FIELD STATION BULLETIN

11305 Wheeler Rd. | Garrettsville, Ohio 44231

(330) 527-2142 | clarkjm@hiram.edu | www.hiram.edu/field-station

FIELD STATION BULLETIN

11305 Wheeler Rd. | Garrettsville, Ohio 44231

(330) 527-2142 | clarkjm@hiram.edu | www.hiram.edu/field-station

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Summer at the James H. Barrow Biological Field Station (JHBBFS) has been busy and productive, as we welcomed 23 student interns to assist with projects such as bird and snake populations, land stewardship and maintenance, animal rehabilitation and husbandry, and leading nature camps! If you visited us this summer, you may have noticed the continued efforts to restore our prairies and improve the trail system and the repairs to the Observation Building pond. We are hopeful that our resident swans will be swimming on the pond in early fall. You may have also noticed the expansion to the parking area next to the trailhead and main building and the newly staffed welcome desk inside the visitor’s center. This fall, we invite you to hike our trails and enjoy the beautiful autumn colors as our forests transform. Trail maps and general information can be found in the visitor’s center and trailhead pavilion next to the visitor parking lot. We also have quite a few exciting events in the coming months! Please visit our website or Facebook page for more information. To

receive regular updates on events, feel free to contact me to join the Friends of the Field Station email listserv. We are always looking for ways to improve our programming and your experience at the Field Station. Please do not hesitate to share your concerns, questions, suggestions, or memories with me and our staff and faculty.

Biodiversity Conservation and Environmental StewardshipAs you visit the JHBBFS, you may notice that our students and staff work hard to keep the trails clear and maintain our grounds and facilities. This summer was no different. A new boardwalk was constructed near the Smiley Blind, paths were improved to allow better access to research areas, new parking areas were added, and stumps were removed at the front of the property, allowing native plants to flourish. In addition to routine lawn care and maintenance, we continued to remove more than 15 species of invasive plants that threaten our prairies and forests. Our stewardship program also continued efforts to transform a 30-acre abandoned farm field into a diverse grassland meadow using controlled burns and adding more than 2,300 plugs of native grasses and wildflowers to the field below Hils Vista. This project is in its seventh season and is showing promise for the grassland bird species we would like to attract. It also resulted in an impressive showing of wildflowers over the summer!

FROM THE DIRECTOR

Jennifer M. Clark, Ph.D. director of JHBBFS and Northwoods Field Station

Students Zack Fox and Henry Schwendler monitor prairie plantings.

Education and Community OutreachThis summer, nearly 200 community members joined us for

programs ranging from nature and art camps, to guided hikes, scientific workshops and citizen science programs! JHBFFS welcomed back former Hiram College professor, Marty Huehner, for an intensive training on freshwater mussel identification and field surveys along Eagle Creek, preparing student interns and local high school students to help conserve these sensitive and declining species. Several community members and student interns also participated in National Moth Week, a citizen science program where over 30 species of these spectacular creatures were successfully identified. Our nature and art camps continued to attract children across the region with more than 100 children in attendance! Art camps encouraged creative youth to use a variety of media inspired by nature. At Pollinator Palooza, children learned to identify bees and their importance to the environment, while at Rock and Roll Earth Science camp, they collected rocks, made models of the

Earth and took soil samples to study. The week-long nature camps were attended by children ages 2-11,

who explored the Field Station habitats, flora and fauna. Stories, songs, crafts, hiking,

experiments, pond exploration and other activities immersed the children in nature and increased their appreciation of the environment.

FIELD STATION BULLETIN

An art camp participant creates window art inspired by the Observation Building Pond.

Students participate in the Monitoring Avian Productivity and Survivorship programSarah Mabey, Ph.D., associate professor of environmental studies, trains students to safely and carefully capture birds so that they may be measured and marked with special leg bands issued by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service before they are released back onto their territories. Capture-mark-recapture methods help researchers follow individuals over many years and estimate changes in population size. This information allows us to monitor the health of our forest community, understand ecological relationships, and identify environmental problems if populations begin to decline. Many individuals captured during the 2019 season have been raising their families in our Beech-Maple forest for years. When you consider that most of the birds in this study migrate thousands of miles every year, it’s pretty exciting to know they return safely to grace our forest year after year.

Summer conservation research interns Aaron Rivard ’22, Miranda Mordue ’22 , and Rachel Jerkins ’22 examine a Gray Catbird (Dumetella carolinensis) captured as part of a long-term study of forest bird diversity and population dynamics.

FIELD STATION BULLETIN

Field-based Scientific ResearchThe diverse habitats and flora and fauna at the JHBBFS offers a number of research opportunities for Hiram students. This summer, student projects included air quality testing using drone technology, progression of Beech Leaf Disease in our forest, long-term population studies of birds, snakes, and butterflies; continued efforts to monitor the impacts of stream restoration within Eagle Creek, and impacts of artificial light on frog and toad colonization in ponds at our outdoor aquatics facility.

Animal Conservation and HusbandryThis year proved to be another busy summer for our animal care staff and students! Our rehab crew took in more than 60 birds and reptiles from the region with one of the birds being a Common Merganser, an unusual species to see in Northeast Ohio. In early summer alone, we successfully released 19 mallard ducks (and the count continues), as we raise and release a variety of injured and orphaned birds. Students get hands-on experience working not only with these rehab animals, but also care for our education animals, endangered white-winged wood ducks and Madagascar teals, and resident trumpeter swans. As you may remember, we raised the surviving cygnet from the Observation Building pond and paired it with a mate in the spring and we are happy to say that they are getting along wonderfully!We are also pleased to announce that we were successful in breeding our white-winged Wood Ducks for the first time since 2012 in a joint program with the Akron Zoo! Five babies successfully hatched and will eventually be valuable additions to the species’ captive breeding population.

JHBBFS FACULTY AND STAFF

Jennifer Clark, Ph.D., Director clarkjm@hiram.edu

James Metzinger, Associate Director and Curator of Animal Programs metzingerje@hiram.edu

Rebecca Moore, Animal Care Manager moorer1@hirame.edu

Jane O’Brien, Education and Community Outreach Coordinator obrienjs@hiram.edu

Emliss Ricks, Land Stewardship Manager rickseo@hiram.edu

James Tolan, Manager of Operations tolanje@hiram.edu

James Kercher, Ph.D., Faculty, Chemistry kercherjp@hiram.edu

Sarah Mabey, Ph.D., Faculty, Environmental Studies mabeyse@hiram.edu

Mary Quade, M.F.A., Faculty, English quadeMR@hiram.edu

Ellen Walker, Ph.D., Faculty, Computer Science walkerel@hiram.edu

Student Carlee Lisser cares for waterfowl in our outdoor rehab facility

Eastern milk snake found during population studies.