Extra! Extra! Read all about it!

Emily and Ziggy need your newspaper donations! Newspapers provide clean, dry, easily-replaceable substrate for captive animal enclosures, and newspaper donations are a constant need for Ruffner animal care specialists. Please make your donations — Tuesdays through Sundays, anytime between 7 AM - 5 PM, from now until February. You’ll find the donation bin near the front door of the Nature Center.

The end of an era — In February 2023, Alabama Media Group, which includes the Birmingham News, will stop printing physical newspapers. The News is the most commonly-donated newspaper locally, and many organizations will lose their biggest source of newspaper substrate starting next month. We urge you to donate them to organizations that will be sorely in need of them in the coming years, as newspaper will be harder to come by and more expensive to obtain. Give your favorite organization with animals a call to ask if they could use your newspapers.

Happy New Year!

We are looking forward to a productive and peaceful 2023. We would also like to say Congratulations to Sierra Anderson, Ruffner's Office, and Special Projects Administrator on her new job opportunity and to Michael Witherspoon, Visitor Services Associate on returning to college.

We wish them both the very best!

How You See Us

Earlier this year, we surveyed members, visitors, partners, board members, and staff and asked the following questions: what led you to Ruffner Mountain? and what would you like to preserve at Ruffner Mountain, no matter what?

We are so grateful for your feedback and would love to share some of your responses (anonymous, of course) with some of our favorite images of the year.

Winter Bat Survey

On a Ruffner hike, you’ll see plenty of clues to the mountain’s industrial past. Quarries, iron ore mine openings, test pits, rock crushers, rail beds, and foundations to hoists and conveyors — industrial scars — scrapes and slopes, pits and chasms, valleys and ridges, quarries and crags — this human-altered landscape has become important habitat for wildlife and a refuge from the escalating spread of modern urbanization. Ruffner’s mines serve as good habitat for roosting and hibernating bats. Safeguarding the openings with gates allows access to bats, keeps visitors from entering danger zones (please do not attempt entry into any mines), and allows researchers to monitor the populations for the presence or absence of Pseudogymnoascus destructans (Pd), the fungus that causes white-nose syndrome, a deadly disease which has devastated populations of several species of bats in North America.

Our first bat survey of the winter season at mine No. 3 went well, finding 339 tricolored bats (Perimyotis subflavus) and two big brown bats (Eptesicus fuscus). Although swab samples collected may find the presence of Pd, the surveyers saw no obvious signs of the disease, providing some hope that the bats may be able to either cope with the disease or that researchers may unlock some potential for treatment. Data was collected from 21 tricolored bats and roosting surfaces and will be sent to a Virginia Tech lab where researchers will test the results. Another survey will be conducted in February, near the end of hibernation. With each new survey we learn more about this species using the Ruffner mines for hibernation.

Thanks to Nick Sharp, Biologist - Alabama Department of Conservation and Natural Resources (ADCNR), Pete Pattavina, Biologist - US Fish and Wildlife Service (USFWS), and Jamie Nobles, Conservation Director - Ruffner Mountain Nature Coalition. Outdoor Alabama U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service

That's a Wrap—Habitat Garden Club 2022

Habitat Garden Club had its last workday of the year on Tuesday, November 29th.

Thanks to the volunteers for your hard work in keeping the gardens looking good and continuing to provide a food source and habitat for wildlife. This scraggly gulf fritillary (bottom photo) appreciates you— and we appreciate you!

If you would like to join the garden club and learn more about plants and the biodiversity of the mountain, we’ll meet again on Tuesday, March 7, 2023, in the parking lot of the East Lake entrance to Ruffner at 9 am and work until noon.

Eastern Screech Owls

Have you met eastern screech owls, Scops and Ziggy?

Eastern screech owls (Megascops asio), Scops and Ziggy, two of Ruffner’s Animal Ambassadors.

On weekends, you may find either of the two little owls hanging out with Wildlife Care Naturalist, Emily Hutto, as she leads educational programs and cares for all of our animal ambassadors. Eastern screech owls (Megascops asio) come in two colors, gray and rufous (reddish brown). Scops is a gray morph, and Ziggy is rufous morph.

In the pictures, Ziggy and Scops demonstrate their amazing camouflage qualities, and you can see for yourself how each color helps them to blend in — colors, along with feather patterns and dark vertical streaking — Scops perfectly matches the oak bark, while Ziggy more closely matches the pine. Both rufous and gray morphs occur across the range for eastern screech owls, and both can be found in Alabama because of our pine and hardwood mixed forests across the state. Rufous morphs occur more commonly where pine trees make up the majority of forest, while gray morphs are most likely to occur in hardwood forests.

Ruffner Wildlife Care Naturalist, Emily Hutto, with the gray eastern screech owl, Scops.

Volunteer Opportunity at East Lake Park

We love East Lake Park—our “sister city park” and hope you do, too!

If you are looking for a volunteer opportunity this weekend, join Cawaco RC&D on Sunday, November 13th at 1:00 pm at East Lake Park to help care for the young forest planted in 2018 and 2019. Learn more here.

Check out this article to learn more about the ongoing restoration and reforestation work at East Lake Park.