Southern Indiana Trails

Spring and summer months bring out a variety of insects and one of the most common is the tick. Ticks are found almost everywhere in North America and all ticks have one behavior in common, they feed on the blood of mammals. The American dog tick is a common variety of these parasites as is the black-legged tick. Ticks can carry several potentially serious bacterial diseases including Lyme Disease and Spotted or Rocky Mountain Spotted Fever. The potential for you to be exposed to these illnesses make control of ticks important you, your family as well as your pets and other domesticated animals and livestock. In order to effectively control ticks you must first understand how they develop and where you or your pets are mostly to be exposed. The small tick larva usually feed on mice and other small rodents until they mature to what is called the nymph stage, fall off and begin to look for other small mammals to feed on. This process can take anywhere from two to three weeks. When they r...

Fountain

They took time to actually pose for the camera and went right back to body slamming each other .

This is a small hydroponic garden setup that works really well. I`m curently growing some milkweed cuttings for our monarch butterfly project.

Biodiversity Factory - Tight budget limits growth of protected area Federal funds drying up for Patoka River's ... By Mark Wilson (Contact) Sunday, May 18, 2008 So many different kinds of animals and plants live in the wet, fertile areas of Pike and Gibson counties that make up the Patoka River National Wildlife Refuge that it is often described as a "biodiversity factory." Endangered whooping cranes stop there during migration. Eagles nest there, as does a colony of endangered Indiana bats. JASON CLARK / Courier & Press A male red-winged blackbird pauses on top of a sign near the Snakey Point Marsh in the Patoka River National Wildlife Refuge recently. The land was one of the first acquired by the refuge, which was established in 1994. With a lack of funding for land acquisition over the past several years, private buyers have been purchasing property within the refuge and acquisition boundary for personal use and private development. But with funding crunches limiti...

Went out today with some gear and milkweed plants. Added 5 stations along the butterfly trail, which have 4 plants per site. I don't expect much from them this year, my biggest hope is that they can adapt, grow and survive. Also took my weed eater and widened the trail all the way through, there were many tall grasses covering the trails which increases the chances of getting ticks on yourself. Here is a link to a few photos of the way stations. Monarch Stations

"THE MONARCH PROJECT" Southern Indiana Trails has teamed up with livemonarch.org Our Mission: To keep our skies filled with Nature's color. The education, involvement, assistance and acknowledgment of persons directly acting to benefit the Monarch Butterfly and various native creatures who have suffered a decline in their natural habitats. Clear Goals. Clear objectives. Results you can see. Create an experience to be remembered for a lifetime. Through livemonarch, we were able to purchase 20 milkweed plant that we will be planting in in 5 (stations) in the Angel Mounds woods. We will be monitoring the progress in each station in hopes to see caterpillars some time in early summer. Angel Mounds woods has suffered a tremendous loss of canopy the the 2005 tornado and will take nearly 25 years to recover into climax forest again. For now, the conditions are supporting a whole new ecosystem. Last year saw the skies filled with many varieties of butterfly, including the Monarc...