Turtle Tagging

I love turtles, and I find most people do. These (mostly) sweet and harmless reptiles with their good sense of style and "take it easy" attitude are hard not to love. Here at the homestead, we have our fair share of turtles. Several very large red-eared sliders have been finding their way into our yard to the chagrin of our puppies. Over the past few days, I seem to have a side career of rescuing turtles from curious puppies and returning the reptiles to the pond in front of our house.

This morning, I had the "aha!" idea of marking the turtles with nail polish on their shells to see if we either have a bumper crop of super large turtles or if we have some not-so-bright turtles on our hands. My brilliant husband suggested that we actually paint numbers on the shells.

As I was returning "1" to the pond today, Maggie (our German Shepard bird dog mix puppy) found what soon became number "2." My family couldn't believe that I left with one turtle and returned with another on that quick walk.

We have been using our handy National Audubon Society Field Guide to the Southeastern States to identify our turtles.  A couple of weeks ago, we used our guide to identify an Eastern Box Turtle (three toed race).  If you live in the Southeastern states and enjoy getting out into nature, I highly recommend you pick up your own copy of this guide.

   

Also, check out this interesting article about the turtle industry in Louisiana.  I didn't even know we had a turtle industry, much less that we dominated the market.

Wild Times (Wildlife on Halls' Homestead)

We are blessed with lots of animals from the wild kingdom at Halls' Homestead.  An otter lives in our pond, a great blue heron likes to aggravate our dogs, various ducks stop in throughout the year, and then there's the normal gambit of coyotes, foxes, raccoon, moles, gophers, armadillo, squirrels, frogs, toads, turtles, snakes, rabbits, wild hogs, deer, fish, lizards, salamanders, turkeys, and opossum.  Not long after moving here, I found myself wanting to know more and wanting to be able to teach the kids more about the things we found on our nature walks.  I searched Amazon.com for a field guide and came across this one:

It's a handy little guide the kids and I use to identify the things we find on the farm.  One night, I found a dead moth in the house.  We immediately pulled out the guide and began looking for the exact species of moth we had found.  As we find and identify species, we place a check in our book next to the entry.  My goal is that the kids and I both learn more about our surroundings and that the kids learn to look for books for answers in addition to the internet.  I also want to increase their ability to notice details, and looking at the slight variations between species seems to be great practice.

There is also more excitement and general interest when we find things in the yard than there would be without the field guide.

This particular guide is "a mile wide and an inch deep" as one reviewer stated, since the book does cover the entire Southeast including coastal regions and sea life.  There are more extensive field guides available, but the kids and I are suckers for glossy, full-color photos.  It is a good fit for us as beginners.

Great Blue Heron

08/12/2014 Update: The other day I called my mother to excitedly tell her that I had discovered Butterfly Pea on our property using the field guide.  She must have thought I had been in the sun too long or really fancied myself as an expert with my field guide, because she thought I believed that I had found and identified butterfly urine.  After a brief "Who's on First?" style conversation, she finally realized that I had found a flower that is featured on the cover of our field guide.

09/02/2015 Update: Check out this Great Horned Owl that landed in our front yard this evening.

Great Horned Owl