Upcoming in July at Gahagan

We have a number of events at the cabin in the coming month.

Children’s Gahagan Nature Camp- Tracks & Traces - TUE-THU 7/20-22 9:00am-noon Children: 6-11 yrs. old. Bring Bug spray! Skeletons, Skulls, Teeth, Tracks, and Traces. These clues indicate where and how wild animals live. Curious? Join Naturalists/Educators Tom Dale and Karen Demers to make exciting discoveries at the Preserve! Check http://www.gahagannature.org/ for more details.

MGNP Family Night- Cat Tales THU 7/22 7:00pm-8:00pm Everyone Welcome, Especially Kids!This program is NOT about your ordinary Tabby cat! Join Naturalist/Educator Tom Dale for a program about America’s amazing cats, including some rare and endangered cats, as well as many extinct cats, including the biggest cat the world has ever known. Fossils, skulls, pelts, and a puppet show will be used to tell some unbelievable stories.

Good Bug – Bad Bug TUE 7/27 7:00pm-8:30pm Adults. Join Barb Bishoff, Master Gardener and member of the Kirtland Garden Club, for a discussion on Integrated Pest Management. Learn to identify the good and bad bugs that crawl or wiggle into your floral or veggie garden. Then learn how to encourage the good bugs to work for you!

The Adventure of Geocaching for Kids SAT 7/31 10:00am-12:30pm Children: 10-15 yrs.old/Parents Welcome. Join instructors from HeadWaters Land Conservancy for an exciting morning of navigation and orienteering in the Gahagan Preserve. Compasses and GPS equipment will be provided, but if you have your own, please bring them. There are a number of well-hidden geocaches to be discovered! RSVP @ 989-731-0573 or land@headwatersconservancy.org.

Note: Alaskan Fisheries has been rescheduled to August 5

AuSable River Water Quality Monitoring Update

We still have a little work to do identifying bugs collected on the river earlier this month. Join the crew Tuesday evening June 22nd at 5:00 pm in the biology lab at Kirtland Community College. Dinner and microscopes provided!

Recycle It

Join us June 22 at 7 PM at the cabin when Barb Stauffer, Recycle Coordinator from the Crawford-Roscommon Conservation District enlightens all of us about how to rid our homes of unwanted stuff responsibly. How to find Gahagan Preserve? Look for the Roscommon-Higgins Township recycle center then drive just a bit past. That should make it easy to find or remember what the topic is.

Wildflowers at Gahagan

From time-to-time we post photos of the flowering plants at the preserve. Currently, the parking lot wildflower plants that were started a few years ago by Julie Borak are flourishing (see below). Stop by and take a look.

The Glidden Butterfly garden at the cabin has many blooms. This planting is a couple years old is filling out nicely. (see left)

Day on the River

The blog has discussed Gahagan's involvement in monitoring the water quality of the upper AuSable River watershed. The project started four years ago and we are in our third year of sampling. Volunteers spent yesterday afternoon at six points in the watershed collecting macro-invertebrates (bugs) in the river and its branches. The species and quantity can tell us how clean our waters are. Tomorrow at 5PM in the Kirtland Community College biology lab, we will start looking under the microscopes at the samples, identify them and analyze the results. You can join us there.

The photos show the scene at the East Branch sample site at the south end of Hartwick Pines State Park. The collection is done primarily by net or by picking up logs or rocks and picking off the invertebrates. In the top photo, collectors Karen Demers and Jeff Millgren are in the stream while in the background Millie Millgren and Tracy Bosworth are on the river bank sorting collected bugs. The second photo shows collectors pulling insects off a log and into the sample tub. Back at the bank, insects are sorted and placed in alcohol filled jars ready to go to the lab for final identification.

For more information on the project, the cooperating organizations and to view past data results go to http://www.gahagannature.org/, then click the AuSable Monitoring link to go to the project's website.

June Pine Whispers

Check out what was happening around Marguerite's cabin on June 27, 1964. Visit her Pine Whispers article first published in her North Woods Call newspaper by going to www.GahaganNature.org. Each month there is "new one from the past."