The white-tailed deer has 4 stomachs! These deer also mark their territory by rubbing bark off trees.
Many trees along our trails are labeled with their names! Both scientific and common!
Heartland Forest has a large swamp forest (or slough forest) on its property! This wetland is seasonal with parts drying up in the summer.
Heartland Forest is home to Both Barn swallows and tree swallows! If you see a bird with blue back and a white throat that’s a tree swallow! If the bird has a blue back with a red throat that a barn swallow!
Heartland Forest has 4 kinds of maple trees: the black maple, the red maple, the sugar maple, and the freeman’s Maple. The maple genus is called Acer! The sugar maple’s binomial name (scientific name) is Acer saccharum!
The Muskrat is a semi aquatic rodent that lives in wetlands! We have some living at Heartland Forest, they can be seen at the fishpond, and can swim underwater for roughly 15 minutes on average!
There are a bunch of mammals that visit or live in Heartland Forest such as, bats, coyotes, chipmunks, rabbits, squirrels, muskrats, opossums, raccoons, foxes, and deer!
Frogs, toads, newts, and Salamanders are amphibians, meaning they have an aquatic gill-breathing larval stage, followed by a terrestrial lung-breathing adult stage, but some amphibians stay in an aquatic habitat and keep their gills as an adult such as the Axolotl!
Turtles can be seen sunbathing to regulate their temperature, they are called exotherms or “cold blooded”.
Heartland Forest is home to 9 species at risk! The Round-leaved Greenbrier, The Black Ash, the Common Snapping Turtle, The Midland Painted Turtle, The Monarch Butterfly, The Grass Pickerel, The Wood Thrush, The Easter Wood-pewee, and the Barn Swallow!
Heartland Forest is home to 10 amphibians, and 4 reptile species! A person who studies reptiles and amphibians are called a herpetologist.