![\"IMG_2266\"](\"https:\/\/www.kabt.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/06\/IMG_2266.jpg\")
<\/a>\nOur first stop was at the Headquarters of the Marais des Cygnes National Wildlife Refuge where we met with Kim Martin, Federal Law Officer at the refuge.\u00a0 She showed us a 12 minutes video introducing us to the history and growth of the\u00a0national wildlife refuge system.\u00a0 She then talked and answered questions about the Marais des Cygnes refuge and her duties in federal law enforcement.<\/p>\n
After our interactions with the chelonians, we traveled a wooded area surrounding an abandoned coal mining operation.\u00a0 We were in search of the only stand of swamp white oak in the entire state of Kansas.\u00a0 We read the informative email from MdCNWR Biologist, Tim Menard, which\u00a0contained the following information – \u00a0“As you walk west from the state line parking lot, the swamp white will begin to appear before you get to the old service road, and definitely before you get to the flowing creek.\u00a0 many of these trees are forked at the base.\u00a0 Then you can see many more as you walk to the northwest.\u00a0 The leaves look like chinkapin (which are just on the other side of the hill).\u00a0 However, look for last year’s acorn caps with the long stem attached.”\u00a0 We successfully found the trees.\u00a0\u00a0At this stop we\u00a0also witnessed a ringneck snake and the caterpillar of the pipe-vine swallowtail butterfly.\u00a0 Chris Ollig from Blue Valley North High School introduced the group to dendrochronology and the appropriate use of the increment borer.<\/p>\n On Sunday, those that were left travelled to the Smith Ranch newt pond.\u00a0 We encountered a large plain-bellied water snake (check out the story on the KS Herpetology Facebook), a worm snake, and a ground skink.\u00a0 None of us braved the muddy pond to seine for newts.<\/p>\n I will be adding some links in the future, and subsequently will be creating individual posts for some of the information that we planned on sharing but didn’t seem the time to.<\/p>\n Enjoy!<\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" As one of the trip coordinators for this year’s field trip, I must say that even though I was a bit stressed when\u00a0our journey began\u00a0and not everyone decided to take advantage of the free van transportation, it didn’t take long for me to relax as I watched the participants\u00a0striking up\u00a0conversations with each other in the<\/a>
\nAfter our introduction, we check 15 small mammal traps that had been baited and set the afternoon before.\u00a0 The traps were set in a recently burned restoration area, a non-burned restoration area, and a non-burned area that within a remnant tallgrass prairie.\u00a0 We had no success in either of the restorations but captured a single hispid cotton rat and lone deer mouse in the prairie remnant.\u00a0 While traversing the prairies the\u00a0young naturalist\u00a0in our party enjoyed netting the numerous great spangled fritillary butterflies we observed pollinating a stand of dogbane.<\/p>\n<\/a>
\n<\/a>
\nFrom there we travel to another prairie restoration along Yardley Road to search for Mead’s Milkweed.\u00a0 This federally endangered plant is known to exist naturally at three locations on the NWR property.\u00a0 The plants we saw were individuals that had been planted into one of their restorations.\u00a0 Participants were able to find a couple of plants that were in full bloom.<\/p>\n<\/a>
\nFrom there we returned to Linn County Park for lunch and a short siesta.\u00a0 When finished, we returned the NWR and headed to Stick Pond adjacent to the photoblind to check 4 turtle traps that had been baited and set the evening prior.\u00a0 Three of the traps were hoop traps and one was a cage trap.\u00a0 Each were baited with creamed corn and mackerel.\u00a0 Interestingly enough, three of the traps had not a single turtle while one of the hoop traps contained 13 turtles of three species – 1 large snapping turtles, 1 painted turtle, and 12 large sliders (2 males and 10 females based on fore fingernail length).\u00a0 It took us awhile to safely position the snapping turtle for removal from the trap and get a few pictures.\u00a0 You’ll have to check out the KABT Facebook site for images of the turtles.\u00a0 I had my hands full and didn’t want to get my camera wet.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n<\/p>\n<\/a>
\nNext, we traveled to Turkey Foot Pond, a man-made pond resulting from previous coal mining activities.\u00a0 There we checked four additional turtle traps as well as surveyed for freshwater mussels known to occur at the site.\u00a0 As the name implies, Turkey Foot Pond has three fingers.\u00a0 On our descent to the western most finger, we encountered a lush stand of equisetum.\u00a0 Two young snakes were observed – a plain-bellied water snake and a northern water snake –\u00a0and a horsehair worm was discovered swimming in the pond along the shore.\u00a0 We found a number of mussels the most abundant of which was the three ridge mussel.\u00a0 The identities of the other mussels encountered awaits verification by mussel experts.\u00a0 In the second finger we searched, we captured two sliders in one of four traps deployed.\u00a0 Check out the aged slider that doesn’t look like a slider anymore in the images below.<\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n<\/a>\u00a0 <\/a><\/p>\n<\/a>
\nFinally, we travelled to the Marais des Cygnes River itself to search for the mussels beds that eluded Kelley Tuel and I on our previous trip to the refuge.\u00a0 The group rallied their remaining reserves of energy to make the 1\/2 mile walk\u00a0into the site.\u00a0\u00a0Along the way\u00a0a number of gravid ribbon snakes were found hanging out in a warm ephemeral watered ditch.\u00a0 Most of the kids and only two adults made there way into the river.\u00a0 Not thinking, I swam downstream looking for mussels and found a few weathered shells and a young slider basking on a log.\u00a0 Otherwise, the kids enjoyed this final swim one of the parents of the big muddy.<\/p>\n<\/a> <\/a> <\/a> <\/a><\/p>\n<\/a> <\/a><\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n<\/a> <\/a><\/p>\n
+ Read More<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":30,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_s2mail":"yes","_uf_show_specific_survey":0,"_uf_disable_surveys":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[6,1,36],"tags":[594,197,606,497,607,603,601,605,602,600,604,579],"class_list":["post-4579","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-field-trips","category-kabt-news","category-nature","tag-594","tag-field-trip","tag-freshwater-mussels","tag-kansas","tag-linn-county","tag-mammal-trapping","tag-marais-des-cygnes","tag-meads-milkweed","tag-national-wildlife-refuge","tag-spring","tag-swamp-white-oak","tag-turtle-trapping"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kabt.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4579","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kabt.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kabt.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kabt.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/30"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kabt.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=4579"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/www.kabt.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4579\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4609,"href":"https:\/\/www.kabt.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4579\/revisions\/4609"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kabt.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=4579"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kabt.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=4579"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kabt.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=4579"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}