Critter Corner

Pelicans in Indiana? Surely not. Pelicans live near the ocean, don’t they? If you have visited Goose Pond FWA in the spring or fall, you more than likely know that yes, pelicans do indeed visit our state. But first, let’s clarify the story. In North America there are two endemic species of pelicans. One, the…

If asked to do so, we can often identify an ecosystem simply by seeing a photo of one of its iconic animal inhabitants. Example? A polar bear would surely bring thoughts of the tundra to mind. Seeing a Malayan tapir would just as assuredly elicit images of the steamy southeast Asian rainforest. Similarly, the American…

While birds may lay claim to the “star power” at Goose Pond FWA, let’s remind ourselves that there is a whole world of smaller animals, many of which lack a backbone, that are of major ecological importance there. Let us focus on one group of invertebrate animals which most people look at with fear, revulsion,…

If I were to ask you to guess what the most abundant mammal inhabiting GPFWA is, you might first think of white-tailed deer. They seem to be abundant almost everywhere in Indiana. Perhaps the muskrat or the mink, a common predator-prey duo of the wetlands, would come to mind. All would be good conjectures. But,…

  With several thousand acres of shallow water, it should come as no surprise that Goose Pond FWA is home to an abundant, varied, and highly interesting assemblage of aquatic macroinvertebrates. The prefix macro- means big enough to see without a microscope and the suffix invertebrate refers to their lack of a backbone. Hidden from…

Critter Corner No. 21 – The Red Bat by George Sly (photo courtesy So. Conn. St. Univ.) A recent presentation on bats to a group of Sullivan Elementary School second graders reminded me that this was a group which has, up until now, been totally neglected in my Critter Corner blogs. Time to remedy that…