatever amazing thing is happening at that moment (like watching geese hatch)! I've cleaned 1,000 pounds of algae from our filters and carried several tons of tree and brush limbs getting the place ready for spring and summer. I'd love to say more, but a bus just pulled up and I gotta run. Since a picture says a thousand words, here's a small novel to keep you busy until I can get back to the blog again. Ciao!

Burrowing owl

Peregrine falcon

Future geologists

Future hydrologists

Future wildlife biologists

Black-capped chickadee

Looking for our 8-foot sturgeon

Butterfly, or crazy wolf-creature?

How many kinders can fit in an animal shelter?

Burrowing owl

First bee of the year

Spring in Idaho

My girlfriend Fiona

Day-old geese

Idaho Master Naturalists after clearing an entire dumpster's worth of brush

Sharpening my photog skills.

One of the best parts of my job is stalking around the Nature Center getting photos for our Facebook page. By highlighting some of the unique animals that visit our site, we are able to show people the variety of critters that they might see on a visit. These are some of the more recent photos I have taken.

Great Blue Heron

Song birds

Water fowl

Wood ducks

Why did the heron cross the road?

Because I was holding a falcon! I was out walking one of our falcons when I spotted this guy.

Night of the Swimming Dead

We have zombie fish at MKNC!

In reality, these are steelhead which have traveled from Hell's Canyon to the ocean and back. They are battered and bruised, but they are HUGE! In the last two weeks, we have had a rash of problems that have made the fish look even worse. Thankfully, everything is clearing up and they are looking healthy again.

First, spawning season brought all of our trout and steelhead to shallow water where they can be attacked by predators. Mink, heron, osprey, raccoons, and more take advantage of spawning to feed on our fish. As a result, many fish have large open wounds. The wounds are bad enough, but they look even worse when coupled with the second problem.

The second problem is fungus. Fish fungus grows into a white, wispy coating on the wounds of the fish. It is always in the water, but if there are no injuries, there is nowhere for the fungus to take hold. The spawning and migration injuries are perfect locations for the fungus to grow, so all of the wounds became covered in a white fuzz.

Both of these problems get better as wounds heal and the fungus fades. Unfortunately, the third problem is more serious and harder to treat. This is a parasite infection from a small crustacean called gill lice (Salmincola californiensis). This gets into the gills and mouth and makes it hard for the fish to breathe. This problem has to be treated with an oral medication given to each individual fish, so it likely will have to run its course also. The animation below shows an infected fish. The small white flexible objects in and around the mouth are the gill lice.

For the last few weeks, all of my attention has been focused on school. I was finishing up my master's project and preparing to present my research and graduate. I drove the Boise-Moscow-Boise loop twice on snowy roads two weekends in a row. Although the Salmon river canyon is beautiful, I hope I don't have to go through it again for a few months. My research was on technology that can be used to monitor plant function remotely. I try to make presentations a little different and this one was no exception. It features an Elvis impersonation and audience participation. There are two versions of the video if you want to see them. They both have the same audio, but one is the slides and the other is the presentation video.

P.S. I passed!

This place is for the birds! (and the deer, and the fish, and the....)

One of the coolest things about the nature center is the presence of animals that people can get up close and personal with. The habitat here draws wild animals which are sheltered enough that they sit still for people to observe. The exception is our raptors which are all rescue animals that can't survive in the wild so they are in aviaries. I love getting kids up close and teaching them that stepping quietly can lead to some cool encounters.

Meeting deer on the path is a common occurrence. Some of these fawns were actually born in the nature center.

Sassy crayfish.

Fiona, our one-eyed american kestrel

Mother and fawn watching from the safety of the trees.

This squirrel ate a bit too much and had to be rescued from the bird feeder.

Whoots! has a broken wing that never healed.

Wilson is a peregrine falcon with a broken left wing.

Hawk Stalking

I like to go out into the Nature Center and look for opportunities to educate people on-the-spot. Today I saw a man taking a picture of this Copper's Hawk. After we were done, I started stalking the bird around the Nature Center and eventually got him taking a bath.