15 June MAHA WetlandsJune through August are the months we do our most productive waterfowl improvements. Levee and pipe repair is usually on top of the list, but last summer's hot weather enabled us to pretty much get caught up on that end.
Right now, we're planning to keep as much standing water as possible in the Middle Zone and seed some of the mud flats as the water recedes.
In the North Zone we're doing some work to plant feed for the ducks only in areas we have a guaranteed water source such as in the photo series below.
Jon Jr. (future owner/operator of MAHA) working some seed into the ground on one of our wetlands that flooded and was too wet to plant to a regular crop (also too soft for regular tractor to work). The large fields east of the wetland (under MAHA lease for field sets) have been planted to corn and are doing well.
We had to pick and choose areas to seed since a lot of the ground was too rough to work with what we have to work with. This particular low spot next to one of the blinds worked real well.
This is pretty much the same as the last one, but it shows a little more detail like the shooting pool that was left in front of the blind.
And some pictures on our wetlands from other times this year.
Fisher's #2 from the south facing north. SnakeThe snake picture continues to draw interest with the copperhead and rattler votes losing to Black Rat Snake, Western Rat Snake and generic Rat Snake. The southern members with far more cottonmouth experience than we have further do not support the cottonmouth identification. The Audubon book seems to be lacking any suitable correlation to the picture having scoured it snake picture by snake picture through its entire inventory.
Here is one that is easily identified.
Sent in by one of our supporters of a snake that was not where it should have been and was dispatched accordingly. It is from our area and a rarity for both species and size. So rare are rattle snakes in the agriculture region where disk gangs, combines, plows, bailers dispatch far more than any road kill anywhere that on John Wenzel's farm plus over 2,000 acres of surrounding dog training area it took 11 years before the first rattler was seen and never has any of his farm or hunting dogs been bitten by any snake.
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