{"id":2267,"date":"2010-06-17T12:14:53","date_gmt":"2010-06-17T18:14:53","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.kabt.org\/?p=2267"},"modified":"2010-06-17T12:40:14","modified_gmt":"2010-06-17T18:40:14","slug":"home-home-on-the-range","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.kabt.org\/?p=2267","title":{"rendered":"Home, Home on the Range"},"content":{"rendered":"

Where the Mule Deer and the Pronghorn Antelope Play…
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\nReflections on the KABT Field Trip\u00a0in Logan County, June 4-6, 2010<\/p>\n

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I am not sure what KABT’s goal for the field trip were but for me\u00a0they were two-fold.\u00a0 I wanted to provide an inspirational outdoor experience for four of my senior students, and two of my children, who eagerly participated in the trip, while learning myself about the wonderful short-grass prairie from our very own sage, the Yoda-like natural history\u00a0master, Stan Roth.\u00a0<\/p>\n

In both regards the trip was a resounding success, even though\u00a0I failed to continue to follow Noah’s driving lead into better pastures where he was finally able to witness the character of our pursuit, the endangered a recently re-established Black-Footed Ferret (see Noah’s posts).\u00a0<\/p>\n

If you are sad that you missed the trip, continue on since I did my best to record it all for you…<\/p>\n

More specifically, follow along to see what I saw<\/a>, learn what I learned, listen while I contemplate what KABT may have learned, and educate yourself on the prairie dog wars of Logan County, Kansas\u00a0in hopes of a\u00a0return trip\u00a0to this wonderful county…\u00a0<\/p>\n

I apologize up front for the lack of quality audio in some of the following videos…\u00a0 I was just using a flip mino, and as you will see, it can get quite windy out west.\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n

Also, two the videos I am sharing are too large for YouTube standards (more than 10 minutes), so I have provided a link to the files being stored elsewhere.\u00a0 They should open and play in windows media player but if not (which has happened to me already), just right-click, save to your local machine, and view using Quick Time.\u00a0 I will continue to work on having them display in a more user friendly manner…<\/em><\/p>\n

What did I see?<\/strong><\/p>\n

I know I won’t be all inclusive since I didn’t record all the plants and birds that we observed, but here goes…<\/p>\n

yucca, indian blanket, prince’s plume, little bluestem, buffalo grass, western salsify, prickey pear and button cactus, sage, larkspur,\u00a0stinkhorn mushroom, green sunfish (in the Smoky Valley River that had flowing water), great plains toad, woodhouse’s toad, plains spadefooted toad, ornate box turtle, prairie lizard, six-linned racerunner, earless lizard, coachwhip, plains garter snake, common kingsnake, bullsnake, prairie rattlesnake, racer, western hognose snake, eastern and western kingbirds, mocking bird, blue jay (two words), orchard oriole, barn owl,\u00a0red-headed woodpecker, grasshopper sparrow, horned lark, barn swallow, cliff swallow, night hawk, turkey vulture, red-tailed hawk, burrowing owl, ferruginous hawk, unidentified rodents, kangaroo rat, cotton tail rabbit, black-tailed jack rabbit, raccoon, white-tailed deer, mule deer, pronghorn, and swift fox.\u00a0<\/p>\n

It sounds like a short-grass prairie doesn’t it?<\/p>\n

Well, we also saw humans, yellow sweat clover, corn, wheat, a dog, some cats, lambs, chickens, and quite a number of\u00a0cows.\u00a0 No herds of bison, at least out west…<\/p>\n