Biology 101

Last year Matt said “no more biology lessons…..only blog about people, friends, family”. But the problem with that is we live in a wildlife reserve. We are surrounded by “biology”. I can’t help but share what’s going on, even if it is biology. So I’m going to ignore him for a bit and give a lesson to you anyway (sorry Matt, don’t read it!:)

A few years ago the county built a few ponds around the park to stop the silt from the farmland surrounding the park from getting into the main lake and filling it up. We have one of these ponds right by the house.

We can sit on the deck and watch wildlife around the pond every day. We see deer and their new fawns, turtles (we have a new turtle nest right next to the deck…..we watched the mother lay her eggs the other night and now are just waiting for them to hatch), egrets, herons, muskrats, eagles, turkeys, bullfrogs, geese and ducks at or near the pond regularly. The most common one is the Canadian Goose. 

We had several pairs hatch their eggs in early-mid May around the pond, and have watched the goslings grow. I have picture after picture of them, sometimes clear up to the driveway, getting bigger by the day.

The parents teach them what to eat and teach them how to clean themselves in the water. They were doing that this morning. They would go under the water for several feet then come back up. Almost like they were just playing.

I really enjoy watching them.

But geese are pretty fertile creatures. Even with the raccoons and mink that raid the nests every year, you still have too many geese. If they are where people are, you end up with trouble. The people start feeding them, and the geese end up everywhere exactly where you don’t want them.  Our park just can’t have the high numbers of geese that come back every year. 

So the DNR came today to transplant several of the geese to a different area that can handle the higher numbers of geese. The young ones will return to nest every year from the place where they learn to fly from, so they transplant them before the goslings have learned to fly.

They have moved geese from here for several years, but this is the first year that I could actually watch….they were doing it in my front yard! I stood on the deck and just watched (and snapped photos).

It wasn’t too spectacular really…..they just snuck up on the geese and herded them where they wanted them to go. Since the young can’t fly yet, the parents won’t leave them, so it’s fairly easy to herd them (although I just found out that the parents are molting right now and couldn’t fly anyway…..maybe it’s not that they want to stay with their babies!).

 

They just pushed them down a mowed trail toward the road into an already set up catch-pen.

They then loaded them into box in the back of a pickup to transport them.  They left one pair with very young goslings here, but took 25 of the rest of them to Otter Creek Marsh, which is an Iowa State waterfowl refuge an hour south of here that can handle the higher numbers.

That ends the lesson for today……. did you learn anything new?

(I bet you read it all the way through even though you didn’t want to….didn’t you Matt?)

Joe & Sarah

Joe & Sarah turned 28 years old last week. I cannot believe that I actually have kids that are 28 years old! It seems very strange…….I can’t be old enough to have kids that old, right?

Everyone came out to the house for dinner Saturday to celebrate. It was a perfect evening outside. We grilled and had a nice fire. 

I made their favorite (although not very good for you) treats for desert. (and made them take any leftovers home with them!)

Joe even helped “cook”.

Ave played with the dogs and loved on her aunt Lauren.

And met the buffalo and some snakes….

And went for a walk around the park. Obviously from this photo you can tell that Ava and the dogs didn’t walk much.

Matt bought Joe toys for his birthday…….so Ava has something to play with at their house. :)

Now we just need to get Trevor old enough so he can join in the fun.

Happy Birthday guys!

Sauerkraut Days

Like Sauerkraut? How about a festival for it? There’s one in Ackley every year, so this year we thought we would head over to see what it’s all about. Our friends, Roger & Sandy, are staying in Hampton, which is close, so we took the camper up and stayed at Beed’s Lake State Park.

We had a schedule of events that told us at 5:00 they served free “wieners and sauerkraut” to anyone that was at the festival.  We thought we might as well be there to have something free, right? What we found out, though, is that not many other people were too excited about getting the free dinner.  The “wieners” were just hot dogs, which I don’t care for, but the sauerkraut was pretty good, although they gave each person about a cup of it!

They serve it out of a huge vat, you just walk up and they give you a platefull.

At 5:00 on Friday night in the big town of Ackley (Pop. ~1800), there wasn’t many people out.  They did have the band playing for entertainment.

I’m not sure what these were for, but there were stuffed people sitting on all the benches on the main street. It was funny to see the older townsfolk sitting next to them eating their free wieners and ‘kraut.

 

Al couldn’t resist it either.

We camped at Beed’s Lake State Park just outside of Hampton. Sarah told me to make sure and take the camera, and I’m glad I did.  The park has been there since the 1930’s, and had some great buildings, and a spillway at the end of the lake. Below the spillway it was like you were in an entirely different area. 

From the lake, the spillway looked like an infinity pool. You can’t hardly tell where the water stops and the trees begin.

I did catch a nice catfish below the spillway. Although Al laughed at me because I was fishing with a bass lure, and that’s not supposed to catch catfish. Hah!

The park rents out fishing boats for only $35 per day including gas and bait, so we didn’t even take our boat. Roger & Sandy rented one as well.

Al and I fished most of the day. We found a nice spot and caught bluegill after bluegill. I don’t mind fishing, but I’m not one to do it all day long. When they are biting like this, though, it was fun! And for the record I did bait my own hooks……..but Al took the fish off for me (although that was because pretty much every one that I caught had the hook so far down inside it that we had to keep it!)

Even though the temperatures the entire weekend were in the 90’s, and it was sunny & humid, it was a good weekend.It was nice to get out of our park and away from our campers for a weekend.  (And we made some GREAT fish tacos Sunday when we got home!)

The End of the World

“Wheerrredeeego!?”

(Funny for the day courtesy of Matt)

Tiptoe through the tulips….

We took the camper and went to Des Moines last weekend. Mom and Doug were still here, it was opening day for the Des Moines Farmer’s Market and the Pella Tulip Time Festival was going on, and it was a gorgeous weekend!

The Des Moines Farmer’s market is huge (ok, it’s huge for what I’m used to….maybe those of you who live elsewhere have a bigger one, but I soooo wish we had this one nearer to us). It had flowers, tomato plants, veggies, bread, and anything else you could want. I was surprised that we didn’t see any asparagus or rhubarb, but we found lots more to buy anyway.

There are blocks and blocks of vendors. Did I mention that I wish we had this closer to us? We may have to just make the 90 minute trip once a month or so and go more often.

There were also lots of dogs. Everyone brought their dogs.

Big dogs. And little dogs.

And everything else.

Mom and I hit pretty much every booth. Everyone else just stood around waiting for us to come back. Even Matt brought his dog.

We then headed to Pella for the annual Tulip Festival.  Pella was founded in the mid 1800’s by Dutch Separatists, and they have had the Tulip Festival since 1935. There are up to 300,000 tulips planted each year for the festival. They have the festival to celebrate the Dutch heritage and history.

My boss is from The Netherlands. I have seen him in his wooden shoes, listened as he spoke to his mom and dad on the phone in Dutch at my desk, and tasted the treats he brought back from his visits. But that’s pretty much the extent of my knowledge. I wish we had a bit more time to spend there. I think I would like to go back when there weren’t thousands of people, though.

We have had a late spring this year, and the tulips were spectacular. They were everywhere around town. In every color.

 

It was funny to watch all the people taking pictures of the tulips.

There were people dressed in costume.

And entertainment about the Dutch history.

And a parade with beautiful floats.

It was a great weekend with beautiful weather.  (and I spent $11.00 and won $90 bucks at the casino on Friday night….so that just added to the nice weekend)