The month of April has become an extremely busy one, but this is nothing to complain about!
I'm taking classes again, not for school but as training to become a master naturalist! Along with classes, volunteering at The Wild Animal Sanctuary, the job I have already, and a few interviews that lead to the job I will be starting in May, it has been a busy spring!
Let's rewind a bit so I can explain what a Master Naturalist is, and how I happened upon it.
Just a few months ago, I was applying for as many jobs as I could, knowing that I simply couldn't stay at my current job as a boat inspector, because I wasn't using this degree I spent all my money on.
So while hunting for jobs, I came across one job for a natural interpreter.
It sounded interesting, and just the sort of job I'd love to do. The only problem was, I didn't really know a lot about Colorado ecology. Being a Mainer, I felt more at home trying to interpret a mixed forest stand filled with porcupine and gray squirrels, but in Colorado I found myself in this strange ecosystem, mountains and prairies filled with coyotes and black tailed prairie dogs, and I felt knowledge-less.
So I started looking for ways to become a naturalist, and to learn more about Colorado ecosystems. What I ended up finding was the Master Naturalist class in Fort Collins. The class was free, and I imagined there was a lot of demand to get into this class. So I applied immediately, and hoped for the best. While becoming a master naturalist would not pay me anything, I would be a volunteer, but this would be a fantastic networking experience and a chance to explore my teaching skills, to see if that is a path I want to wander down.
About the middle of March, while volunteering at The Wild Animal Sanctuary on a cold and quiet day when I got a phone call. I was a bit worried, because I was standing in the lion house, and we had some vocal lions that are hard to talk over when they get started.
Luckily, they remained quiet, and as I had hopped, the call was from the Master Naturalist program, and I got accepted into the class!
This was very exciting, especially because by this time I had thought I didn't make it in, classes started at the end of March and I thought I would have heard from them sooner. This meant I had to get a few shifts covered to attend the class, but luckily that was soon all sorted out!
The master naturalist classes have been great. We talked about geology, ecology, prairie dogs, native plants, life zones, aquatic insects, and more!
We also had to make a presentation, and this ten minute presentation is a good demonstration about what we do as master naturalists. A lot of programs are for kids, especially in the Spring and Fall, as that is when there are a lot of class field trips. There are also programs for really young kids (accompanied by their parents) and even programs that we can teach for adults or mixed ages.
One adult program is a night walk lead by a master naturalist at Bobcat Ridge, and it's adults only because sometimes they want some peace and quiet! We have night walks where kids are allowed too, of course.
If you want to see the ten minute presentation that I did about Birds of Prey, the link is below!
We have gone to a few different places now, called Natural Areas, to get to know them better for when we eventually do programs at them.
These include:
Bobcat Ridge
Open from sunrise to sunset, with a gate that closes at sunset (don't get locked in!) and a ranger that lives there! There are wildlife cameras here that have gotten photos of wildlife that people haven't seen at the park, such as the aberts (or tassle-eared) squirrel, and mountain goat. They showed up on the camera, but people didn't know they had been there! (If not for the cameras, of course).
They have caught a lot of animals on these cameras, from butterflies to bobcats, coyotes and skunk, mountain lions and bears, as well as a red fox with black fur!
Elk like to come down to this area in the winter, when the cold is too harsh up the mountains they come down for food. We saw a lot of elk scat on our trip there.
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| Elk scat! Do not eat! = P |
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| Ponderosa Pines! Known for their fire resistance and cones with little spikes on the outside! |
Bobcat Ridge also has a lot of historical value. On site there are some old homes and farms that had been restored, from farmers who had lived here in the 1880's.
Also found on site are stone circles believed to have been left behind by Native American tribes, and the stones are believed to have held the sides of their tents down.
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| This is the Kitchen/Smith Cabin. A whole family lived in this small house, and three children had been born there. Virginia Kitchen in 1919, Mary Griffing in 1929 and David Griffing in 1932. |
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| The sign located next to the stone circle. There are more of these on the site, but due to the tall grass they are very hard to find. It's not worth going off trail to search, there are rattle snakes here! |
Poudre River:
This river is named Cache la Poudre after the French fur traders traveling by wagon in 1836 got stuck on their way to Wyoming. They had to lighten their load to go on, and so they hid some gun powder off the shore. They came back in the spring, but apparently this was a famous enough story that the river was named after the cache of powder that had been left there.
This is a scenic area with lots of trails, and its shore had suffered some damage from the flood that occurred last fall.
When we went to Cache la Poudre River, it was to look at aquatic insects, which is a class taught along with the Fort Collins Watershed employees, to teach people not only how the river works, but what they might find in it.
Using partners, we kicked soil and over turned rocks upstream from the person holding the net, catching the insects that clung to the rocks.
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| There are a lot of caddisflies, mayflies and stoneflies! |
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| A dichotomous key to help identify what we found |
Coyote Ridge
This is an area where the trail goes for a few miles before crossing into state owned forests and trails. Rattle snakes are something to be wary off, look before you sit!
It hosts a prairie dog colony that sometimes has to be managed, because they don't have a lot of predators in this area it is easy for them to have a population boom and spread. This is a problem because they can overgraze and destroy an area.
Coyote Ridge is rich in geologic history, and most of which used to be the seabed a 100 million years ago.
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| This plant, from the mustard family, only grows on the Neobrara formation! |
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| The Mule deer here aren't really all that concerned by our presence |
We also went to Fossil Creek, a place where we conduct eagle watches for the bald eagles that roost there in the winter, although this year they seem to be remaining year round and so we may have summer eagle watches! It's a location on the edge of town also used for star gazing and other events, and as it has a lot of protected areas, it is an amazing birding location.
I don't have pictures yet, but I will have to return soon!
This is roughly everything that goes into my training so far. I only have one week left of classes, and a training at Soapstone in May! I also have a certification coming up, I have to lead a class by myself in order to get certified as a Master Naturalist, and then I can volunteer as much as I want!
I will update again once I've gone to Soapstone Prairie, a place that has a huge archeological significance!
