Conservation Resources

Fabulous Way to Start the Day!

9/25/2023

It's Autumn! The temps are actually cool enough to wear my sweatshirt. Well, in the morning anyway. I'm back in my T-shirt for the rest of the day.

I love my walks. It's a fabulous way to start my day, especially this time of year! It's incredible to witness the transition from summer wildflowers to the diverse selection of autumn plants that will nourish and shelter insects as they prepare for the winter. The berries and fruits on bushes, trees, and flowers will continue ripening as the vegetation around them withers away. Soon, the birds and wildlife will have a new feast to sustain them through the winter.

Berries and fruit from the American Beautyberry, Flowering Dogwood, Pokeweed, and Maypops (Passion Flowers).

A wonderful surprise greeted me yesterday. The farm roads have been bush-hogged, opening the way for the tractors to access "the back 40" and harvest the corn.

It also allows me to walk around the fields again. Most of the paths are still overgrown, but a few are walkable. Once the harvest is complete, I'll have full access to the fields and the surrounding woodlands.

Every day will be a new adventure. I'm looking forward to it!

Wild Turkeys enjoying breakfast.

Interesting. A couple of trees lived and died side-by-side. All the insides have rotted away and left the bark shell. This will make a great home for critters this winter.

The corn is ready to harvest. The deer will be sorry to see it go. They have been feasting on this easy to find free meal every night

An interesting mushroom.

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Intruder Alert!

9/22/2023

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My neighbor is a sweet lady. We get along just fine except for one thing. Our ideas of having a nice yard differ significantly. She prefers large expanses of manicured grass interspersed with big, showy, non-native plants placed just so. My taste runs more toward organized chaos.

I cringe when I see new exotic plants in her yard. Even so, there’s never been any conflict between us since there’s nearly a mile of woodland and fields between our homes. Problems began, though, when her plants started spreading outside her yard and taking over the ‘wild’ area between us.

The two worst alien invaders creeping my way were:

Elephant Ear or Wild Taro (Colocasia esculenta) – personally, I have no idea what the attraction is with these gigantic heart-shaped green leaves. There are no flowers; all they do is tower over all the other vegetation, smothering everything in its path. These invasive monsters have taken over a large portion of the roadside bordering her yard and have even somehow jumped across the road, taking over that side as well.
Elephant ears are considered a major invasive weed in the southeast, displacing native flora and are next to impossible to get rid of since they spread underground.
Luckily, they’re partial to the wetter areas around the ditches and aren’t spreading too far from home. Hopefully, they’ll stay in the swampy spots and leave the rest alone.

I used to like the Daylilies (Hemerocallis fulva) until they became a nuisance. The orange flowers made a lovely border along my neighbor’s fence. Unfortunately, they spread big time and have now established themselves for at least a quarter mile along the shoulder on both sides of the road and along the tractor paths leading to the farm fields.

Earlier this summer, a lovely stand of volunteer lance-leaf coreopsis beautified the grassy edge. However, within a few weeks, they fell victim to the fast-growing daylilies. There’s no stopping them!

Mimosa tree, Chinese privet, Chinese wisteria, and Sicklepod

I’ve noticed a number of other invasives taking over as well. About eight years ago, chainsaws ruthlessly clear-cut about an acre of virgin woodlands. All the native undergrowth was torn from the ground as the pine trees were loaded onto trucks and hauled away to the paper mill. The felled hardwoods were left abandoned to slowly decompose.

The faster growing Mimosas (Albizia julibrissin), Bradford Pears (Pyrus calleryana), Chinese privets (Ligustrum sinense), and non-native wisteria (Wisteria sinensis), along with lots of weeds like sicklepod (Senna obtusifolia) have taken advantage of the unoccupied space and created a haven for themselves.

Unfortunately, vines from native morning glories (Ipomoea) and muscadines (Vitis rotundifolia) have totally overgrown most of the other vegetation, so now it looks more jungle-like than forested.

It’s sad to watch the destruction of indigenous trees, shrubs, plants, and wildlife and be unable to do anything about it. According to the National Wildlife Federation, without native plants, there would be no web of life. Every strand in the web is vital in ways we are still coming to understand. Meanwhile, our native plant populations are declining, becoming fewer, fragmented, and imperiled by threats such as extreme weather, competition from invasive species, and development. Thirty-four percent of plants and 40% of animals are at risk of extinction, and an alarming 41% of ecosystems in the U.S. are at risk of collapse.

So please refrain from introducing non-native flora to your neighborhood and help keep our ecosystems strong with lots of diverse native plants. Thank you

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All Creatures Great and Small

9/8/2023

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There's more to conservation than flowers and bugs. We share this planet with countless creatures we will never meet or even know they exist. However, they're just as important as the more visible beings we're around every day. All creatures, great and small, must be treated with respect and dignity.

I never knew there was such a thing as a spotted turtle until I came across the little guy in the middle of our road. The sandy surface may have offered a comfortable spot to relax in the shade, but it wasn't safe. The way some frustrated wanna-be race drivers consider secondary roads as their private dirt track didn't bode well for me to leave the turtle where it was.

Astonishingly, it wasn't as shy as the common box or snapping turtles I generally see hanging out along the roadside. They usually retreat into their shells and allow me to pick them up and move them into the grass without any fuss.

Not this guy. He watched every move I made as I snapped pictures and complimented him on the nice paint job on his shell. When I reached down to pick him up, he refused to come quietly. Instead, the turtle gave me the evil eye as I grasped the sides of his shell. Then he squirmed out of my hands and ran away. That surprised me! Not the evil eye so much but the agility and speed at which he moved. He was quite fast.

I took the hint and didn't try a second time. Since the turtle didn't want to be carried, a few taps with my foot gently persuaded him to move to the shoulder. After the little guy disappeared amongst the overgrown vegetation bordering the ditch, I waved goodbye and continued on my way.

Later on, my research on Spotted Turtles yielded some very interesting information. "Spotted turtles are small, aquatic turtles, named for the yellow polka dots scattered across their dark shells. The species occur in wetlands throughout the east coast and in the Great Lakes region of the United States and is threatened by the loss, alteration, and fragmentation of this habitat. Climate change has the potential to impact the hydrology of the wetlands the species depends upon over time. Poaching and collection for the foreign and domestic pet trade also pose a threat for spotted turtle populations." (US Fish and Wildlife Service) https://www.fws.gov/species/spotted-turtle-clemmys-guttata

I wished I'd spent more time taking pictures of this threatened turtle. Wow! I feel privileged to have seen, talked to, and photographed a beautiful creature people rarely encounter.

I must admit, I'd never been a big fan of the deep ditches crisscrossing the local countryside mainly because they're prime mosquito-breeding territory. When I realized how many other creatures depend on the waterways though, I changed my way of thinking. Predatory insects such as dragonflies require the same wet, marshy conditions and eat the skeeters, as do the fish and frogs living in the ditches. We can't forget the herons and other waterfowl that drop by to feed on the insects, frogs, and fish.

That habitat is vital for turtles as well. They need clean, shallow bodies of standing or slow-flowing water with muddy or mucky bottoms and aquatic vegetation. At night and during hot weather, they burrow under vegetation or into the soil or muddy bottoms of the wetland or crawl into mammal burrows. They overwinter in shallow water, mud, mammal burrows, or lodges.

Even though they are aquatic, turtles, including the spotted variety, also spend time on land, especially during mating and nesting seasons. That's when they're more vulnerable to forces outside of nature, i.e., crossing paths with humans and our mechanized contraptions.

Conservation biologist James Gibb says, "Turtle populations in the Northeast, Southeast, and Great Lakes region suffer at least a 10 percent annual kill rate from road kills, and some of these regions likely have up to 20 percent mortality rates due to traffic encounters." Unfortunately, at those rates, turtle species are vanishing in some regions.

We've got to look out for these innocent creatures as they navigate across the terrain. They're clueless about roads and traffic. Please, keep an eye out for turtles (and other critters) while you're driving. Here are some tips for helping a turtle cross the road.

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Greta Burroughs

Through the Lens of a Nature-Lover

No creature, whether it has two, four, six, eight, or no legs, should ever be homeless. Every living being deserves the basics of food, water, and shelter. By planting native plants, trees, and shrubs, I can do something toward providing the food and shelter these creatures need.

It's amazing how plants and insects evolved to interact with each other, and how one could always instinctively rely upon the other for survival.

That's what Mother Nature intended.

Unfortunately, humanity's carelessness and greed disrupted her master plan.

I'm on a quest to help restore Nature's balance by collecting seeds from, transplanting, or propagating the indigenous plants I find along the roadsides and fields before they are mown down or poisoned with pesticides.

Then, if my gardening skills don't fail me, my yard will eventually provide a year-round oasis of native flowers, trees, and shrubs that'll provide the food and shelter insects need to thrive and never be homeless again.

Through the Lens of a Nature-Lover will share my journey as I discover, photograph, and rescue the plants and bugs no one else notices.

Please join me in my quest to end homelessness. Thank you for caring.

Fabulous Way to Start the Day!

Intruder Alert!

All Creatures Great and Small

Greta Burroughs

Through the Lens of a Nature-Lover

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Fabulous Way to Start the Day!

Intruder Alert!

All Creatures Great and Small

Greta BurroughsThrough the Lens of a Nature-Lover​

Archives

Categories

Greta Burroughs

Through the Lens of a Nature-Lover