Deer at Fort Ridgely

Fort Ridgely does not have bison like Minneopa or Blue Mounds State Parks. It does have many white-tailed deer that most people see a few of when they snowmobile, ride horses or walk in the park. I have been able to shoot many of them with my camera over the years and I am going to share a few of them with you.

This first one I saw a couple days ago. My wife and I were walking on the woods path below the amphitheater and noticed a number of deer running across the old golf course to get away from us. They gathered together, as you can see in the picture, at the edge of the woods to look back at us and I got this picture. They were gone before we reached the trail coming down from the museum.

Once in a while you see a dead deer carcass This one has had a few carnivores eating its remains. Somehow this deer got caught in this fallen tree when it tried to jump over it. This was 3 years ago now and was just off the same path below the chalet parking lot, like many of the other pictures of deer in this update. If you look closely in this photo or the close up, you will see an interesting carnivore. I did not know that downy woodpeckers would eat deer meat for food.

This picture shows the usual large predator that eats dead deer. Eagles and crows are often seen eating roadkill along the side of roads. This one was just on the other side of the river on the road that goes into the valley from Franklin. It was a deer carcass.

85+ Year Old Picnic Tables and Grills

Have you wondered what the stone and metal structures like the one below could be? They are found in different parts of Fort Ridgely? They are picnic tables that had wooden tops that were built by CCC and WCC workers in the 1930's. The wood has decayed away but not the stone and metal. All the other stone buildings around the park were built at the same time. Scott Kudelka wrote the attached PDF describing how this construction was done.

On a hike a couple days ago I walked up the trail, next to the creek and north of the old stone bathroom and shower building, across the creek from the campground. I knew there were a couple stone remnants of picnic tables and had seen one up farther off the trail. As I explored I found all of these, another table and a couple stone grills too. The first grill was very large and could have handled quite a few hamburgers.

I would love to hear any stories that anyone on this mailing has of using these grills and tables. Pictures would be even better. Anyone know when they were abandoned and why they were not kept up?

Butterflies on my Nature Blog.

In the last Update a link was given to where all of the Fort Ridgely Updates have been put online. I started another website several years ago called Bix Baker Nature Blog. The Google software was hard to use at the time so I quit doing it in 2018. They have improved the software so I tried again and did the Fort Ridgely Update site and improved the Blog site.

Late in the fall of 2019, my wife and I had the privilege of traveling to Hong Kong for a month. Our main motive was to visit our daughter who had our first grandchild “Sophia” shortly before we arrived. I brought my camera along and in addition to spoiling and taking pictures of Sophia every chance we could, I took lots of pictures of nature in Hong Kong. One of the most beautiful parts was the butterflies and moths that were everywhere. Two of the pages in the blog are comparing the butterflies and moths of Hong Kong to those of Minnesota. Below are 2 pictures. One is of a swallowtail butterfly there and the other is of a false tiger moth from there.

Here is a link if you want to check out the blog. I plan to add more entries. https://sites.google.com/view/bixbakernatureblog/home