The following are excerpts from the Summer 2015 edition of Innsbrook property owners Richard McFall and Kathleen Kremer’s newsletter on living in harmony with nature and wildlife at Innsbrook.

New Trail Guides and Maps

Innsbrook has published a new Hiking Trail Pocket Guide which covers seven great trails across the Innsbrook Resort.  It includes updated maps plus a quick reference guide to plants and animals that also call Innsbrook home. It can be downloaded at Innsbrook’s Nature Page or you can pick up a copy at the Property Management Building, Real Estate Office or Aspen Center.

Poison Ivy

During our last guided nature hike at Innsbrook, many of us learned that we had been misidentifying poison ivy, as there are so many lookalikes. It can be a shrub or a vine with hairy looking stems. It has 3-leaf clusters that alternate left and right along the stem. It also may have white berries. The plant exudes an oil that causes an irritating skin reaction on most, but not all, people. This oil is on all parts of the plant (including the roots) at all times of the year. If you’re exposed, wash with soapy water immediately. You have about 5 minutes before the reaction occurs. The oil remains on clothing, so be sure to wash that, too, to prevent re-exposing yourself. If you hike with your dog, his fur will most likely protect him, but you could be exposed if you pet his fur that has been oiled.

Poison Ivy plant.

Since so many plants look similar, especially sumac, here’s a great reference from the Missouri Dept. of Conservation at MDC on Poison Ivy.

Tick Tock

It’s that time of year again — tick season. In Missouri, ticks are definitely going to be sharing the hiking trail with you. They can’t jump or fly, but they do sit on top of a grass stem and wait for a host to brush by. They can tell which beings are mammals by exhaled CO2 and body odor. We have three varieties here: dog tick, deer tick and lone star tick — and all vary substantially by size.

There are several common sense things we can do to minimize the chance of a bite. Use bug repellent that is 20-30% DEET then check yourself as soon as you leave a grassy area of the trail. Remove embedded ticks immediately, then clean and disinfect your skin. Ticks can cause Ehrlichiosis, Rocky Mountain Spotted Fever, Lyme Disease and the new Heartland Virus, among other problems.

One myth about ticks is that deer create tick-borne disease, when it’s actually rodents, like field mice and rats, that ticks start out feeding on — another good reason to let snakes continue to share Innsbrook with us to help control the rodent population!

It’s important to understand that not all ticks are disease carriers and that it usually takes many hours attached before they can infect a host. Here’s a reference from the MDC Field Guide to Ticks.

Let’s all go Batty!

We invited Jan Payne, Innsbrook resident and co-owner of the Chesterfield Wild Birds Unlimited store, to share a few facts with us about bats.

“Another useful resident of Innsbrook are bats. Bats are highly beneficial for insect control, especially [when it comes to] mosquitoes, because they are the only major predators of night-flying insects. Due to bat lore and because bats are only active at dusk and night, they are often misunderstood.

Photo by Cynthia Bowers

“[Bats] are not blind or dirty. They do not get caught in people’s hair or infest homes with bedbugs. Much like other mammals, less than 1% of bats contract rabies. Here at Innsbrook, we have the perfect setting to attract bats because we have lots of water and lots of insects. One bat can eat up to 600 insects in one hour!

You can attract bats to your property by putting up a bat house. A bat house that is approved by the Organization for Bat Conservation assures that the house has the appropriate qualities. The bat house should be attached to a tree or structure at least 15’ high with the house facing the south, if possible. Bats can detect the hollow openings of the house by their keen sense of sound.”

We, and our bats, thank you, Jan!

Gobble, Gobble

Baby turkeys, called poults, have hatched all around Innsbrook and have been seen crossing roads in a slow family procession. The brown and tan speckled eggs take about a month to incubate. After birth, poults are unable to fly for the first two weeks. They roost on the ground with their mother until they are able to fly, then flock with their mother for the first year of life.

My favorite turkey fact is regarding the color of the male’s head and neck. It’s normally a bluish color, though when they are excited by a nearby female their head turns white. When they’re ready to fight with another male it turns bright red. They wear their emotions on their heads!

Adopt-a-Highway, Trail and Stream Volunteers

If you have interest in volunteering a few times during the year to help us maintain the roadsides, trails and streams that run through Innsbrook, please let us know with an email to info@ibknature.com. Next year we hope to organize hikes that are still for fun but also include the option to monitor and clean up all that we are blessed to have.

Invitation to our Annual Fall Meeting

We plan to host a meeting of our informal group early this fall with an invited guest lecturer. Check back to our website or go there to sign up to receive an email when a new blog is posted.

Feel free to send us your Innsbrook wildlife sightings, discussion questions and topics for future issues or meetings by emailing rwmcfall@earthlink.net.

-Innsbrook property owners Kathleen Kremer and Richard McFall