Switching parks soon!

I've enjoyed my summer here at Montauk State Park, but they're not going to be able to keep me on through the fall as we'd hoped. However, I found out that Sam A. Baker State Park was looking for a full-time naturalist to work through the fall, and today I found out that I got the job! I'll be starting there next week - although I will be coming back to Montauk one more time, as I already promised to help with programs during the holiday.

Hognose snakes – such drama!

Hognose snakes are known for their dramatic performances. Specifically, the lengths they go to in order to persuade whatever has frightened them that messing with them is a bad idea. They have several variations:

First, they will shake their tail very hard so that it rustles the leaves and might just make you think they are a rattlesnake. A lot of nonvenomous snakes do this particular trick, actually.

They will pretend to strike, but instead of biting they just head-butt you. If you saw a snake dart out at you and you felt something, you’d probably be fooled!

They will flatten out their neck and rear up like a cobra! (This is the one from the Naturalist office here at Montauk State Park – Steve sometimes takes it out and provokes it into doing this. I do not, as I have no confidence in my ability to keep it from heading for the hills.)

Tiny snakes

Earlier this summer, my coworker Azmyth brought in a brown snake that she caught in her yard on her day off when she was moving boxes. She had read that they do well in captivity, and this one did. Not all snakes do. She was not much bigger than a pencil, and that’s as big as they get – one of those things that produces the tiny rustle when you’re out hiking and then you can’t see anything. They eat worms, slugs, things like that.

We suspected she was pregnant, but didn’t know for sure. Then, on August 6, I went to show her to a visitor and realized she was not alone! There were several baby snakes in there!

Showing the park off to family

On July 28, my sister Joanne and her friend Amanda came to visit the park! They arrived a little before lunchtime, so we started with a walk at Montauk Spring. It was as lovely as ever, although I was disappointed they didn’t get to see the muskrat. Or even a snake!

This is one of those pretty little flowers that is too small to make it into the flower book.

A close encounter at Montauk Spring

On July 21 I was scheduled to do a nature walk at Montauk Spring. Sadly, no one showed. However, I walked out to the spring anyway, and was glad I did!

Bellflowers at the trail entrance. 

Feeding another snake

Most of our snakes eat mice. Our cottonmouth eats fish. The plains hognose snake eats mostly toads in the wild, so when Steve saw one next to his tomato plants, he grabbed it and told me to go give it to the hognose! He must have been hungry, because the second I dropped the toad in he was attacking it.

Warning: pictures below!

A better look at Montauk Spring

I have been writing and presenting programs here at Montauk since my first weekend. Several of them were the result of watching Steve give a program and then writing my own version of the same topic. However, the goal is to keep a good variety, so I kept trying to think of something different. I decided I wanted to plan a nature walk at Montauk Spring – it’s an easy walk, a clear trail, and a good possibility of seeing wildlife in the spring. I decided to go and walk the trail and plan my program. This was on July 10.

The first thing I saw at the parking area was a big bunch of pokeberry bushes. Any program I did here would have to start with a PSA about how extremely poisonous they are.

Temporary residents of the Naturalist Office

People sometimes bring us critters. One of the people who works at the hatchery frequently finds frogs and other small animals trapped in the intake pool. These are two of our temporary residents, both brought in during the first week of July.

A visitor brought us a tiny box turtle. The girl really liked looking at all our animals, and holding the snakes, and telling the other kids who came in about the snakes before I could – it could have been annoying, but I just kept reminding myself that I was exactly like that when I was her age… It’s just that now they pay me for it! Anyway, she came back to the Naturalist Office several times, and the last time it was to show us her turtle. She had found it, but was worried because it wasn’t eating, so she agreed to let us keep it. We kept her name for it, which was Blackberry.

Spotting the Bald Eagle nest, and first visit to Montauk Spring

It’s been fun working here at Montauk State Park. I’m one of three naturalists – the other two are Steve, who is here permanently, and Azmyth, who is a seasonal like me. The position includes not only presenting interpretive programs and providing visitor information, but also resource management, like trail maintenance, invasive weed eradication, and working on the unfinished part of the historic mill. Luckily, I prefer to do more programming and Azmyth prefers to do more outdoor work, so she and I get along pretty well! Steve does programs, and resource management, but also has to do a lot of other administrative-type stuff, including driving out to help at the new state park that got established earlier this summer, so he was glad to have two of us helping to divide the labor. That also meant that I had to start doing programs right away!

On July 1, after making sure the three of us would all be in at the same time, Steve drove us around the park to several different areas he wanted us to see. The first was to a spot where we could access the Pine Ridge Trail where it crosses the road – much faster than doing the entire two-mile loop! We walked a little way along the trail, then he led us off-trail to where we could see the eagle nest that has been active every year for a long time.

Can you spot it?

Feeding the Snake

The house I've been staying in this summer in is actually one of the old cabins built by the CCC – although it’s got electricity, and plumbing, and – thank goodness! – air conditioning. It’s a duplex, with two bedrooms, kitchen, and bathroom  on each side, and since there was only one other seasonal using it, we each had a side to ourself – with the understanding that someone else might get moved in at any time, and we would have to double up. It was a pretty good accommodation.

Unfortunately it also had a high cricket population. Every night I would come in and when I turned on the light there would be crickets everywhere! I started catching them and putting them in an old orange juice bottle, and bringing them in to the Naturalist Office to feed to the fish and the frogs. Apparently I really put a dent in the population, because now I only see one every once in a while.

                        

Then there was a mouse. And it kept raiding the mousetrap without getting caught. Steve gave me a “tin cat”, a live trap, and that did it. He told me to bring whatever I caught in to the office, and we would feed it to one of the snakes.

WARNING: snake pictures below the cut!

First time on the job site - Montauk State Park

I’m going to be posting a series of entries with photos of Montauk State Park, where I’ve been working as a seasonal naturalist this summer.

I found out about the job opening at in June, and on June 10 I went in for my interview. My dad drove out there with me – any excuse for a road trip! But it was nice to not have to try and find it by myself.

It’s a bit of a drive, almost three hours – southwest from St. Louis to Rolla, then straight south, then up and down and around on back roads. After the first section, we needed a break, and Dad knew to look for a place called Lane Spring, just south of Rolla. It’s part of Mark Twain National Forest. We took a short walk out to the spring, and saw something very unexpected.

Hummingbirds!!!

Last weekend there was a special program here at Montauk State Park. Lanny Chambers, a master bird bander who specializes in hummingbirds, was set up in front of the lodge on Sunday and spent the morning capturing,measuring, banding, and releasing hummingbirds, while his wife Linda recorded all the information. They were here a month ago, but I didn’t get any pictures because it started raining shortly after they started, and handling hummingbirds with wet fingers can catch on the feathers and injure the birds. So, happily, I was able to watch Lanny in action again!

They will be here one more time this year, on Labor Day weekend.

The bait for the trap was a hummingbird feeder, with a cage set up around it and a trapdoor attached to a string. Once the birds got inside, the door came down. Now all that was left was to catch them!

Sorry, I disappeared into the woods

I’m still alive! I had gotten behind in posting about the hikes I was doing all spring, and then I finally got a job, which distracted me further. This time it is a state park – Montauk State Park, which is only a few hours from St. Louis. I got the job pretty suddenly – I was waiting to hear back about a bunch of national park jobs, but that system had gotten backed up. I found out that Montauk SP was looking for a seasonal naturalist, so I emailed a resume. I talked to someone on the phone and he said they were interested and asked me to come in for an interview – but when I got there it turned out that they had already decided to hire me, and the interview was more of an overview! And I started less than a week later, on June 16!

It’s been a little hectic, because this park puts on interpretive programs every day during the summer, so I had to learn some and write some new ones pretty quickly. But it’s also a lot of fun! This park is primarily a destination for trout fishing, but since all but the most determined fishermen need a break now and then, we have mill tours, and “critter encounters” at the Naturalist’s Office – or they can just come in and look at the animal pelts, and the snakes. I have really been enjoying the snakes – we take them out a lot, for people to touch and hold, or just for fun when we need a break!

There is another seasonal naturalist, Azmyth, and the Chief Naturalist is Steve. Everyone loves Steve – he’s been here for years and everyone knows him. He has been telling me that there are a lot of projects that we will be working on once the school year starts and there aren’t as many visitors – we will still do programs, especially on the weekends, but there is a lot of other stuff to do behind the scenes. It’s going to be interesting to see what – we’ve been doing things here and there all along, but there will be a lot more time.

I haven’t done any hiking yet because it’s been so hot – temperatures in the 90s and heat advisories – but I have walked out to Montauk Spring several  times – I am working on organizing some pictures to post. I have also done several night hikes – walks, really, out by Montauk Lake, which is more of a long pond. I did one last night, in fact, and we saw a deer and two armadillos! No other big critters, but in the clear water we saw multiple crayfish and sculpin. And the huge trout in their pool, waiting to be released into the river.

List of wildlife seen since I started working here a month and a half ago:

Deer – and fawns!

Raccoons

Woodchucks/groundhogs

Beaver

Muskrats

Opossum
Skunks

Armadillos

Little Brown Bats

Big Brown Bats (they are still small!)

Barred Owls

The owls flew into the campground amphitheater in response to a CD of owls calling. They thought they heard a party starting up and wanted to know where everybody was! I’m going to be doing that program tonight, for the first time – but I’m fairly certain the owls will show up, and that’s all anybody is going to remember, whether or not I flub the first part!

I still have not yet seen a mink or an otter. I really want to see an otter. I mean, I REALLY want to see an otter. Multiple otters. Fortunately, it looks like I will be here all the way through October, so I have plenty of time to hope to see them!