Saving Salamanders

When I got home from work today, the kids came bolting out of the house all chattering at once about saving some salamanders.  I had no idea what they were talking about.  At first I thought they were confused between salamanders and skinks (which we have a ton of around the homestead and I had yet to see a salamander.)  Scott assured me that indeed they were talking about salamanders.  He found them in a log that he was harvesting for firewood that afternoon and we needed to find them a new home. 

So we all hiked out to the current and soon to be former home of said salamanders.  After moving a few of the log pieces we found 5 beautiful little salamanders.  The contrast of their black bodies and their bright blue spots were so awesome.  

Now where to locate them to?  There is a nice downed, semi rotted out log next to our bow target that we won't be using for fire wood so we hollowed out a couple of little wholes underneath it and carefully set them down and watched as they scurried into their new home. 

We then covered up their doorway so they are set for winter.  I hope that they like their new accommodations and the kids sure had fun learning a bit about these shy little creatures that you don't get to see everyday.

House Guest

This is one of our kitchen/dinning room windows.

This is one of our fake window shutters,

purely for decoration purposes only, or so I thought!

Here is the tiny little crack between the cement board siding and the shutters. 

This isn't just a tiny little crack, this is a condo. 

A condo?  For what?  For our friendly neighborhood bug catchers, bats!  I have always wanted to make a few bat houses around the homestead, but haven't gotten around to it.  I knew we had some local residence because early in the morning when I would go out the front door and head to the coop, these little guys would be flying around the light outside the front door catching bugs.  I have always enjoyed watching bats fly. 

It wasn't until just this week that I discovered this nice little condo.  I was in our sunroom with the windows open and heard a bunch of squeeking.  I tracked down that sound to behind the shutter and low and behold I could just barly see him/her moving around back there.  Cool - just so they don't move into the actual house, they can live behind the shutters all they want.

Wisconsin is home to 8 different species of bats.  Three are solitary most of the year and then migrate south for the winter.  "Snowbirds".  The other 5 species form colonies and will hibernate here over the winter.  Now I can't tell you forsure which species has become out House Shutter Guest as I haven't gotten a good look at it yet, but I am guessing it is a Little Brown Bat as they are very common in Northern Wisconsin.  If I do get a good look and I can tell which one it realy is, I'll be sure to update.  Until then, I will just enjoy knowing our little bats will continue to eat mosquitoes and other bugs for us.  They are so great.