The Trailblazer

Frogs are hard to find and catch, so we're surveying them by listening to their nocturnal calls! If you think of the night as a quiet, peaceful time, you probably haven’t done much night hiking. Hillsborough County’s Nature Preserves are absolutely chock full of exciting sounds after dark (you can find out yourself by signing up for one of our guided night hikes, which are advertised in the Trailblazer newsletter each month and on our Community Calendar. Guided hikes will resume after the Safer-at-Home Order is lifted, when the county administrator allows events to resume). Some of the sounds, like bat calls, are harder to hear, but crickets, cicadas, owls, and frogs are all easily detectable by the human ear, and can even be deafeningly loud in some places. It’s a good thing for the Environmental Lands Research Analysts Team (EL-RAT) that frog calls are so audible. EL-RAT is currently surveying frogs in nature preserves, and these small creatures are extremely difficult to find an...

Gopher tortoise peering out of its shell If you’ve ever been hiking on a Hillsborough County Nature Preserve, there’s a good chance you’ve seen a gopher tortoise munching some grass, sunning near the trail, or peering out of a burrow. The only tortoise native to the southeastern U.S., these slow-growing and long-lived reptiles are found in many dry upland areas of Hillsborough County. Gopher tortoises are a keystone species, meaning they have a disproportionately large effect on the ecosystem because hundreds of mammal, bird, reptile, and insect species find shelter in their burrows. Without these burrows to use as hiding spots, shade, and protection from fire, many sensitive and important species would not be able to survive. Sadly, development and suburban sprawl have fractured and degraded their upland habitat so much that gopher tortoises are now listed as a threatened species in Florida.  To keep our gopher tortoise populations healthy and thriving, it’s important for the Cons...

      Bats flying into the sunset (Anne Froschauer, CC BY 2.0 )  Most of us don’t get the opportunity to spend much time around bats, but these flying mammals are a common and crucial part of Hillsborough County’s nocturnal scene. They do us a huge service by eating thousands of insects every night, including mosquitoes and other pest insects.  Their appetite for bugs makes our outdoor recreation much more enjoyable, reduces the number of mosquitoes present to spread disease, and even helps to protect crops from insects that may damage them. Bats are a vital part of Florida’s ecosystems, and assessing the diversity of bat species can give us a great idea of an area’s overall biodiversity. Eastern red bat with three babies (Josh Henderson, CC BY-SA 2.0 ) Tricolored bat (Pete Pattavina, public domain) In last month’s newsletter we introduced you to the Environmental Lands Research Analysts Team (EL-RAT), Bernie Kaiser and Gillian Seymour. EL-RAT has been working o...

How many insects do you see in a day?  Probably far more than you actually notice!  The next time you’re out hiking or taking a walk in your neighborhood, challenge yourself to pay attention to every insect that flutters by. You may be amazed by what you see- we certainly were. Zebra swallowtail butterfly feeding on blazing star flower Recently, members of the Hillsborough County Conservation and Environmental Lands Management team had the opportunity to take part in a butterfly count with the North American Butterfly Association (NABA) . Working in conjunction with other groups in the region, we hiked through meadows, woods, and salt flats, identifying and counting every butterfly we saw and taking some pictures to identify mystery butterflies later. We were easily able to stick to social distancing guidelines on the wide hiking trails. At the beginning of the count, our team headed out to the coastal salt flats in the hopes of seeing a salt marsh skipper, a small and fast-f...