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Blue Hills Trailside Museum Blue Hills Trailside Museum Review + Species List

Discussion in 'United States' started by ZooElephantMan, 24 Dec 2022.

  1. ZooElephantMan

    ZooElephantMan Well-Known Member 5+ year member

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    Today I went to the Blue Hills Trailside Museum in Milton, Massachusetts. The museum is essentially a small nature center with indoor and outdoor animal exhibits, located on the 7000-acre Blue Hills reservation. The museum’s collection is made almost entirely of rescued native wildlife, but they are not AZA accredited. While small, the museum is still nice not only because of its focus on local conservation, but also because it has a great location near many nature trails that can take you throughout the vast Blue Hills area if you have time for a hike.

    The first part of the museum is the outdoor section, which is free to the public. At the start of the outdoor area is a pair of exhibits that make up a small wetland area for native turtle species and North American river otters. These enclosures are the newest additions to the museum, and were both opened in 2021 for a budget of $2.3 million to replace older ones from the 60s. The otter exhibit was very spacious for the one otter, giving it a nice amount of shade, land, and water to swim in. There was a mix of glass, opaque, and chain-link barriers, with no underwater viewing. The turtle exhibit also seemed good, although the turtles were off-exhibit due to the cold weather.


    Beyond the wetlands exhibits are several exhibits for North American birds of prey. These took the form of several chain-link aviaries. It seemed many of the birds were flighted, and I saw a snowy owl fly across its exhibit several times between different perches. Most of these exhibits also had small water features in them, which I thought was a simple but nice touch.

    After the birds of prey, the last two outdoor exhibits are for white-tailed deer and red foxes. The deer exhibit was a simple chain-link paddock with a wooden shelter for them to hide in, but the fox exhibit was slightly more complex with a stream running down the center. The visitor area around the fox exhibit also had a large wooden shelter with big glass viewing windows, which was nice since most of the other exhibits at the museum had more obstructive chain-link barriers.



    After checking out the outdoor section, I went to see what the interior of the museum was like. This part of the museum requires guests to pay for a $5 ticket. Inside there are some glass-fronted exhibits for smaller animals like various rodents and venomous snakes. There was also a small indoor exhibit for a great horned owl. The exhibit looked far too small for an owl of its size, but a sign explained that the animal was orphaned at a young age and blind in one eye. Apparently she was previously kept in a larger outdoor exhibit by the other birds of prey, but she got very stressed and kept injuring herself in larger open space, and so this smaller exhibit counterintuitively ended up being the best option for her quality of life. I really appreciated this, because I think it is so important to acknowledge that not every individual animal of a given species should be cared for in the same way. Different individuals of the same species will have different needs based on psychological factors, disabilities, and their different personal preferences, and while some great horned owls may do better in larger exhibits, this is not the case for every member of the species as a whole.


    Other than the live indoor exhibits, the museum also had a small taxidermy collection, with animals including a fisher, two black bears, and various birds like woodpeckers and more birds of prey. There were also some educational opportunities for kids, with areas to learn about things like bird wingspan size, how skulls can teach about animal adaptations, and some basic areas to learn about animal tracking and how to look for signs of activity in the forest.



    Overall, I enjoyed my visit to the museum. I went through the whole place in 45 minutes and had never been there before, but I thought trying out a “zoo” that focuses on native species would be a good choice on a winter day when tropical animals are more likely to be off exhibit and I was right. It seems like no other zoochatters have been here, so I added a bunch of additional photos to the gallery for documentation purposes. I found the museum to be somewhat like the Ecotarium in Worcester MA-- another zoo-museum-hybrid that focuses on exhibiting native wildlife. I would say the Ecotarium's animal collection and museum exhibits are probably more extensive and higher quality than Blue Hills', but the Trailside Museum is in a better location and I still enjoyed both facilities.

    After I left, I also did some digging and found the museum's 2008 masterplan, which called for more immersive exhibitry, the new otter and turtle area, and adding brand new habitats for animals like black bears, coyotes, and bobcats. By now the MP is around 15 years old so it is unclear if any more of it will come to fruition, but I found it fascinating to read regardless. Here’s the link to the document if anyone is interested: https://www.mass.gov/doc/02executive-summarypdf/download
     
  2. ZooElephantMan

    ZooElephantMan Well-Known Member 5+ year member

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    Here's the species list! I saw everything except the seasonal animals:

    Outdoors

    1. North American River Otter
    2. Snowy Owl
    3. White-Tailed Deer
    4. Bald Eagle
    5. Black Vulture
    6. Turkey Vulture
    7. Red Fox
    8. Red-Tailed Hawk


    Seasonal

    9. Blanding's Turtle
    10. Eastern Box Turtle
    11. Musk Turtle
    12. Painted Turtle
    13. Spotted Turtle
    14. Wood Turtle


    Indoors

    15. House Mouse
    16. Norway Rat
    17. White-Footed Mouse
    18. Great Horned Owl
    19. Virginia Opossum
    20. Eastern Box Turtle
    21. Eastern Screech Owl
    22. Northern Copperhead
    23. Timber Rattlesnake
    24. Shiner (Fish)
    25. Honeybee
     
  3. TinoPup

    TinoPup Well-Known Member 5+ year member

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    Thanks for the detailed review! Sounds like I could have fit it in when I visited Stone and Franklin Park, darn :( I wasn't sure how much walking it was to see the animals (to make another comparison to Ecotarium, there's a lot of space between exhibits there and the layout is confusing).
     
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  4. Neil chace

    Neil chace Well-Known Member 5+ year member

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    Thanks for sharing this review! This is one of the local zoos I've never visited, even though I've driven by it before and have gone on a few hikes in the Blue Hills, including the entire Skyline Trail on one occasion. Looks like a decent place, but doesn't seem like I'm missing much by not visiting before. If I'm ever in the Milton area again though, I'll have to check it out.
     
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  5. ZooElephantMan

    ZooElephantMan Well-Known Member 5+ year member

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    I’m glad you both liked the review! The museum is definitely smaller and less spaced out than the Ecotarium, and while it might not be worth it to go out of the way to visit, it seems pretty easy to combine with Franklin Park (only a 20-minute drive) or possibly even Capron (a 30-minute drive). The Ecotarium, on the other hand, is more remote.

    Neil like you I had been to Blue Hills before, but not to the museum itself. This was also one of the major “zoos” I had not yet visited in the area (the other is Buttonwood which I am hoping to check out in the Spring, before I start to explore more facilities in western MA, CT, NH, and the RI aquariums). However, given how close the Trailside Museum was, I was really curious about it, and felt compelled to see what this local place would truly be like. I enjoyed my visit, and it was a nice way to spend an hour in the forest outdoors on a cool winter morning.
     
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  6. TinoPup

    TinoPup Well-Known Member 5+ year member

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    I had intended to stop there after Franklin Park, and even drove past it on my way back to RI, but I only had an hour or so wiggle room and frankly didn't want to do a lot more walking after all of the sun at FPZ (it was July). Ecotarium I did the following month, when I was pet sitting in CT, as a stand-alone since I could only leave for a few hours at a time.
     
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  7. Pleistohorse

    Pleistohorse Well-Known Member 10+ year member

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    Thanks for the review. For my part I’m happy to see they display a few rodents appropriately sized the for the Red Fox, the snakes, and the raptors. With the collection on hand, you could imagine if there were a largish island in Massachusetts Bay and if these were the animals present on that island, along with the invertebrates that a found in the area…the zoo’s ecology would be sustainable. Nice touch with the Fisher and Black Bear perhaps representing extirpated species…maybe being considered for reintroduction.

    Although have you ever read about Anticosti Island in the Gulf of St Lawrence? The introduction of the Whitetail Deer is thought to have played a roll in the extinction of the island’s Black Bears. So maybe an island the size of Martha’s Vinyard would be unable to sustain both?

    Did you observe any wild animals or birds on the grounds?

    Hope you don’t mind me dabbling in the fantastic looking at your zoo from a slightly different angle. This place is on my list to visit when I take my tour of New England.
     
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  8. ZooElephantMan

    ZooElephantMan Well-Known Member 5+ year member

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    Thanks for your comments! I'm glad my review has been able to spark discussion.

    You make a good point that the museum does have a nice balance of different species representing the various niches in the ecosystem. In terms of rewilding, I have heard that reintroducing carnivorous animals has been very controversial in MA in the recent past. Back in 2017 there was a plan to reintroduce 150 locally-endangered Timber Rattlesnakes to an island in the Quabbin reservoir, but the plan was suspended since locals were afraid that they may be bitten by the venomous animals. There is a place in Ipswich called the North American Wolf Foundation that is supposed to be doing a lot of work for conservation of local carnivores. I haven’t been yet but they have several wolves there, and they apparently are working on destigmatizing the long-demonized canids as well as educating locals on how to coexist with coyotes. Their work destigmatizing carnivores is going to be important if we want plans like the Timber Rattlesnake plan to be successful without sparking fear from locals. Still, I’ve heard wolves might be harder to reintroduce in MA given limited available habitat, but that black bears or fishers could perhaps be more successful as they both have been able to form more stable populations in the nearby states of ME, NH, and VT.

    I did observe some wild animals on the grounds, although not too many. There were several gray squirrels, sparrows (unsure as to specific species), robins, and also some northern cardinals. I am sure I would have seen more species if I went on one of the trails, and it seems that there may also be good opportunities to see local wildlife in other times of the year. I didn’t mention it in my initial review but the museum has a pollinator garden where, in the summer, you can spot wild butterflies. There is also an area with bird feeders where you might be able to spot more wild birds, as well as a natural pond with signage for spotting potential waterfowl and other animals like herons.
     
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  9. ZooElephantMan

    ZooElephantMan Well-Known Member 5+ year member

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    After seeing your comments about rewilding last week I have been thinking a lot more about the status of megafauna in the Northeast US, and I did some looking into Anticosti Island.

    What is interesting about the island is that it seems like all the species (including deer) were introduced to turn the place into a “hunter’s paradise,” rather than for ecological purposes. These introductions had some negative effects on the ecosystem, including the extinction of the island’s Black Bears as you mentioned.

    I was talking about this with one of my friends who studied environmental science in college, and he mentioned that the bears may have become locally extinct since unrestrained deer populations can affect bears due to overbrowsing, and because deer and bears compete for food sources like berries. Wolves are a really important species (which was notably absent from the island) because they can curtail the deer population, which will decrease overbrowsing, which will give bears more viable food sources and better quality of habitat.

    Overabundance of deer, who do not have any predators, can also perhaps explain why black bear and fisher populations are not quite as strong in New England as they once were. The same issues may be happening here as once happened in Anticosti Island; without wolves, deer populations are soaring, which leads to overbrowsing, which has negative results for black bears and fishers.
     
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