Today Amy and I went back to Hoffler Creek Wildlife Foundation & Preserve. The preserve itself is beautiful, but as with any outdoor setting people should be aware and be careful. Today was classified as a high tick day on the tick-o-meter, a device used to tell just how many ticks you may be picking off yourself as you arrive back at the parking lot.
Tick-o-meter, its a high tick day use caution
At Hoffler we have transects just off of two major trails, Riparian Trail and Homestead Trail. Trails have tick warning signs to remind visitors to use caution.
Kids Trail "Here be ticks!" The park is great for kids, we spotted a lot of wildlife ourselves, so it has very valuable educational opportunities especially from the point of view of a future Wildlife Biologist, but a few tick checks are definitely necessary.
This is what a lone star female looks like on a flag.
This is me removing the lone star from my flag, most of the ticks we find here are lone stars
It's a very careful process, don't want them all to escape...
Sometimes we do get adult female Ixodes though, not sure if its an affinis or scapularis; we'll save that for the lab later.
Overall Hoffler is a great place to see some critters and an amazing view of the water.
Toad with cobweb(?) But he was cool!
-Lexi
No comments:
Post a Comment