Thanksgiving is one of my favorite holidays...the opportunity to show appreciation is something often overlooked in our busy lives.   On our Facebook site through November, I've been giving credit to those individuals and groups who have made the ABC a special place and without whom, it would be difficult to keep up a private conservancy.

This includes....
*   Sarah & Tim for the bench, for providing seed & for chainsaw work in the woods
*  Rich & Brenda for being the adopted "caretakers" of the conservancy, for making bluebird boxes, for hauling stuff and for letting Donny mow the trails.
*   Liesl for bluebird box monitoring
*   Bruce for the osprey nests and coordinating his UW-W classes in doing research
*   WE Energies for hanging the osprey nests
*   The Prairie Enthusiasts (among them Zach and Walter) for their chainsaw and girdling work
*   Cody and his Whitewater High School classes for building blinds and helping with signage
*  Gretchen & Mark and other NRCS and State staff for their assistance in securing funding for burns and other invasive management.
*   Byron for mowing the drumlin 
*  Aaron for eBirding the property so regularly during peak seasons (and for all eBirders who log their findings)
*   Brother Mike and wife Kathy for helping with field trips, events and in offering advice
*   The many professors and students at UW-Whitewater and UW-Madison who have used the property for research and in offering advice on our plants, hydrology, birds, herps, fens, etc.

If I have left off some people, my apologies.  My thanks to all! 

Phase 2 runs from about 10AM until noon and entails picking prairie seeds which will be dried out later and spread on the conservancy over winter.   Bags will be provided.  Bringing gloves and snips or a knife would be greatly appreciated.

Lastly, around noon, we will offer up free pints of kombucha from Whitewater's very own Kombooch Brewing along with a variety of kringles to try.  Wine and cheese!  Nah.  Naturalists do their own thing...try some interesting combos...what fruit-flavored kringle goes best with berry hibiscus kombucha?

The warm weather encouraged me to slow down this weekend at the conservancy and notice the small stuff. That meant overlooking the sweet clover and wild parsnip and instead dwelling on the dragonflies & damselflies, the bees, Bobolinks and botanical offerings. 
The Bobolinks put on a great Father's Day show. Mom and Dad were huddling with their son when I walked across their path. Son followed Dad, then the two of them carried on a conversation with Mom with the Dad giving the son a vocalization lesson. Pretty awesome.

​Included below is a snippet of the trail cam shots from April at the ABC.  American Wigeons and Gadwalls seemed more abundant than in prior years, both hanging out for more than three weeks.  The snowpocalypse in early April led to some funny photos.  In addition to the Wigeons and Gadwalls, hopefully you will find American White Pelicans, Hooked Mergansers, Ring-Necked Ducks, Northern Shovelers, Green-Winged Teals, Wood Ducks, BOUS's**, Mallards, Canadian Geese, Sandhill Cranes and Big Blue Herons.  Let me know if I've missed anything.  I'm not the best at IDing birds.  Also, the Wilderness trail cam did not have the date correctly set...these were all taken in April of 2018.

**  BOUS's = Beasts of Unusual Size.

The trail cam over the new wildlife blind caught a mink, a coyote and quite a few sandhill cranes in its first week.  Ice is gone (for now) and there were some of my beloved buffleheads along with the early migrating species out over the weekend.   

So before I go plant, there were cranes at the ABC earlier in the week and lots of waterfowl in the large ponds to the east.   Trails are wet, so come prepared with rubber boots.

On to plants...thanks to the advice of my friend Sarah Schultz, we have a draft list of plants, shrubs, trees, etc. of the ABC set up within the Universal FQA Calculator software.  In laypersons, the greater the concentration of high-Cs, the better.  Summary stats are below; full details can be downloaded under the "Flora" tab.

Conservatism-Based Metrics:
Total Mean C:3.4
Native Mean C:4.3
Total FQI:38.9
Native FQI:43.9
Adjusted FQI:38.3
% C value 0:24.4
% C value 1-3:28.2
% C value 4-6:29.8
% C value 7-10:17.6
Native Tree Mean C:2.7
Native Shrub Mean C:3.8
Native Herbaceous Mean C:4.5
Species Richness:
Total Species:131
Native Species:10479.40%
Non-native Species:2720.60%
Species Wetness:
Mean Wetness:-0.4
Native Mean Wetness:-0.9
Physiognomy Metrics:
Tree:118.40%
Shrub:64.60%
Vine:53.80%
Forb:9068.70%
Grass:86.10%
Sedge:107.60%
Rush:00%
Fern:10.80%
Bryophyte:00%

Happy World Wetlands Day!   For a recap of what happened at the ABC in 2017 and some of what is in store in 2018, please click on the link below for a two page newsletter.

New in 2018...in addition to an Instagram presence (#adamconservancy), we are using an app called StriveOn to make an interactive tour of the ABC more interesting.   The software uses GeoFences that provide separate site content on your phone (an audio, some pictures and text) when you get to each of the seven stations or fences in the conservancy.   Walk the Inner Peace trail and you should encounter each "fence".  On the route, here about the source of the mysterious moos in the early morning mist and a bit more about the dilapidated fens on the property.

The links below will (hopefully) take you to Google or Apple's app store to download the StriveOn app Slipstream Technologies.   Once it is loaded, you can search (using the magnifying glass at the bottom) for "Adam Birding Conservancy" to get some basic info.  To take the tour and get the full features, you will need to be on site and walk in the range of the "fences".

Decided to stop "bucking" the trends and moved into the 21st Century...we are now on Instagram - click on the link below and/or post to #adamconservancy.

https://www.instagram.com/adamconservancy/