u/IWantAHobbitLife

LOTS of waterhemp and horse weed. Should we be worried? Our ecologists say we're on track, but curious what you all think!

I've got an update for anyone who's been following my acoustic monitoring project in southwest Wisconsin! 

After gathering and processing my first batch of data, I created an interactive Wildlife Map website for our restoration project where those who are interested can click into each habitat monitoring station and hear clips of real birds singing on our land and see photos and videos of the wildlife that call Badgerton home! 

https://preview.redd.it/hvbudun2d6hh1.png?width=2108&format=png&auto=webp&s=63aff63858763f94458bb6b834dbf92150a95fff

In case you missed my previous posts, this project uses cheap trail cameras and Wildlife Acoustics Song Meter Micro monitors to gather data in several distinct habitats across the land. The plan is to gather the data from the field manually every few months when I swap out batteries. 

https://preview.redd.it/57f26720d6hh1.jpg?width=1456&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=9b52b9a584b537da553ba5d2d58ffd4a40c06895

On June 30, I collected my first batch of data - over 6,000 files recorded in less than two months! 

BirdNET was awesome at cranking through the audio files and identifying bird calls and species but I was left with thousands of individual CSV files to combine. I ended up creating a small free utility called Chorus to help me (and you!) process those CSVs into a single file. You can download it here. For those of you who are new to data processing, I hope this user-friendly interface helps bridge the gap from a mountain of individual files to a consolidated list of birds with counts for each.

https://preview.redd.it/w9ft7f8jd6hh1.png?width=1564&format=png&auto=webp&s=d0394d8b7f28013e1742746a3a598335ed5f3b00

I reviewed and categorized the 4,000 images and videos from the trail cams manually. (Please let me know if there’s free software for that I could be using!) It was slow going but I can think of worse ways of spending a couple hours than looking at images of cute baby fawns and watching videos of hunting coyotes!

https://preview.redd.it/2h3vmytnd6hh1.png?width=1398&format=png&auto=webp&s=924a7e519d8db48ca164b66e8ee684f6090d1eda

A big thank you to everyone on this subreddit who has given me advice and encouragement along the way! 

If anyone wants the full details on my process I wrote up exactly how I did all of this. 

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I use AI thoughtfully and selectively in my work. You can read my guiding principles for when and how I use it here. 

You can read more about our restoration project at https://badgerton.substack.com/p/video-planting-badgerton-prairie

UPDATE: Thank you to everyone who weighed in. Reading through all the great advice and talking as a family we've decided to buy some collapsable Cascade Mountain Tech Hiking poles, some wool socks and skip the gear rental. It's a bit of compromise, but it's about the same cost as the rental, and gives us up to 3 hours back in our day between traffic, parking and returns and more time to enjoy our only day in the park.

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Folks on this forum have gotten me to question if we really need to stop by and rent special boots, socks and walking sticks for the Narrows hike. We are only there for 1 day and skipping the gear rental will save us 60-90 minutes in travel and wait time.

Context:

• We are going on 6/24 - looks like the low will be 60 and high 90 that day. We will be driving there that AM and hiking in the afternoon.
• Soonest we'd hit the water would be noon
• We are flying in and renting a car.
• This is day 4 of a longer 7-day road trip starting in the Grand Canyon and ending in Vegas.
• My husband and I are in our late 40's, and we have a 15yo kiddo.
• We are all in reasonable shape but are not hard core outdoorsy people by any stretch.

Equipment

• ✅ All have regular hiking boots of good quality
• ❌ No specialty socks
• ❌ No walking sticks or poles (or ability to get them from nature prior to arrival)

My questions:

• If we use our regular boots, should we at least get special socks? If so, what do we need?
• Many have mentioned walking sticks being very helpful - I can find some that telescope for cheap on Amazon so that we can get them on the plane, but have no idea about quality. I don't really want to spend more than the $105 total we would have spent to rent the gear if I can help it. We don't hike often enough for this to be a worthwhile investment for us. Will we regret not having them? Will we regret cheap Amazon poles?

I just want to make the most of our time at the park while not putting my family in a situation where we are miserably cold for a 4 hour hike or fall and hurt ourselves. Would love some advice.

Can anyone give me some context to the Mule ride timing and lunch? They say we need to be there at 10:30am for a 12pm-2pm tour. Like... when will we eat lunch? Do we just need to eat a super hearty breakfast that AM and power through? Do they sell food there? Should I bring snacks for my family - will there be an opportunity to slam a power bar before the tour starts? Just trying to figure out what I need to bring with us, what's even allowed.

We are headed to Zion for one day/night (Wed. June 24-25th). How realistic is this timing? Are there lines or choke points I'm not accounting for?

7:30am - Leave Page AZ at 7:30am local time - 2.25hr drive + 1 hour in time change

10:45am - Arrive at Zion Outfitters to pick up gear for Narrows Hike. (Will parking be available?)

11:15-12 - Drive into park and park at Lodge (we have a reservation for that night). Drop bags.

12-12:45 - lunch at Lodge Cafe, grab and go

12:45-1pm - shuttle to Narrows

1-5pm - Hike

5-5:45pm - Shuttle back to outfitters to return gear

5:45pm - Drop gear

6-6:20pm - Shuttle back to lodge

7pm - Dinner at Red Rock Grill (I've got reservations)

8:30pm - Twilight walk to Emerald Pools, just the first leg (if we have the energy)

I set a goal for myself to learn to identify every plant in our prairie mix before the end of the summer. To help me do this, I created a small website with fact sheets, flashcards and quizzes. Every one of the 110 species has three photos that I selected from iNaturalist’s public domain library to show the plant in different stages of growth throughout the year.

Each plant also has a Fact Sheet pulled together with the help of AI, and fact checked against sources like the USDA, NRCS plant fact sheets, wildflower.org,  illinoiswildflowers.info, Prairie Moon Nursery, iNaturalist, and Wikipedia. I ensured that in addition to specifics on how to identify the plant across each season, each sheet had interesting facts that would help me remember it.

One of my favorite plant facts:

>Achillea millefolium – Yarrow: Yarrow is named after Achilles who reputedly used it to staunch his soldiers' bleeding wounds — and it actually works. The plant contains achilleine a compound that promotes clotting. It has been used medicinally on every continent where it grows.

These are the sort of nuggets that help the names stick in my brain!

Beyond just a learning tool for this initial seed mix, this site will become a record of native plants we either plant or discover across our 107-acre restoration site. I’ve already got about a dozen woodland species that I identified on our last hike that I will be adding soon.

If you want to learn more about the project or how I built the website, I wrote up an article on my blog: https://badgerton.substack.com/p/our-ecologists-surprised-us-with

I set a goal for myself to learn to identify every plant in our prairie mix before the end of the summer. To help me do this, I created a small website with fact sheets, flashcards and quizzes. Every one of the 110 species has three photos that I selected from iNaturalist’s public domain library to show the plant in different stages of growth throughout the year.

Each plant also has a Fact Sheet pulled together with the help of AI, and fact checked against sources like the USDA, NRCS plant fact sheets, wildflower.org,  illinoiswildflowers.info, Prairie Moon Nursery, iNaturalist, and Wikipedia. I ensured that in addition to specifics on how to identify the plant across each season, each sheet had interesting facts that would help me remember it.

One of my favorite plant facts:

>Achillea millefolium – Yarrow: Yarrow is named after Achilles who reputedly used it to staunch his soldiers' bleeding wounds — and it actually works. The plant contains achilleine a compound that promotes clotting. It has been used medicinally on every continent where it grows.

These are the sort of nuggets that help the names stick in my brain!

Beyond just a learning tool for this initial seed mix, this site will become a record of native plants we either plant or discover across our 107-acre restoration site. I’ve already got about a dozen woodland species that I identified on our last hike that I will be adding soon.

If you want to learn more about the project or how I built the website, I wrote up an article on my blog: https://badgerton.substack.com/p/our-ecologists-surprised-us-with

I set a goal for myself to learn to identify every plant in our prairie mix before the end of the summer. To help me do this, I created a small website with fact sheets, flashcards and quizzes. Every one of the 110 species has three photos that I selected from iNaturalist’s public domain library to show the plant in different stages of growth throughout the year.

Each plant also has a Fact Sheet pulled together with the help of AI, and fact checked against sources like the USDA, NRCS plant fact sheets, wildflower.org,  illinoiswildflowers.info, Prairie Moon Nursery, iNaturalist, and Wikipedia. I ensured that in addition to specifics on how to identify the plant across each season, each sheet had interesting facts that would help me remember it.

One of my favorite plant facts:

>Achillea millefolium – Yarrow: Yarrow is named after Achilles who reputedly used it to staunch his soldiers' bleeding wounds — and it actually works. The plant contains achilleine a compound that promotes clotting. It has been used medicinally on every continent where it grows.

These are the sort of nuggets that help the names stick in my brain!

Beyond just a learning tool for this initial seed mix, this site will become a record of native plants we either plant or discover across our 107-acre restoration site. I’ve already got about a dozen woodland species that I identified on our last hike that I will be adding soon.

If you want to learn more about the project or how I built the website, I wrote up an article on my blog: https://badgerton.substack.com/p/our-ecologists-surprised-us-with

I’d like to develop a foraging trail through our Wisconsin woodlands. We have about 65 acres of oak and walnut woodland - hilly, some older growth, most newer, some in decent shape, some with heavy invasives. My dream is to create a trail (over the next decade+) where we manage along the trail for native woodland edibles - mushrooms, wild ramps, nuts, others? How do I figure out how to do that? Books or article recommendations? Podcasts?

I’d like to develop a foraging trail through our Wisconsin woodlands. We have about 65 acres of oak and walnut woodland - hilly, some older growth, most newer, some in decent shape, some with heavy invasives. My dream is to create a trail (over the next decade+) where we manage along the trail for native woodland edibles - mushrooms, wild ramps, nuts, others? How do I figure out how to do that? Books or article recommendations? Podcasts?

A huge thanks to those of you in this forum who answered all my questions months ago as I was trying to figure out how to set all this up. In this article, I lay out all the gear I used, why I picked it, and how much it cost. It's Part 2 of a multi-part series about this system. There are links at the beginning and end of the article if you want to read it all, but figured this group might be most interested in the "how" of it all. I'll come back in a couple months with a follow up on what I get back and how I process all the data using free AI tools.

Wresting with a major decision regarding an acre of beautiful trees on our land. Let me know if you agree with where we landed.