Family Fun Friday

So,,, some of you work full time and others need to be extremely cautious in this time of pandemic, but… a handful of us sure had a careful good time at our family fun outing last Friday. (By careful I mean we wore our masks outside!)

Arthur Liles responded to my call for a birder and produced a list, which I will put on eBird and add to my assessment lists for Camp Hardtner. Here’s what he saw and heard:

• Eastern Bluebird (Sialia sialis)
• Summer Tanager (Piranga rubra)
• Carolina Wren (Thryothorus ludovicianus)
• Northern Cardinal (Cardinalis cardinalis)
• Tufted Titmouse (Baeolophus bicolor)
• Great Crested Flycatcher (Myiarchus crinitus)
• Chimney Swift (Chaetura pelagica)
• Turkey Vulture (Cathartes aura)
• Eastern Kingbird (Tyrannus tyrannus)
• Eurasian Collared Dove (Streptopelia decaocto)
• Orchard Oriole (Icterus spurius)
• White-eyed Vireo (Vireo griseus)
• Mourning Dove (Zenaida macroura)

LDWF field botanist Chris Doffitt was with us, so I got plant questions answered. Yes, I had correctly identified black gum (Nyssa sylvatica) trees at Camp Hardtner! Yay! Chris had identified water tupelo (Nyssa aquatica) standing in Fish Creek in the northeast corner of Camp Hardtner back in December 2018 . Now I’m keeping an eye out for swamp tupelo (aka swamp black-gum) (Nyssa biflora). It would be cool to have all three Nyssa species at Hardtner.

We saw several lady’s tresses (Spiranthes sp,) wild orchids, lots of coreopsis (Coreopsis sp.), and in an interesting little corner near one of the lakes, a bunch of prairie plants: lyreleaf sage (Salvia lyrata), blue salvia (Salvia azurea), narrowleaf mountainmint (Pycnanthemum tenuifolium) and wild petunia (Rhuellia sp.).

But perhaps my favorite of the wildflowers was the tiny scarlet pimpernel (Anagallis arvensis) we found on a wooded path. I couldn’t come up with the name on my own. I just knew it involved a “P” and sounded British! And if you research this plant, be sure to specify “plant” because Google will inevitably bring up the novel first!

After lunch, Amanda Serio, her son Cedric, and I followed Chris up the road a bit to the Little River WMA. Friday was just two weeks post-prescribed burn by the LDWF and our mission was to see what was popping up out of the still blackened earth.

Almost immediately we spied drops of bright yellow against fresh green. Yellow star grass (Hypoxis hirsuta) was a brand new plant to me, and it is easy to see why. This tiny plant will be among the first to “disappear” under the grasses, vines and shrubs that prescribed burning clears away.

Yellow Star Grass (Hypoxis hirsuta)

Oxalis violacea

A bit further on, we sampled the lemon-tart leaves of violet wood-sorrel (Oxalis violacea), a small native plant that can be mixed into salads for a pop of flavor. And…, yes! One tiny purple bloom!

So… these are just a few of the highlights of a fun, enlightening day. I close with two thoughts: 1) Amanda’s son Cedric is exactly why I so want a chapter of Junior Master Naturalists, and 2) we need to do these “family fun” outings more often.