I love the two-mile interpretive trail through the meadows, marshlands and wooded areas that starts from the Trautman Nature Center at Maumee Bay State Park, but I also found that lingering a while at the center to talk with its year-round naturalist is a great way to learn more about the wildlife and landscape you'll see along the trail.
I recently visited the center with a group of travel writers, and naturalist Ryan Jacob met with us to show off the center's lab and its residents, as well as to give us a quick tour of the park's monarch butterfly sanctuary housed in a gazebo at the center.
Naturalists find butterfly eggs in area farm fields and on milkweed plants around the park, and Jacob noted that the park's preservation of more of the meadows where the milkweed flourish in recent years was a good thing for the center's cultivation of the monarch butterflies that settle along Ohio's Lake Erie shore during their northward migration each spring.
We could see a single monarch butterfly recently emerged from its chrysalis hanging from a branch in the gazebo that mid-August day.
Jacob told us that the unusually hot weather we experienced this past spring meant a rough season for the monarchs at Maumee Bay. Normal summers see the center helping to raise 1,000 or more monarchs for eventual release at summer's end so they can migrate south to Mexico. This year, the center saw something closer to just a third of that number of butterfly chrysalis to nurture for the eventual emergence of the butterflies within and their subsequent migration south.
Several children visited the monarch sanctuary as Jacob explained the nature center's work there, and Jacob patiently answered their questions about the beautiful butterflies, their migrations and life cycles.
Jacob also introduced us to several residents of the small lab inside of the nature center.
The lab serves as a refuge for rescue animals like Rufus and Otis, two small screech owls whose injuries make it difficult for them to survive on their own in the wild. Lucky for the duo, they have a safe home at the center and nature center visitors can get a close up view of these animals.
It was fun to see how patiently and quietly one of the little owls perched on Jacob's hand and to hear Jacob's bird calls.
Perhaps not quite so much fun was seeing one of the center's snakes make a meal of a baby mouse, but such is the cycle of life and death in nature.
Want to learn more about Ohio's wildlife? Check out Ohio Wildlife: An Introduction to Familiar Species by James Kavanagh or Wild Ohio: The Best of our Natural Heritage by James S. McCormac and Gary Meszaros.
Thanks to Xanterra Parks and Resorts and Maumee Bay State Park Lodge, which provided lodging, meals and on-site activities for my review, with no further compensation. I was free to express my own opinion about my stay and experiences, and the opinions expressed here are mine.
© Dominique King 2012 All rights reserved
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