Today, Big Oaks hosted a Field Day for Madison Junior High. The students began their day at Karn's Pond, located in a grassland patch along the eastern perimeter, seen from Route 421. Karn's pond was built to help improve the population of the state endangered Crawfish frogs. The students were split up into three, rotating groups. One group learned about Crawfish frogs and restoring their population from, Joe Robb, Project Leader at Big Oaks. Another group learned about Hensl

Tonight during the weekly BOCS meeting, Rob Chapman, gave a presentation on the infamous black bear that wandered into the refuge in 2016. Rob has been with the Big Oaks for 2 years. He began his presentation with a little humor and background on his past experiences with black bears. Rob then went into general facts about black bears, and ended his presentation with the journey of the black bear, from Kentucky into Big Oaks and back into Kentucky. I very much enjoyed the pre

Today we had the opportunity to go mushroom hunting around Big Oaks. It was my first time really going mushroom hunting, and I'm pleased to say it was a success! We found over 30 mushrooms! All yellow morels. When we started, I feared we wouldn't find more than a handful. Everyone had been saying it just wasn't a good year for mushrooms, because winter didn't want to say goodbye. Luckily for us, everyone else just weren't looking in the right spots. Not only did we find an ab

Big Oaks has partnered with Full Cycle Phenology Project with the Department of Biological Sciences for a project to collect more information on the American Kestrel in Indiana. The American Kestrel will be a model species for Full Cycle Phenology Project, to determine the effects of climate change on land birds. The boxes were put up along the West Perimeter, and since being up have been checked biweekly. Today I joined George Terlinden to check if the kestrels are using the