Nature Treasure Hunt

Catbird

A plain gray bird with a black toupee, catbirds love to eat honeybees. There are several that nest along the trail down to the river, and wether or not you see one, you will most definitely hear them. They sound a lot like a grumpy cat, with a raspy, one syllable “mew”. Catbirds are also excellent copy cats, and like mockingbirds, often mimic the sounds of other birds in the area.

Canada Goose

Each spring, a breeding pair of Canada Geese hatches a clutch of goslings in a shallow cove just upriver. Over the course of the summer, they can often be seen paddling around off the end of the peninsula. Sometimes, you can even hear them honking to each other in the middle of the night!

There are many birds and animals that make their homes and raise their families in or around the basin. You can also find a large variety of trees, bushes, and flowers. During your stay, you are likely to see, at least once, many of the following. See how many things on this list you can see, hear, or smell!

Great Blue Heron

Our unofficial mascot is the resident Great Blue Heron that can be seen daily gliding in (or out) of the basin. He loves striding along it’s shores searching for a tasty snack or standing like a statue while waiting for fish to swim around his long legs.

Bonus: Once in awhile, you can hear him announcing his arrival (or departure) with a sort of prehistoric dinosaur call.

Bald Eagle

Seeing a Bald Eagle is always exiting, and your chances of seeing one during your stay are pretty good. A breeding pair resides just below our stretch of river beyond the dam and raises a family every summer.

Bonus: If you’re real lucky, you may get the chance to see them training a fledgling to fish! Fledglings are the same size as their parents but a solid, dark brown without any of the white head feathers that it will eventually display.

Frog

Leopard frogs love the trail side pools you will pass on your way down to the water. Bullfrogs can commonly be spotted in the shallow, grassier areas toward the back of the basin.

Red Fox

While you are unlikely to see one (unless you are up very early in the morning) you may get a whiff. Red Foxes mark their areas with a strong smell that is often mistaken for skunk. Our chickens are penned in safe, but that doesn’t stop a local fox mother from swinging by once or twice a week just to make sure no one left the gate unlatched. If you hear a fox at night, you probably won’t forget it! To claim their territory, they screech like a woman screaming, and they also “gekker” to each other if they feel threatened. Don’t be frightened, they’re just trying to sound scarier than they actually are!

Coyote

You probably won’t see any coyotes, but you may hear them at night, and you may see their prints in the sand. Coyotes travel in groups and sometimes you can hear them playfully calling, yipping, and howling to each other as they hunt for food and mischief.

Beaver

While primarily nocturnal, beavers can often be spotted swimming up, down, and across the river. Look for a head the size of a large cat followed by a large “V” in the water trailing out behind in it’s wake. Nearly everywhere you look along the edge of the river, you’ll see evidence of the beavers hard at work. They leave stumps, half chewed trees, and sticks all over the place, clearly identified by the large teeth marks. Most of the well traveled paths you see entering/exiting the water in the thick underbrush are beaver slides made and used by the local beaver family.

Bonus: Keep your eyes out for “castor mounds”, large muddy piles made and maintained along the riverbank to mark the beavers territory.

Painted Turtle

Painted turtles are one of our favorite sights around the basin. If the sun is out, you will probably find as many as a half-dozen turtles sunbathing on the logs toward the back of the basin.

White-Tailed Deer

Racoon

Raccoons love the swampy area beside where we keep the kayaks and paddle boards. They should be sleeping while you’re playing but they often leave their prints behind. Make sure you take a minute to examine how different their “hand” prints are from their “foot” prints!

Just about every day deer use the trails around the basin, often walking all the way up to the top of the hill into our backyard. Keep an eye out and you may see one! If not, you will definitely see tracks; big, medium, and small prints are all over the place!

Cattail

The fluffy seed heads might look like a corndog, but they don’t taste good! One of the coolest swamp grasses (normal people say that haha) many parts of the cattail are edible and can be used for other things too. A very useful native plant.

Poison Ivy

Always keep your eyes out for poison ivy. Learning how to identify plants you should avoid is an important part of exploring the outdoors. This picture shows the general shape, but it can be all green, mostly rusty brown to red, or a combination. The old adage is: leaves of 3, leave it be!

Oak Tree

Our favorite tree on the property, and the largest, is an old oak we have named “General Sherman,” like the famous sequoia. This giant oak is hard to miss! We have a lot of oaks on the property, and they drop a lot of acorns! The blue jays help to plant them. You will find baby oak trees everywhere if you stop to look.

Swarm Trap

We have positioned several empty “houses” for wild bees around the property. These reddish-brown boxes are attached to tree trunks about six feet off the ground and provide a safe place for them to go in the spring when honeybees form new colonies. How many can you spot?