How far east in the state have armadillos been confirmed?

Man, if you drive the...

This week on Kentucky Afield.

We went live on social media and YouTube to answer all of your questions about Kentucky█s species that are not hunted, fished or trapped.

And we're bringing you those answers right now, it's time for the Kentucky Wild question and answer show.

itHellome and welcome to Kentucky Afield.

I'm your host, Chad Miles.

And tonight, you have tuned into our live Kentucky wild question and answer show.

Joining me tonight, I have three guests that have been on the show numerous times before, starting with Kate Slankard, our avian biologist.

How you doing, Kate?

Good and happy to be here.

Great.

Right to her left we have Monte, Dr. Monte McGregor, who is our mussel research biologist.

How you doing?

Good to be here.

And also joining us, we have Michaela Rogers, who's a wildlife biologist.

How are you doing?

I'm good.

This is the time of year you guys have all kinds of cool and exciting projects out in the field.

And we can't wait to hear about some of those.

Some of these are activities for individuals who are members of Kentucky wild to tag along.

So you'll notice that all of our guests tonight are wearing the Kentucky wild t-shirts.

Kentucky Wild.

Now, it's been been around for five years.

Michaela, tell me a little bit about Kentucky Wild.

Absolutely.

Yeah, we're really excited.

We just celebrated our five year anniversary for Kentucky Wild and Kentucky Wild is a membership based program that directly supports a lot of the species that we're going to be talking about tonight.

So our songbirds, our bats, our mussels, some of our amphibians, salamanders, snakes, that sort of thing, our non-game fish, really all the species that are managed through our non-game program here at the Kentucky Fish and Wildlife Department, and the membership program not only gives you the opportunity to help with the conservation of these species, but it also allows for members to come out with the biologists and see some of the work that's happening in the field in real time.

So we have our member experiences.

Those go out through different email signup opportunities and members can sign up for those and go see the different.

We've had a monarch tagging event, songbird banding, muscle tagging, that sort of thing.

So just different things that members can go out and see.

Biologists working in the field, you know, if you're an outdoor person or a conservationist, you probably are well aware that it's hunters and anglers that support hunting and fishing.

Well these are species that are not hunted and fish for, but they also need to be studied to be researched and they need to be conserved.

So this is a great way for someone, doesn't matter if you own a hunting or fishing license state of Kentucky, get involved with Kentucky Wild.

I'll tell you what, it's a it's a great way to keep up with what's going on.

Most of our communication is done through Instagram, so find them on Instagram, sign up and keep up with what's going on with Kentucky Wild.

Hey, we've got some questions pouring in already.

So first up, we've got Tim from Lebanon.

Why do we band birds?

Why do we band birds?

Okay, so we band birds to learn more about them.

We can learn about their migration.

When we recover the bands we can learn about how long they live.

We can identify different individuals by the bands on their legs.

And so I actually brought some bird bands tonight.

I was wanting to bring that up because they changed how you report bands now.

It used to be when you'd find a band like, this is a bald eagle band, If you found a dead bald eagle that was banded, you'd call the number on the band.

You can't call the number anymore.

You█ve got to report it on the website.

But if you're not an Internet person, you can call me and I'm happy to report that information.

Finding a banded bird is so exciting because we get to figure out what we've wanted to learn all along, and so we want all those band reports to continue to come in.

Oh yeah.

But the website is called ReportBand.gov if you want to report your own band.

And so if you find a dead bird, we don't encourage you know, picking it up, but just check and see if it's banded.

If you find one in your yard, because we can learn a lot from that.

And that's even if it's a bird that is a game bird.

They get banded quite frequently.

Well, you still want to make sure that those get reported.

Is it the same website?

It's the same website for game and non-game birds.

And you know, you can see here, this is an Eagle band.

This is one that we would put on peregrine falcons because it's got a color and a letter and a number on it.

So if we see them in a picture or through a spotting scope, we can identify the individual just by seeing them not, you know we don't have to find them or hold them in our hand.

We we've got birds banded all the way down to the tiny little warblers that can wear these color bands and so it's really kind of neat.

And people get excited when they find one.

So you really ban birds for information?

I'm sure that as many years as you've been banding birds and doing bird research, there's been something that what's what's what's the one piece of information you got that you got that you go, “I would have never guessed that”?

Oh gosh, you know, it.

It's always so exciting.

Probably the coolest thing that I had recovered was a barn owl that flew all the way to Nebraska within a few months of being born.

We had no idea our barn owls would go that far away.

And so we get to learn really neat things through band recoveries.

And what's the oldest bird that you've ever found banded?

I just had a bald eagle that I banded maybe 13 years ago recovered and that was really neat.

Bald eagles can be 25 years old, but it's neat to look back in the earlier parts of your career with a band recovery like that.

That's a program that the feds and the Department of Fish Wildlife banding birds, they've been doing that for many, many, many years.

Right?

It's a national thing.

And so this is a national website that you put the information into.

And it's the information is consistent throughout the entire country.

Okay.

Very cool.

Well, next up, we have Brock Allen.

How long do crayfish live?

Anybody know how long crayfish live?

I'm sure there's a bunch of different species of crayfish.

So we have a lot of species of crayfish in Kentucky, over 60 something species.

But typically they live just a few years.

But there is a few species, some of the burrowing crayfish that live under the ground their entire life.

They can live over ten years.

Oh, wow.

So but some of the big ones you might find in the rivers, like the bottlebrush, can also live probably about the same amount of time.

Okay.

All right.

So can live up to ten years.

Wow.

All right.

Next question.

Tony, Tony Sites, how far east in the state have armadillos been confirmed?

Man If you drive the roads, especially in western Kentucky, you know, I first started hearing this, I don't know, ten, 15 years ago, people were saying, “you know what I saw?”, I saw an armadillo.

And you're like, Really?

Well, now I've seen dozens It seems.

Because if you're driving in western Kentucky, you're going to see them.

They're out there.

How Far East, though?

There's actually been an armadillo sighting confirmed in Pike County.

So as far east as you can go in Kentucky.

But yeah, you're right.

When they first started moving northward into the state, it was more just concentrated in the purchase in western Kentucky.

They're still sporadic throughout central and definitely sporadic in eastern Kentucky, but they are going to continue to become more common in Kentucky.

gotcha.

Really interesting species.

So if you if you think you saw an armadillo in Kentucky, no matter what state you're in, it's it's very possible.

Yeah.

Yeah.

And John MacGregor, he's still collecting sightings on armadillos, especially in central and eastern Kentucky.

Not as much as far as western Kentucky goes, just because, like you're saying, they are becoming a little bit more common.

Our next question is from Nick Johnson.

He wants he wants to know where he gets one of those sweet blue shirts.

So he's interested in these Kentucky wild shirts you're wearing a couple of years ago version, the green one, there was a red one.

Now, this year, this is the the blue version.

It's blue on blue.

How do you get one of these?

Yeah.

So this new blue shirt is our Kentucky wild shirt for 2023.

And you can get one of these by becoming a member of Kentucky Wild.

And we're actually running a membership special tonight.

So the $25 membership level, that's the basic membership level that you can join.

You usually don't get a T-shirt but now, now until August 15th because of this Kentucky wild Q&A show.

You can join using a promo code KYAFIELD on the Kentucky Wild website and if you join at that $25 level you will get this blue t-shirt.

All right.

So if you would like a new, very soft material that they make these out.

If you want a new t-shirt, Kentucky Wild, show that show that you support wildlife here in the state of Kentucky.

There you go.

You got you got a deal right now you can get one for $10 off and be a member of Kentucky.

Wild all for $25.

All right.

Next question is Sharron Carrick do you track bats with band tagging, and what happens to them during the extreme heat?

How do how are we track?

How do we track and bats are you also banding bats?

We are also banning bats.

And just in case we got a question about banning bats, I brought a couple of bat bands.

You'll see they're a whole lot smaller than the bird bands that Kate just showed.

These are actually different colored bands.

The normal band that you order comes in silver.

These have been anodized several different colors so that we can not only track bands by a unique code that is on each of those.

It's probably a little bit hard to see from there, but there's a unique code that goes on the band and then of course, on to the bat.

So a bat is recaptured.

You can tell where they were originally captured.

Their weight If we first captured them as a juvenile and now they're an adult and that sort of thing.

So we can track them that way.

And then also the different colors will show us specifically for one project that we were doing with Virginia big eared bats.

We wanted to see where they were moving from their maternity colonies and then where they were showing up in overwintering sites.

So if we go into a cave in the winter, we can very quickly identify, okay, there's a red band, so we know that came from this specific cave in the summertime.

Oh, okay, cool.

And then we also use radio tracking to locate bats.

So if you capture a bat, and especially if it's a rare species, if it's a pregnant female and you want to see where her roost tree might be, so we can make sure that's protected, you can actually glue on a very small radio tracking tag to the bat and then track it using a receiver.

So you're basically walking around in a field, holding this antenna up, listening for beeps and just trying to walk towards where the bat is.

And they also want to know what happens to bats during extreme heat.

Oh, in the extreme heat.

So there has been, there was quite a few calls recently in that extreme heat where there were a few kind of bats that people had found just down and about.

So they do get dehydrated.

They will drink out of people's ponds and stuff on their property and really, you know, just as much as any other species, water is really important.

They'll drink out of people's pools.

But yeah, you know, they can get dehydrated like any other animal.

But if you do find a downed bat that's on the ground or something like that, don't pick it up barehanded.

If you need to move it, you can coax it into a cardboard box wearing a glove or something like that and move it.

But call a licensed rehaber if you need rehab services, don't don't try to take care of a bat on your own.

Okay.

Next question is from Jeremy Powell from Calvert City.

How do skinks and lizards lose their tails without bleeding to death?

Anybody know anything about skinks and lizards?

So I know that they can contract their muscles because of course, if they're losing their tail, they're trying to get away from a predator and the easiest way well, I say easiest.

It's of course a huge energetic loss, but if they're trying to get away from a predator and it's between losing their tail and getting eaten, they can contract those muscles and those blood vessels will can constrict really quickly so that the tail drops off and the lizard can continue on and it can regenerate that tail.

It just won't usually look exactly like it did before.

Isn't that amazing?

It really is.

It's like a like a like a fighting little male, like an army man.

Just snap the arm off and pop it back on whatever it is.

It's amazing that that they can do that.

Next question is from Timothy Stephens.

Wants to know if it's legal to pick up eagle feathers if you run across them in the woods?

it isn't.

All eagle feathers are supposed to be sent to the national repository.

And so if you find them and Google that, it's really just best to send them to us or get them to us or just leave them in the woods, those are the best things to do, but it's not legal to possess them yourself.

So.

Gotcha.

Next question from Donna Tharp wants to know what's the best time of year to cut hay for wildlife benefit?

Says I've been waiting until September and October to allow the milkweed to be used by all the monarchs.

Any suggestions on best times of year?

Here's where you're going to see Michaela and I argue a little bit, because it's hard to pick the perfect time.

And so I often tell people if they want to do the best case scenario to cut a little at one time and then a little at another time for birds.

You want to wait until after the nesting season like the last week of August.

First week of September is good because the habitat has time to rebound before, before winter.

But for pollinators, Michaela can feel you in.

Yeah, we've had this discussion before where September is a really huge month of course for the monarch migration.

So that's the challenging time as well for us really.

But that early August, late July is sometimes an okay period, just because the milkweed does have a little bit of time, especially in mid-July, to grow back up a little bit.

Like Kate said, really, if you can just kind of leave a little bit at a time, that that's kind of the equalizer and giving wildlife some habitat, if you can leave a little bit.

Okay.

Yeah, because milkweed I mean, that's that's the only thing they eat, and they've got to feed up for the migration trips.

And when do they head out?

Well, at the end of August we'll start seeing the migratory generation of monarchs and then through September and early October.

I mean even now, sometimes when the falls have been really warm through late October, we've been seeing monarch butterflies.

And I guess this is a good time to talk about the monarch Butterfly is a species of greatest conservation need for the state.

Now, I wanted to just really quickly bring up that we're in the midst of our State Wildlife Action Plan revisions.

So for the first time ever, insects, including the monarch butterfly, have been added into that plan.

There's a whole slew of mussels, songbirds, raptors, a whole bunch of species that biologists here study that have been incorporated into our state wildlife action Plan.

And that's something I wanted to bring up because that's an important plan that really guides how we do the conservation and monitoring work here at the Department for all of these species.

And that plan will actually be available for public comment here in a couple of weeks on our website.

Okay.

So just to kind of point out that there are those species of greatest conservation need, a lot of the ones that we're talking about tonight are actually in that plan as species of greatest conservation need.

So anyway, I just wanted to point that out that that will be on our website soon for public review of anyone is interested in looking at our State Wildlife Action Plan and providing comments.

Very good.

Very good.

Next question is from Jason Thomas.

Want to know what kind of work do we do on Elkhorn Creek for mussels?

Well, your lab is right there at Elkhorn Creek.

What are you guys doing on Elkhorn Creek as far as releasing mussels?

Well, we have a Center for Mollusk Conservation that's been there since 2002.

And our primary objective is to research and study and propagate and culture these really rare mussels that we have in Kentucky, we have 105 species in Kentucky, 29 are federally listed as threatened or endangered.

So we have a lot of rare ones.

Some of them are doing fairly well in the state, but the ones that aren't, maybe they have gone from Kentucky.

So we can actually go to where they are currently living.

The good example is the Cats Paw.

It was gone.

A population was rediscovered in 1996.

It took about ten years, 15 years to find three or four animals to be able to try to work with them.

So we started the project in 2012 to be able to try to grow the Cats Pawl in captivity.

So so after ten years of working with this species, we've released over 5000 from a population of less than 50 in the wild.

Wow.

So we're doing that at at our facility at Elkhorn.

So we're raising the food for them.

We're keeping the animals in captivity and breeding them in captivity.

At one of our other hatcheries, we have two other hatcheries, ones at Lake Cumberland and one at our hatchery near Morehead.

So we're doing things at all three places to try to keep things in natural conditions.

And we're working and studying on what makes them grow and why they're declining in the wild.

But we're bringing these things back into the wild in multiple locations.

And both these girls have talked about banding, you know, all the way down to butterflies and bats.

And you've talked about bald eagles all the way down to little bitty birds you don't band, but you also have a way to track and keep up with with mussels, right?

Yeah.

We have two or three different methods.

One, we can actually actually have one here somewhere on this rabbit's foot muscle, not this one.

So we can put a number tag on them that we can zero in on this animal.

We also have what we call pit tags that we use for Hellbender as well.

So we can actually put that on these animals and go back with this wand like a metal detector and find those animals in the wild.

But one thing that we do is since we've been raising thousands of these things each year, we put a different color of plastic glitter each year to represent our stocking classes.

So there are some of our sites in Kentucky now we can go out and we can find six or seven year classes in a row that we've released of these really, really rare mussels that hadn't been seen in maybe even 100 years.

So it's literally a little piece of glue that's waterproof, that doesn't affect the muscle, and you just glue one might be purple, might be green, might be blue, and that tells you what year class it is for that muscle.

And I've seen you guys do that, actually participated in that before, it is really cool.

So you also can go out in couple of years and potentially, are you seeing any natural reproduction on mussels that you guys have released?

Yes, we've we've released several species that we've gone back and checked on them the next year or ever every five years.

And so we're seeing reproduction already from some of the animals.

Now they take some four or five years before they reproduce.

So those Cats Paw Mussels, it's just, they've been out now probably at high enough levels for three or four years.

So it's probably going to take them three or four more years before we see some young juveniles that come as a result of that.

But if we can get enough of them out, they'll reproduce and recruit on their own.

And that's the goal is to is establish a population that we don't have to do anything with but but watch it.

So you went from literally a handful known in the world to releasing over 5000 and over a period of time, they may very well be reproducing, but they're very small.

When they're first they first come out, they're well, how many could fit in that little shell, thousands of thousands?

We could get several thousand in the space of this of this shell.

One thing that I will mention is we've got another 4 or 5000 Cats Paws to release this year, that we're going to have a Kentucky wild event to help us tag those.

Oh wow.

When you have four or 5000 mussels to tag it takes a lot of people.

So we get ten or 15, 20 people, four or 5 hours, and we can tag all of those and they're ready to go out in the field.

So we're going to have that at some point.

Then you may be tagging and releasing that one day, as many of that in the total population out in about.

In the entire world.

In the world.

Yeah.

By double or 100 times what it was, I mean they were down to less than 50 animals in the wild.

Yeah.

They thought they were extinct in the 1990s.

And then one researcher found two or three individuals and then so it took several years of effort to be able to find and locate enough animals to be able to.

And then it took us several years to figure out how to raise them in the wild in captivity.

There's some great stories about how we're managing and trying to reestablish populations that are viable to sustain themselves.

You know, we've all been on different releases with the show.

What do you actually have down there?

You have what have you got right there?

I have a life size replica of the eastern Hellbender.

That was a very unique ordeal that we went out and we filmed that.

It was the very first time that Hellbenders had been reintroduced in Kentucky, and that was, I don't remember how many we released that day?

25.

25, and I know there's been really since then we've had additional release, right?

There will be additional releases in Kentucky, because this is a species that really should be statewide in our streams and rivers but has been in decline just due to different water quality issues and other factors that we're really trying to study.

And so we did our first release.

There's been a program with Purdue University and other partners.

We're possibly partnering with the Louisville Zoo, and we're also going to be doing some actually rearing here at the department, or as far as our facilities.

So far we've been able to harvest eggs from wild populations of Hellbender that we know are in the state.

And those so far have been sent to a lab in Indiana to be reared up to the subadult level.

And then that's what we rereleased last year, is hellbender at that subadult level.

So if you're just releasing a really small juvenile hellbender, or if it's just coming out from egg, it has a much lower chance of survival.

But by rearing these hellbender and then releasing them at that subadult level, they're a little bit larger.

They're going to have a little bit better chance against predators.

So that's kind of the goal there, is to start putting them back into these places where we know that the habitat is good, we know that they should be there.

But just wanting to get more of them out there.

So it's exciting that that's the program that we're currently building the facilities to do in-house.

Now that was something I wanted to bring up because we, you know, we came out and covered that and it was a really fun day to be out seeing an animal species that I probably saw more hellbender that day than I'll see the rest of my life in any one stream.

Yeah.

Easily, especially because, you know, these guys, when they're in a creek, even if you're right next to it, it's going to be at the bottom of the creek under a very large rock.

So and then they also look like a rock.

You can see how flat its head is when you're snorkeling and looking under rocks for them.

It's very easy to look under a rock and think, oh, well, that's a rock that I'm looking at under there.

But really, it's it's an adult Hellbender guarding eggs.

Very cool, very cool.

Next question is from Isaac Walker wants to know where is the best place to see eagles in the eastern part of Kentucky?

There you go.

Probably lake Cumberland, has really good counts in the wintertime.

They have a lot of nests, but it's always easier to see eagles in the winter when the leaves are off the trees.

And so I would just get on a boat on Lake Cumberland and keep your eyes open.

You'll probably see some, but they can be seen., just about any lake any more is, you know, good eagle watching.

But if he's just really wanting a sure thing, that would be where I would go.

But we do have Eagles statewide nowadays.

Statewide.

Yeah.

So on the water, though, eagles are always pretty close to water aren█t they?

Usually.

Yeah.

Yeah.

So pick a lake.

Pick a lake and a big lake like Cumberland gives you a lot more area to search.

But a lake or a river, you got a chance in Kentucky to see an eagle.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Next question is from Tom Timbrook wants to know what happened to the whippoorwill?

This is a question we get every year.

What are we, what do we know about the whippoorwill populations?

That's a really hot topic in bird research right now, and it's thought that habitat loss is probably the biggest factor.

Whippoorwill need open woodlands and so we have issues with a lot of invasive species and the understory of woodlands nowadays, like bush honeysuckle and things like that, especially if he's talking about whippoorwill that used to be on a farm's edge.

Invasive species can be a real problems there.

There may be some issues with predation when it comes to feral cats, raccoons, things like that that are a little overpopulated on the landscape.

And there's folks doing research on things like insecticides because they're insect eaters, Whippoorwills are.

And so it's probably a few different things causing the whippoorwill declines, but we're all paying attention to it.

And we do a statewide count for Whippoorwill and ChuckWills Widows now trying to figure out where they're still doing the best, which seems like large tracts of public land.

So, yeah.

Kari Cook from Lyons County wants to know where they can get a bat box.

Apparently, they're interested in a bat box.

Well, as far as bat boxes go, there are a lot of different options.

If you go to Bat Conservation International's website, they kind of have a big overview of the different designs of bat boxes.

There's things called rocket boxes.

And if you go and look, they're kind of these little boxes that have different layers of like they have different sections where there's wood in between them so the bats can move around and kind of temperature regulate within that box.

So really anywhere where she wants to either look for the box designs on Bat Conservation International and take those and just look as she's shopping in different areas, or look online for bat boxes.

That's just a good way to know that you're getting a bat box that has the specification, specifications that she needs.

Okay.

And make sure you put it up pretty high and in a fairly sunny area.

So if the bat box is too low, you're going to want it to be about 12 feet off the ground because the bats have to fly down out of the bat box and kind of swoop a little bit.

So they don't want to be too close to the ground, especially because predators can have access to the box.

I gotcha.

There you go.

Next one is Sharron Sims wants to know how to make hummingbird food?

They want to know when they should take their hummingbird feeder down?

I got a hummingbird question after this, well, but how do you make hummingbird food?

And then when when should they take it down?

Okay Yeah, you can make your own.

You don't need to buy it.

And so you just mix one part sugar to four parts water.

Don't add the red dye.

It might be bad for the hummingbirds.

And make sure your hummingbird feeder stays nice and clean.

You█ve got to take it down and bleach it honestly every few days in the heat like this to keep it healthy for the birds, keep the food fresh every two days.

You probably need to be putting hummingbird new hummingbird food out.

Hummingbirds are in Kentucky until usually through mid to late September, so I usually just take mine down at the end of September.

Rarely you'll see one persist longer than that.

But September 30th is a good day to just kind of close it down because you need to keep it fresh, you know?

So it's kind of a maintenance issue.

I don't remember getting this question.

Maybe we have that.

I've had this same issue with the hummingbird two years in a row, and it actually is happening right now.

They get in my garage.

Oh.

And when they get in the garage, they go straight to the top, way above the door where they can't see the exit.

Yeah.

And I leave the door open.

Day upon day and I come out and those hummingbirds, they won't go low to fly out.

So I end up having to crack the door where, where they can see light from the very, very top.

Yeah.

And they make their way out finally.

But any, any, any hints on.. You█ve done exactly what I would tell you.

So they get in the, you know, a garage is a confusing place for a bird and so they just get confused when they get in there.

And a lot of times there's something about twilight conditions.

If you leave the door open, you know, the bird might be in there all day.

But something about the twilight of the evening, they see that infrared light coming through and they go towards it at night.

They think, I got to get home now, you know, But it can take a while.

You just have to be patient and just let the bird fly out.

You can try to encourage them, but honestly, a lot of times it's just better to be quiet and leave the door open.

You know, I dealt with this for, I had one in there three days last year.

Oh, wow.

I█m surprised it made it.

Yeah, I know.

And after three days it finally, I didn't see the birds.

anymore.

So yeah, I hope he made it.

This year.

Yeah.

I had it in there today and I end up taking the door and putting it about halfway down where I could see that there was light from the top.

I left, came back to the bird was out.

So yeah, usually in that you know how it goes, but it's a problem for a homeowner, you know, you don't want to kill this hummingbird but in our garage and... Is your feeder close to the garage because sometimes you got to you know...

I don█t have a hummingbird feeder.

I have no idea why that would happen so often for you.

Strange.

It█s happened two years in a row.

And like I said, it's one of those things when they get in the they don't land, they're just non stop, they're non stop, they're going and you could tell they're, they're excited and they're nervous.

But yeah, there's not a really good way to, you know, get one out without hurting it.

So we let it find its own way.

Yeah.

Thank goodness they did last year though.

It took, it took a little, little extra time.

Yeah.

Don Stanfield wants to know, how are the eagle and barn owl surveys going?

Any results you can share?

Okay.

Well, a few years ago, we ran into the fortunate problem where we had too many bald eagles to count statewide every year.

And so we divided the state in three regions.

And we started doing regional counts where we would just rotate a region each year.

And we started in central Kentucky and the numbers were great there, a big increase.

We went to eastern Kentucky last year, another big increase, great numbers.

This year.

We counted western Kentucky, which is usually just the absolute stronghold for eagles in Kentucky.

And we had an unusual year where the numbers dipped about 15%, which was very, very unusual.

And we think it's these windstorms we keep getting have knocked down some of the nest because we've had a lot of reports of nests coming down in wind storms.

We may have also had some issues with the avian flu that we had last year in the waterfowl.

We know that it affected some eagles in our state.

We think next year the numbers will be good again.

We're going to count extra carefully next year and we expect a rebound.

But in any case, the statewide survey is going good.

We're just hoping to see western Kentucky bounce back pretty quick.

If an eagle does lose its nest, obviously if it's got eggs or very, very small young, then that's going to be a loss.

But as far as the the bird, it would be able to do fine without a nest, right?

Yeah.

Usually the adults survive the storm and it's a matter of losing that year's nest.

And then the next year they'll nest again.

And so because they build these nest and use them year after year and they get really big and heavy up there in the tree.

Yeah, ultimately you get a bad windstorm.

It can happen.

Bald eagle nests are not made for wind storms, that's for sure.

So hopefully we'll have fewer storms next year and we'll have better luck.

But you asked about barn owls, too, right?

And so that's a species that we've counted every three years.

And last year was a big statewide count and we had a great count.

Last year, we counted more barn owls than ever, over 130 nests, and another 25 or so birds that were just roosting birds.

And that was just great numbers in comparison to what we've seen in the past.

So very cool.

So we're feeling really good about the barn owls.

We've done a lot of work with them.

We've put up nest boxes for birds that needed safer nest sites.

We don't put up nest boxes just anywhere.

We find the birds first and we we give them a nest box.

And that's worked out pretty good.

It seems to have boosted their productivity.

So that's great to hear the numbers coming up.

I know we've done shows on Barn Owls.

You've done this show saying, hey, if you have a barn owl and here's how you find out if you have a barn owl.

We've shown the cast and and it sounds like all that effort is the numbers are increasing.

That's great.

Yeah, we've worked on them a long time, and so it's nice to see it pay off.

Yeah.

Next question is Cody from Spencer County, how big do mussels get in Kentucky and how big our muscles compared to other states?

What's the biggest mussel here in Kentucky?

Well, that has to be the washboa with me tonight because I thought I might get a question about the biggest muscle.

And so here's here's one that's not even full size.

Oh, this one is over 50 years old.

Muscle just keep growing.

And these these can live about 60 or 70 years.

Some muscles can live almost 200 years.

Oh, my gosh.

And they keep growing and growing and not very much.

They put on maybe one millimeter a year when they get 40 or 50 years old, if they live another 40 years, that's another couple of inches.

Yeah.

So these can get much larger than your hand and they'll weigh six or severn pounds.

Wow.

So this is this is one of the largest that we have definitely in Kentucky.

And the other one close to it is the three ridge, which looks a lot like, they're very similar when they get old.

In the United States.

What's the biggest muscle found?

This is one of them.

This is probably the largest muscle we have in North America as far as just the volume and size, how big it gets, not the oldest, but the largest.

And what's the inside of that that that muscle looks like?

Okay.

So this is, this mother of pearl and that's where we get the name from.

The pearls are made from shells.

They're cultured.

Most of them that you buy are cultured.

I think I have some here.

Here's an example of some pearls.

So what happens is the muscle will get something inside the shell and it'll add a layer of what we call Mother Pearl over top of it.

Most times they're irregularly shaped and not round.

The ones in in the wild that are round are extremely rare and you would only find those in like the royalty.

But you can culture these artificially.

So they'll take, for years, Kentucky people would collect the mussel shells and make little beads out of the shells, send them over Japan and China, and they would make what we call culture pearls.

So almost all the entire market that you buy pearls from now are made from synthetic inserts that are in the oyster or something in China and Japan or New Zealand.

So very few are done here in this country.

There is a couple of places down in Tennessee where they actually make freshwater pearls from North American mussels.

Oh, wow.

But they get really beautiful color.

And so whatever color the mussel is will be the color of the pearl.

So here's one that'll be pink.

Oh, wow.

And they get really pretty colors.

And there's a lot of variety.

There's red, there's orange, purple cream color.

But the majority are probably this pearly whites that you see.

And that's the most common sought after is is the white ones.

That pink color what muscle is that?

It█s the pink heels splitter, and it's appropriately named because of the color.

But these are really pretty they can get fairly large too.

They can get it almost as large as these washboards.

And I remember we actually, the heel splitter, I remember we actually found some of those when I was out with you that day in Green River.

Right?

We did.

I remember that being one of the names.

And I asked you the reason of the name and it's appropriately named, right?

Yes.

Because you said if you step out them with your heels, that it you'll know it.

Right.

And they they you know, mussels live in the bottom of streams and rivers.

So what you normally see is something like this.

So when I'm out looking for them, 80% of the ones are below the surface.

So I'm seeing a little tiny little peek.

So these this guy here, they'd like to crawl around this way and live like this.

And this little hill gets really sharp.

So if you walk around barefoot in a stream and you step on that, it's going it's going to cause an injury.

So this have to watch out.

Most of the time, though, they say buried completely.

Yeah.

Yeah, I remember you show me some of those.

That's very cool.

Next question here is from Justin Caldwell.

Does Kentucky have a growing owl population?

I'm seeing more and more every year in Owen County.

So he's not saying what particular species at all, but overall owls.

What tell me the, name me the species of owls we have here in Kentucky.

Which ones are the most common?

And then what our population of ours is like?

Okay, so starting with the more common ones, we have great horned owls, barred owls and screech owls and they all have stable or possibly slowly growing populations.

We have the barn owl, which is a species of concern.

We've been working on a bit more rare.

We have Northern saw whet owls that are only here in the winter time.

Okay, On rare occasion we'll get a snowy owl in the winter.

Oh, wow.

Yeah.

We've had those in Kentucky.

Yeah, but, you know, just a handful in a snowy winter.

So I wouldn't say that.

You know, maybe he's been lucky lately where he's been seeing more, and I wouldn't say any of them are increasing in a huge sort of way.

But there are some owls that are relatively common, like the great horned owl is a pretty common.

Okay.

So yeah, yeah, I've seen quite a few of these, but you spend a couple mornings out, out in the field at daylight.

Good chance you're going to see one.

Yeah, Yeah.

I just have to be looking for.

I'll tell you what.

They can be intimidating in a deer stand.

You can have an owl land right at you.

Right, right in front of you.

It.

It can be a little bit intimidating.

Yeah, it can startle you.

Yeah.

That eyes that they have feels like they're looking right through you.

But you know what?

You just kind of sit there and admire their beauty and they don█t like to sit around though, they'll be there for a few minutes and seem like they're gone.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Next question is from Courtney Hays.

Are there any species of butterflies that migrate other than the monarch?

There are.

That's a great question, because a huge amount of attention gets put on the monarch butterfly, which is absolutely fascinating, makes that huge migration to Mexico each year.

But some of our common species, like Buckeyes, they will migrate south, are clouded, or cloud-less sulfur is the big yellow ones that you'll see probably pretty soon here.

You'll probably see a lot those late August, they'll make a migration.

And the Painted Lady, those are pretty common.

They actually also go to Mexico.

Not all of them.

Some of them end up in south Texas, further south, but they also make a migration, a huge migration to Mexico, and just don't get nearly as much of the attention that the monarch does.

They just have a little less of a structured migration than the monarch does with those four generations.

But they still make a huge migration nonetheless, and they're a smaller bodied butterfly.

Okay, yeah, very cool.

So are there any butterflies that stay in Kentucky year-round?

There are, yeah.

Okay.

So if you think about it, I mean, for butterfly and invertebrate, there's really two options you can get out of here when it gets cold because you're not going to be able to survive.

Or you can go into more of a dormant stage.

So if you think about I like to use the comparison of the monarch and the Viceroys.

So the viceroys is our state butterfly, looks very similar to the monarch, but they have very different life history strategies.

The Viceroy is going to over winter rolled up in a leaf as a first or second instar as caterpillars.

So basically instar is just their molt stages.

So they vary from one of the two first life stages that they go through.

They're going to roll up in that leaf, usually on their host planet, which is willow species, and they're just going to overwinter like that and go very dormant.

And that's regardless of how rough the winter is.

They█ll make it.

And a lot of butterflies and moths will get into their pupa stage when it comes.

You know, they'll either have a chrysalis like most butterflies do or a moth pupa is more of that cocoon like fluffy stage.

And so in the winter time, they're going to go very dormant.

They're just going to stay into that pupation stage all winter until it warms up.

So if you're thinking about getting into your garden, grabbing all the leaves up, cutting all the stems, maybe like we were talking about earlier, try to leave a little bit of that natural habitat.

I know to some people it looks a little messier and you want to get it cleaned up quickly.

But if you can leave it for a little bit longer until spring, until those temperatures warm up, you're going to give a lot of pollenating and overwintering insects a lot more chance to survive.

Well, very interesting.

Next, questions from Danny Maxwell.

And this is for you, Monty.

Does that name sound familiar to you?

Well, just so happens he was at the camp that you taught today and he would like to know.

Apparently you were teaching a camp today on mussels.

Huh?

And he was there and he wants to know what your oldest mussel in your personal collection is.

I have at least one mussel this little bit over a hundred years old.

Oh, it's the kidney, fluted kidney shell.

And so they can really live a long time.

They're not very big.

So that's probably the oldest one that I have, the fluted kidney.

And it's an endangered species and it can live over 100 years.

And yours is over a hundred years old?

Yeah.

How do you how do you tell how old one is?

It's putting rings on just like a tree?

Yeah.

It's, it's similar to that.

They have, they have a rings on them.

You might be able to see them on these.

Instead of a tree, which starts in the center and goes both ways.

The mussels lay a ring down and add them on in layers.

So these dark bands would be like year two, year three.

In fact, Mr. Maxwell, I showed him probably today how to age one.

And he was telling me how old the ones that I had in the box that he, aged them pretty easily after I showed them.

Okay, so it's pretty easy to age them.

Sometimes when they get one millimeter a year, it's really tough.

You have to put them under a microscope or you have to cut the section of the shell and look at them from the side.

So there's different ways of doing it, but you can very accurately age them based on to some extent.

Yes.

Yeah, that's very interesting.

Over 100 What is the longest live muscle in the United States is probably a species we don't have here in Kentucky.

But we have a similar species called the spectacle case.

So it's in the same family and they live well over almost 200 years.

Oh, my gosh, that's amazing.

200 years old.

Our next question is how do you get a job doing what we all do?

So how do you get a job?

How do you get a job being a biologist here in the state of Kentucky?

Well, most of us here generally have a biology or biology related degree.

So I studied natural resources and environmental science and then got a master's in biology.

Not everybody has a masters.

Some people go off of years of experience, but the way I started after college was getting a seasonal technician show up here, and that was a nine month long technician ship and got some experience.

So many people start out as seasonal and whatever their field of study is.

And I know you're is interesting because yours changed when you started with the Department of Fish Wildlife.

You weren█t studying bats before, and that's the job that was available.

And next thing you know, you're studying bats.

Kate, where did you go to school?

I went to Ball State, Muncie, Indiana.

And I'm one of those people who just got a bachelor's degree and then after that, just racked up experience.

And so, yeah, most people go for biology or wildlife biology or natural resources.

Did you come in as a full time right off the bat, or did you come in and do.

No, I started traveling around wherever there was still somebody who would pay me to work with birds and then ended up here eventually.

You know what?

It's it's something that you have to have a passion for, don't you?

I mean, it's a great job.

And you love to get to show what you what you get to do every single day out in the field.

But you got to have a passion for it.

Oh, sure.

You're going to do some traveling and you're going to get some experience.

You're going to be taking some jobs with some maybe some long term uncertainties.

A lot of these jobs are six month jobs.

Monte, how about yourself?

Where did you start?

I mean, you have a Ph.D. You're probably one of the leading people in the world that do what you do.

How did you get started in this?

Well, I was introduced to freshwater mussels in 1988, so I've been working with them since 1988.

And professor in my class at Murray State University said, Would anybody like a job working with freshwater mussels at $3.35 an hour back then?

And I raised my hand.

He introduced me to mussels and I just fell in love with working with them and have been working with them ever since.

So in my position here, I haven't really changed since I've been here for 22 years.

Yeah, my position has been the same entire time I've been here.

I started the Center for Mollusk Conservation, so I've had haven't had to go through too many channels, but right out of grad school I was hired as a malacologist in Virginia to work for the game Fish there, and then came straight to Kentucky after six years.

So I've been working for 28, 29 years in a state wildlife agency as a malacologist.

I bet you have interns almost every year working for you, don't you?

I do, and I usually try to find interns that are interested in going into the field.

So I have a current intern.

She's a natural resource Environmental Science at University Kentucky.

She'll be a junior.

She's doing great.

So she's getting a lot of experience and I have a lot of people that just want to come.

In fact, two of the kids today that were in the class that I taught, one's a graduating senior, one is a junior in high school.

They were both expressed interest in being an intern and getting experience working with wildlife.

And I talked about that.

You can go to our website at the very bottom, our website, it says Careers.

You click on that.

It'll list all the jobs that are open for the agency.

So get a degree in wildlife biology biology if you want to do something what you guys are doing and put a plan in place, call the department and talk to some of the people and find out what internships are available.

And you know what?

Go out and try something before you set your plan, this is what i;m going to do the rest of my life, because you might make a make a change, maybe not.

like in your situation, started this 28 years ago.

You're working with mussels and you absolutely love it, don't you?

I do.

You don't want to do anything different but work with mussels.

That's what you want to do.

On the other hand, you were working with butterflies and the next thing you know, the first opportunity at the Department of Fish and Wildlife for you to get some experience was what?

Cave surveys with bats.

Cave surveys with bats.

And that's the first time we met.

We were actually in a and I was I remember thinking, Man, how did you decide this is what you wanted to do?

And you're like, This is not my first passion.

It's actually butterflies.

But you work with bats for a while.

You love that.

Now you get to do a little bit of all of it, right?

Yes.

Yeah, bats, butterflies, the Hellbender project.

Really anything that comes through that we're like, well, this is probably what we need to work on.

It's a big diversity of just different projects that we're working on.

Get some experience and you know what?

Get spend a couple days out on the field, reach out to the Department of Fish and Wildlife, join Kentucky WILD, find out what opportunities may be available there, to do a field day with a biologist.

See where your passions lie because everyone you know, people want mammals.

You know, some people want the the little furry fuzzy animal.

You're on the insects side, mussels, birds.

There's a lot of opportunities here in the state of Kentucky and with the Department of Fish and Wildlife.

So if it is your passion, it's something you want to do.

I hope to encourage that passion and, get on the department's website and see what type of jobs are available.

Our next question here is from Angela Smallwood said he found a dead finch by her feeder.

What should she do now?

We've talked a little bit about this with bats, but if you find a dead finch or a bird, maybe you don't know what kind of bird it is.

How should you handle that?

Well, finches, especially, it's it's unfortunately common this time of year for finches to get what we call the house finch eye disease.

And it's a disease that makes them go blind.

It's spread on common feeding surfaces.

And so if you find a dead finch at your feeder house, Finch and Goldfinch are the most common species that get it.

You need to take down your feeder right away, bleach it and leave it down for a couple of weeks because you're going to be just allowing the disease to spread by inviting birds to eat on a common feeding surface.

And unfortunately, that's kind of common.

July through October here in Kentucky.

So people need to kind of be on the lookout for it.

In general, when it comes to dead birds, finding one dead bird is not necessarily a concern, But if you find five or more dead songbirds, we would like to know about it and test them and see what the problem is, because periodically we do find disease outbreaks.

And so there is a way on our website that you can report that or you can call the info center here when it comes to other dead raptors and species like that, you're welcome to call and see if that's of concern.

So I'm guessing that any time you find a dead bird, if you don't know what it is and it's around your bird feeder, it's probably a good idea to clean that thing out, take it down for a period of time, clean it very well, dump out the remaining food and start.

Start fresh again.

Yeah.

I'm glad you said that.

You know, you're not really doing birds any favors by feeding them if you're spreading illness.

And so it's important.

If you're feeding birds to keep the bird feeder clean, you really should be it every week or two, regardless of the situation.

And certainly if you find dead birds, leave it down for two weeks.

That lets the disease run its course and then try putting it back up to see if you still have problems.

All right.

Next, questions from Donna.

Want to know if we can explain how to view moths at night using a sheet and a light.

And what is the best time of year to use this method?

What do you know?

This method of locating moths using a sheet and a light?

Yeah.

She's probably talking about putting up a white sheet just hanging it up.

You can find two trees or just anywhere outside on a patio or something like that.

And putting up a black light.

And so the moths will be attracted and they'll kind of just sit right on that sheet and they will just stay under that light and you can just take a look at all the different moths you've attracted.

Very cool.

And, you know, I mean, if you don't have the setup and everything for that, you can just do something as simple as turning on your patio light.

And if you have a screen door, something like that will work.

Okay.

What's the best time of year to view moths?

Really, right now is a great time.

It was actually just Moth Week last week or the week before, so that's just a big awareness week of the amount of moth diversity in the United States.

And so middle of summer there's lots of moth species about.

All right, that's very cool.

Next question is from Abby.

Want to know how we get to work in the field year around?

So is there field work for for all of you guys year round.

Right.

There is yeah.

You know for birds and Kentucky, I guess.

Do you think this is a career interest type question.

I think it sounds like it, yeah.

It sounds like what to make sure there's I know we talked about nine month interim jobs but there are jobs for for biologists year, year, all year round.

There are.

Yeah.

And if you're still in the phase of your career where you're doing temporary positions, honestly, I just had to travel.

You know, I moved south in the winter where they were still doing a lot more bird work and came north during the summers for several years there.

So we generally hire our technicians in the summertime here for birds anyway, but we're here year round.

We count birds in the wintertime too.

I mean there█s work for you every day.

You're raising food and then you have thousands and thousands of species of animals there that you're raising the food and everything from every day.

Right.

Right.

And so we we used to run our facility 365 days a year.

And then when we had the pandemic, we were forced to do some other things a little differently.

But our hatcheries, we have live animals year round and they have to be checked year round.

So it's not as much work in the wintertime going out and doing field work in the rivers and streams.

But we do have equipment such as dry suits, to get out in February and March when the muscles are starting to spawn and getting the broodstock.

So we go out at different times.

It's much easier to go out in the summer when it's not so hard on the biologist.

Yeah.

Oh yeah.

Well, tonight's been a lot of fun.

If there's a particular species of animal that you've heard a little bit about that you want to know more about, reach out to these biologist.

Give us a phone call.

But even better than that, go and join Kentucky Wild on Instagram and become a member.

You pick up one of these t shirts.

If you do it within now and August 15th, right.

For $25 you can be a member of Kentucky wild and that's normally a $35 deal where you get a t shirt for $25.

You get one of these blue on blue t-shirts that our ladies here wearing.

And consider joining Kentucky Wild.

It's been five years now.

How many members total?

10,000 Total members.

10,000 total.

It's amazing how many people are interested in what's going on in Kentucky, because I get phone calls for people that watch Kentucky Afield through YouTube and all these other formats.

Well, people do the same thing for Kentucky Wild.

We've got members of Kentucky Wild from all 50 states now.

Right.

So they may have lived in Kentucky at some point in time or they were raised in Kentucky.

Now they're just interested in what we're doing here in Kentucky with our wildlife species.

So it's a great way, a great way to get involved is by joining Kentucky WILD.

Well, thank you for tuning in with us tonight for our annual Kentucky Wild Question and answer show.

And remember, we're going to be off-air until August the 26th.

So make sure you set your DVR and join us then.

And remember, hunting and fishing on private property is a privilege.

Always ask permission and thank the landowner.

Until August 26, I'm your host, Chad Miles, and I hope to see you in the woods or on the water.