The Wildlife Of Kentucky Route 1000

 

Kentucky Route 1000 begins about a mile and a half from my house and I have driven it regularly for over 31 years.  It is only about 7 miles long and intersects with US 460 at its eastern end and Kentucky Route 191 at its western end.  It runs up what is sometimes known as the Right Fork of White Oak Creek, over the hill, and down a small branch of Caney Creek where it connects with Kentucky Route 191 at the Caney Grocery, an old wooden building approaching a hundred years old which is filled with assorted antiques and sells good sandwiches and pizzas.  The Kentucky Department of Highways has four classifications of roads in the state and Route 1000 is in the last and lowest classification.  The classifications are number 1 through four and those classified as fours are what are described as "the set of highways not in the first three systems, including frontage roads, bypassed portions of other state highways, and rural roads that only serve their immediate area."  That is a great description of Kentucky Route 1000.  But that description leaves out the entire best part of driving Route 1000, the wildlife diversity it regularly produces to the attentive driver.  

 

Nearly every time I drive across Route 1000, I see some kind of wildlife.  There are always small animals, squirrels, rabbits, opossums, raccoons, and sometimes a ground hog.  And ground hogs are much more rare today than they were before coyotes spread all across the southeastern United States.  Sadly, coyotes have nearly obliterated ground hogs in many areas of the country because ground hogs dwell in earthen dens and are very easy for coyotes to dig out and kill.  But in one place in particular, actually in front of a house, I have seen a few ground hogs, probably multiple generations of the same line of descent, dwelling in the vicinity of a culvert which crosses the road at the edge of that yard.  The photo below is of a small buck eating birdseed in my driveway about a mile and  a half from Route 1000.

 

In some ways, it might be easier to list the animals I have not seen when I am driving on Route 1000.  I have never seen a bobcat, a bear, or an elk on Route 1000.  But bobcats are primarily nocturnal and with the many small farms and woodland on the road, I know there are bobcats all around.  I have never seen an elk on Route 1000 but one was seen a few years after elk were placed in Southeastern Kentucky not far from Route 1000.  This county is actually one of the buffer counties which the Department of Fish and Wildlife  added into the design of the entire elk program to prevent them from spreading into primarily agricultural areas and doing damage to crops such as corn, grains, etc.  I have never seen a bear on Route 1000 but a few years ago a man living a few miles from it, actually just across one of the ridges, killed a bear on his property and claimed it had attacked his dog.  The game warden at the time accepted but probably doubted the story of the attack on the dog but chose to not charge the man with killing the bear.  I have no doubt that we have bear in some of the deeper hollows on Route 1000.  The photo below is of a ground hog leaving its den.

 

But the real question becomes, what have I seen on Route 1000.  I see deer regularly, maybe not every time I drive the road, but on many occasions I see them.  I even see them at times in small herds of half a dozen or so.  I have, just in the last few days, seen four separate flocks of turkeys along the road grazing in the fields with gobblers strutting in front of the hens in spring mating rituals.  I have no idea how many species of birds I have seen on the road or how many species of birds regularly live in that part of the county.  But I have documented about fifty species of birds on my own property a couple of miles from Route 1000 so I know there must be in excess of that number along the road, in the fields and the woodlands in that 6 or 7 mile stretch.  So, let's talk about the somewhat unusual bird sightings I have seen on Route 1000.  Just a couple of days ago, I saw the first Canada Goose I have ever seen in this immediate area in a neighbor's field on Route 1000 and within sight of US 460.  About a year ago, my wife and I saw a Great Blue Heron feeding in the creek within a few feet of the road.  I slowed down almost to a stop to get a sight of it and it flew slowly up the creek in front of us as I drove behind it for a quarter mile or so.  It kept to the edge of a mowed hay field near the stream and the timber but flew slowly along until it found a spot it liked in the creek as far as possible from the road and disappeared behind a clump of willows to resume feeding.  The photo below is of a recently hatched but dead common snapping turtle I found in my yard. 

 

On two occasions in the last few years, I have encountered female common snapping turtles crossing Route 1000 either before or after laying their eggs. In both cases, these turtles were actually only a short distance from the ridge which is an odd place to see a snapping turtle even in spring egg laying season.  One of them was probably an eighth of a mile from the ridge in a spot where the little creek isn't three feet across and not at all deep.  This particular turtle was headed back to the creek after laying her eggs near a house which is actually not unusual since I have had common snapping turtles hatch on my own property of an acre or so.   The second snapping turtle was actually just exiting the highway literally at the top of the ridge when I saw it and I suspect it was headed to lay its eggs since there is a small farm pond on the far side of the ridge about a hundred or so yard from where I saw that turtle.  I suspect if she had already laid her eggs, she would have been headed back in the other direction toward the pond. 

On New Year's Eve 2016, I actually drove up on a Bald Eagle eating on a road killed opossum about a hundred yards from where I recently saw the Canada Goose.  The eagle flew up into a tree near the road and I drove past, turned around at the intersection of US 460, and returned to sit and watch the eagle in the tree for a few minutes as it waited for me to leave so it could return to its meal.  That is only the second eagle I have ever seen in this county.  A few years ago, in broad daylight, literally across the road from an occupied home, I saw a coyote standing at the edge of the road.  But as I approached, it quickly darted over the embankment and disappeared into a field where cattle are pastured.  As I recall it was spring calving season and the coyote was most likely looking for fresh afterbirths from cows.  But the owner of that house also owns guineas and the coyote might have been stalking a guinea which I did not see.  The photo below is not the actual eagle I saw but I figure this post deserves a photo of an eagle anyway.  

As I said at the beginning of this blog post, I am never surprised by what I see in terms of wildlife on Kentucky Route 1000.  If I ever see a bear, an elk, or some other highly unusual animal or bird on that road, I won't really be surprised.  If you are in the area with nothing to do, take a quiet, slow drive across Kentucky Route 1000 and you can probably be surprised by some bird or animal you haven't seen in quite a while.