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Benton County Soil and Water Conservation District

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Benton County Soil and Water Conservation District

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We provide information, education and assistance for conservation projects in Benton County

10/28/2026

Happy Wildlife Wednesday! Today we have a not-so-spooky dressed up duck: the Wood Duck (Aix sponsa)! The males’ colorful feathers make them look like they are ready for trick-or-treating. Read more for a treat!

Wood ducks are a prominent species in the United States, particularly in the eastern part including Minnesota. They have been a popular game bird for centuries, which actually contributed to their decline and near extinction in the late 19th century. Luckily, their population has since increased to healthy levels due to hunting management and improving nesting sites. They are one of the earliest examples of a conservation success story.

Did you know? Young ducklings take a leap of faith the morning after they hatch, trusting their instincts as they step off of the tree cavity and plummet to the ground. This can sometimes be a 50 foot fall! They will then be gathered by their mom and tended to for the next 5-6 weeks. Wood ducks create nests in tree cavities left by woodpeckers, so these two bird species unknowingly work together. Another fun nesting fact is that sometimes there is what is known as a “dump nest” which is used by several nesting hens to lay their eggs in. These nests have been found to carry up to 40 eggs from different mothers! This interesting practice is known as “brood parasitism”.

You can help these ducks by installing a nesting box near your backyard pond or wetland. These ducks need to nest near water to raise their young on the water and teach them to swim. While generally increasing in population, wood ducks are still threatened by habitat loss, so creating new nesting spots will help them thrive for years to come!

Thanks for tuning in this week, catch you in the next one! Happy Halloween.

10/28/2026

Bats completely break the rules of aging! 🐀❌🦇

In nature, there's a rule: the smaller the mammal, the shorter its lifespan. A wild mouse rarely lives past 1 year. But a tiny bat? They regularly live for 20 to 30 years in the wild!

In fact, the world record belongs to a wild Siberian bat that lived for over 41 years—even though it weighed less than a coin.

How do they pull off this "Fountain of Youth" superpower?
• 🧬 Cellular Self-Destruct: When a bat’s cells suffer DNA damage, their bodies force those damaged cells to self-destruct before they can cause aging or cancer.
• 🛡️ Immune Superpowers: The exact genetic pathways bats use to coexist with deadly viruses without getting sick are the same ones that prevent age-related decline.
• 💤 The Power of Hibernation: Hibernating bats drop their heart rate from 1,000 beats per minute to just 4! This metabolic freeze gives their bodies a massive break from wear and tear.

Because bats live so long, moms only have one pup per year, making every single bat vital to their colony's survival.

Celebrate by sharing the secrets of nature’s tiny, real-life vampires who just might hold the key to longevity! 🌌🧪

10/27/2026

Bat mothers are the ultimate animal kingdom supermoms! 🦇🤱

Because raising a baby takes an immense amount of energy, most bat species only give birth to one single pup per year. Here is a look inside the wild world of bat motherhood:
• 👶 Giant Newborns: When a pup is born, it can weigh up to one-third to 43% of its mother's body weight! (That is the equivalent of a human giving birth to a two-year-old child).
• 🙃 Upside-Down Births: Mother bats give birth while hanging completely upside down. They have to catch the newborn pup in their wings or tail membrane to keep it from falling!
• 🎒 Clinging for Life: Pups are born with oversized, fully developed feet. They latch onto their mother's fur and ni***es with their feet and mouths, staying securely attached even while the mother dives and twists through the air hunting for food.
• 🏠 It Takes a Village: Pregnant females gather in massive "maternity colonies". In locations like Bracken Cave, millions of mothers huddle together to keep their pink, hairless pups warm while the adults go out to hunt.
• 🔊 "Baby Talk" & Teaching: When a mother returns to a cave filled with millions of screeches, she can pinpoint her exact baby by its unique scent and vocal pitch. Mothers even use a form of "baby talk" vocalization to guide their pups and actively teach them how to navigate the night sky!

Because bats reproduce so slowly, protecting maternity roosts is absolutely critical to saving their populations.

Celebrate by giving a shoutout to these dedicated mammalian moms! 🌎✨

10/23/2026

Bats have a built-in energy-free gripping system that lets them hang upside down completely relaxed, meaning gravity closes their claws and they use zero muscle effort to snooze all day.

Here are more cool and surprising bat facts to blow your mind this October:
• Super-Fast Heartbeats: When a bat is resting, its heart beats a normal rhythm, but during active flight, a bat's heart rate can skyrocket to a staggering 1,000 beats per minute!
• Extreme Longevity: For their tiny size, bats break the rules of animal lifespans. While most small mammals live only a couple of years, certain tiny species like the Brandt's myotis can live up to 41 years in the wild.
• Built-In Cleanliness: Far from being dirty, bats spend hours every day grooming themselves and each other to keep their fur sleek and control parasites—much like a cat.
• Belly Buttons: With very few exceptions, almost all mammals have navels from their mother's umbilical cord, and baby bats are no different.
• Surprising Relatives: Despite looking like flying mice, genetic research shows that bats are actually more closely related to humans and primates than they are to rodents.

Would you like to turn these facts into another quick social media post, or learn more about a specific fact like bat lifespans or grooming habits?

10/21/2026

Happy Wildlife Wednesday! Today we are featuring a fall favorite - the woolly bear caterpillar! Also known as the Isabella Tiger Moth (Pyrrharctia isabella). Read to learn more about them!!

These fuzzy caterpillars are a staple at this time of the year, indicating that fall is here and winter is near. They are even thought to be winter weather predictors; old-time folklore claims that the width of the caterpillar's brown middle band predicts how harsh the winter will be (a wider brown band means a milder winter). In reality, band colors change with age, molt stages, and genetics rather than the weather. The older the caterpillar, the wider the band around its midsection. Believe what you want, but biology usually has an explanation.

Why are they known as fuzzy, woolly bears? Their body is covered in long, stiff hairs known as setae. They protect the caterpillar from predators such as mice and birds who have trouble picking them up. These hairs also help them sense their environment, particularly the temperature. The “woolly” part of their name really comes into play when temperatures drop. When low temperatures are detected the caterpillar uses “cryoprotectants” to protect its vital organs. These cryoprotectants work like a natural antifreeze and according to the National Weather Service, can keep woolly bears alive at temperatures as low as -90℉. With this ability, woolly bears are even able to live in the Arctic!

Once the caterpillars have survived winter and eat enough plant material in the spring, they will form cocoons and metamorphosize into beautiful Isabella Tiger Moths. They are tan with black markings and eat nectar from flowers, pollinating them.

Don’t dispose of your fallen leaves in the yard! Rake them into garden beds, brush piles, or under trees to provide necessary winter cover for the caterpillars. Even with their superpower, they still need shelter from predators and a cozy place to hibernate through the winter.

Thanks for tuning in this week, and be on the lookout for these fuzzy friends!

10/21/2026

Fun Fact: How do bats scream at 140 decibels (as loud as a jet engine!) without deafening themselves? 🎛️🚫👂

Because sound fades quickly in the air, bats have to shout incredibly loud so the echo can actually make it back to them. To survive their own deafening noise, bats have evolved a form of "selective, temporary deafness":

• 🛑 The Disconnect: A split second before a bat screams, a specialized middle ear muscle (the stapedius muscle) automatically contracts.
• 🦴 The Safety Switch: This contraction temporarily pulls apart three tiny bones in their middle ear. By disconnecting these bones, the massive vibrations from their shout cannot travel from the eardrum to the inner ear, safely dialing down their hearing.
• 🔄 Instant Reconnect: The very millisecond the shout leaves their mouth, the muscle relaxes, the bones instantly snap back together, and their hearing is fully restored just in time to catch the faint, returning echo!
Imagine pulling your headphones off your ears every time you speak, and snapping them back on to listen—and doing it up to 200 times every single second! 🤯

10/20/2026

Time to set the record straight: 5 bat myths we need to bust right now! 🦇❌

Bats are often cast as the villains in movies, but the spooky stories you’ve heard are almost entirely fiction. Let's look at the actual science behind Earth’s most misunderstood mammals:

• 🕶️ Myth 1: "Blind as a bat."
• BUSTED: Bats are not blind at all! All bat species have functional eyes, and many have excellent low-light vision. They just use echolocation as an extra "superpower" to navigate and hunt in total darkness.
• 💇 Myth 2: Bats want to nest in your hair.
• BUSTED: Bats have absolutely zero interest in human hair. If a bat swoops close to your head at dusk, it’s because your body heat attracts bugs like mosquitoes, and the bat is just trying to snag a quick snack!
• 🐀 Myth 3: Bats are just "flying mice."
• BUSTED: Bats are not rodents. They belong to their own unique evolutionary order called Chiroptera (meaning "hand-wing"), and genetic research shows they are actually more closely related to humans and primates than mice!
• 🩸 Myth 4: All bats suck human blood.
• BUSTED: Out of more than 1,400 bat species worldwide, only 3 are vampire bats. They live strictly in Central and South America and primarily target livestock or birds—plus, they don't even "suck" blood; they painlessly lap it up like a cat!
• ☣️ Myth 5: All bats carry rabies.
• BUSTED: Like any mammal, bats can contract rabies, but it is incredibly rare. Less than 1% of wild bats carry the virus. (Just remember to always leave wild animals alone and never handle a bat with bare hands).

This , let’s stop the fear and spread the facts! Which of these myths did you used to believe? 👇

10/19/2026

Ever wonder how bats navigate and hunt in total darkness? They use a superpower called echolocation! 🦇🔊

Think of it as nature's built-in radar system—the exact same technology submarines use to map the deep ocean.

Here is how this incredible biological sonar works in three simple steps:
• 🗣️ The Shout: As they fly, bats contract their larynx muscles to emit high-frequency, ultrasonic sound waves out of their mouth or nose. These sounds are incredibly loud—often as loud as a chainsaw!—but because the pitch is so high, human ears can't hear them.
• 💥 The Ricochet: The sound waves travel through the air until they hit an object, like a tree branch or a tiny mosquito. The sound instantly bounces off the object and travels backward as an echo.
• 🧠 The Map: The bat's finely tuned, oversized ears capture the returning echo. By calculating exactly how long the sound took to return, the bat’s brain builds a perfect 3D mental image of its surroundings.

This process happens at lightning speed. A hunting bat can vocalize up to 200 times per second! This allows them to instantly calculate an object's size, texture, distance, speed, and direction—even detecting things as thin as a single human hair in pitch blackness.

Celebrate by sharing the magic of how bats use physics to rule the night sky! 🌌✨

10/16/2026

Forget everything you think you know about bats! 🦇🎨

When most people think of a bat, they imagine a small, dark shadow swooping in the night. But bats are actually one of the most diverse, colorful, and surprising mammal groups on Earth!

Here are four mind-blowing species that completely break the mold:
• ⚪ The Honduras White Bat: These tiny creatures look like fluffy little cotton balls with yellow ears and noses. They don't live in dark caves; instead, they chew the ribs of large leaves to create their own tiny, jungle "tents" to hide from the rain.
• 🦊 The Golden-Crowned Flying Fox: With a wingspan that can reach up to 5.5 feet, this gentle giant is one of the largest bats in the world. Don't worry, though—they are strict vegetarians who only eat fruit, especially figs!
• 🎨 The Painted Bat: Ditch the dark colors. This stunning species from Southeast Asia features bright, vibrant orange fur with contrasting black-and-orange wings. They look more like butterflies than traditional bats.
• 🦟 The Bumblebee Bat: Weighing less than a penny, this is officially the smallest mammal in the world. They roost inside limestone caves in Thailand and Myanmar and are so tiny they can easily fit on the tip of your thumb.

With over 1,400 species worldwide, bats make up roughly 20% of all mammal species on Earth! 🌍

This , let's celebrate the incredible variety they bring to our planet's ecosystems. Which of these species would you want to see in real life? 👇

Address

14 2nd Avenue W
Foley, MN
56329

Opening Hours

Monday	7am - 4:30pm
Tuesday	7am - 4:30pm
Wednesday	7am - 4:30pm
Thursday	7am - 4:30pm
Friday	7am - 12pm

Telephone

+13209685300

Website

http://www.soilandwater.org/

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