All tagged Wildlife
Being home every day during this COVID-19 summer brought me a special opportunity: I started fostering monarch butterflies. First, one friend, Colin Purrington, inspired me to plant milkweed. Then another, Emily Hauze, urged me to bring these miracles of nature fully into my life. I now have three nursery boxes on our screened porch.
Beginning next Friday, October 11, Swarthmore College will for the tenth consecutive year conduct a public hunt of the deer population in the college’s Crum Woods, on the west (i.e. Blue Route) side of the creek. This year’s archery hunting will occur in the woods during the college’s fall break from October 11 to 19, between October 28 and November 8, and over Thanksgiving weekend (November 27-30).
I struggled with whether or not to report the recent beaver activity on Crum Creek to the Swarthmorean. There are two schools of thought on wildlife observations: some keep sightings secret so as not to risk disturbing the animals with excessive gawking. I have encountered observers in the Crum Woods who clearly prefer to hold their sightings close to the chest. I decided, however, that I belong to the other school: I want to publicize wildlife sightings to raise awareness of our natural surroundings.
Swarthmorean Robert Scott recently mentioned beaver sightings on Crum Creek, where the toothy furbearers abounded in the time of the Lenni Lenape, but were absent for decades and have only returned in the past few years. The lower trail is all but inaccessible due to tree fall, but walking downstream from the “Crumhenge” meadow near the SEPTA viaduct, Scott said, he had seen four beavers and their lodges during his evening walks along the trail.
