These aerial photos from Sunday show how high the water can rise at our Beanblossom Bottoms Nature Preserve in Monroe County after spring storms. "I'd guess about two feet of water over the parking lot, maybe three," reported our Executive Director John Lawrence, who got as close as he could on Sunday afternoon to our flooded nature preserves along Beanblossom Creek to fly his drone and document the record high water level in these protected wetlands. In the second photo, the parking lot is in the upper left and the bridge over Beanblossom Creek is in the lower right. The creek is over its banks. The White River at Spencer is the first gauge station downstream of Beanblossom Creek and a good indicator of Beanblossom flooding. It crested at 24.41 feet early Monday morning according to the National Weather Service at https://water.noaa.gov/gauges/spni3. This is about 20 feet above the usual river height, and appears to be the fourth highest on record. The photo of the parking lot shows the partially-submerged brown kiosk framework (which will be getting a new educational sign this spring!) There are new benches in front of it that are just below the water level. Nature is powerful! But it still needs a strong community like ours to protect it 💪 (fb)

A proud pair of native tree swallows has made our nest box at our Sam Shine Foundation Preserve their home this spring. Our Land Stewardship intern Wyatt Downey captured them sitting on top of their new nest, watching over the preserve's bottoms where we are restoring over 70 acres of wetland habitat. Look closely at the male's foot, you can see a band! We are working on finding the bander to learn more about this bird's journey. It is unlikely we will find them unless we can read the numbers, but that would require capturing the bird and we do not want to disturb them. Wyatt is going to try to get more pictures so we can try to read the number 🤞 📸 A proud pair of tree swallows watching over the Shine bottoms, by Wyatt Downey (fb)