Raptors are sexy!/Mailbag

I saw this Red-Tailed Hawk on top of one of our bluebird houses this morning!

He is about to take off, because it took so long for the camera to focus on him.

Here he is in the tree behind the birdhouse.

Mailbag-


From a comment posted to the previous blog entry....

Brian Kuehn  said...

After one of these burns it is common to find a bunch of toasted golf balls left behind.

Well, what do you think?

It took me about 5 mins to find these along #11.

Burn Season is Underway!

The City of Ann Arbor's Natural Areas Preservation unit started the 2011 burn season yesterday and one of the first locations chosen was Leslie Park. These controlled burns are used to try and control the spread of invasive plant species. I will have a longer post later that will go into more detail, but here are some pictures and a video taken yesterday (March 28, 2011)

Before

After

Before



During

After



Sunrise Pictures

Here is one reason why I am a morning person.

A Sure Sign of Spring

I saw this bluebird and it's mate, hanging out on one of our bluebird houses this morning.

Traver Creek Testing with the AALC

Last Wednesday, members of Tracey Marchyok's 4th and 5th grade class from the Ann Arbor Learning Community along with Stefan Szumko from the Leslie Science and Learning Center, came to the golf course to test Traver Creek for various factors, such as pH, nitrogen, phosphorous and temperature. (Edit: A link to an Ann Arbor.com article is here)

I spent some time talking to the class about the things we are doing at Leslie Park to enhance our wildlife habitat and become certified in the Audubon Cooperative Sanctuary Program for Golf Courses.

We then went out and tested the water. Stefan was nice enough to don the waders and pull the water out for the kids and then spent a half an hour searching around for macro-invertebrates in the mud.

The class then walked through Black Pond Woods back to the science center.

February Weather Summary (2011)

February had a high temperature of 56.0 degrees (Feb18th) and a low of -3.8 degrees (Feb 11th). The average temperature was 26.3. Highest wind speed recorded was 34 mph (Feb 14th).  Fifteen days the high temperature was above freezing while on 26 of the days, the low was below 32 degrees. 1.07 inches of rain fell in the month with three days recording over a tenth of an inch (22nd, 27th and 28th).