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Friday, May 29, 2009

Birding at King Elementary

I just finished my ecologist-in-residence program at the King Elementary School in Warwick. The 5th grade classes joined me as ornithologists to do a survey of birds at the school. In two days I took 5 classes out to find birds in the woods, wetland and fields that surround the school. The 5 classes were: Mrs. Curtain (May 28, 10:30-11:30), Mrs. Kunath (May 29, 10:00-11:00), Mrs. Shook (May 29, 11:15-12:15), Mrs. Boccia (May 29, 1:00-2:00) and Ms. Davis (May 29, 2:30-3:30). We identified a total of 41 species between the five classes and two days. I’m listing the birds identified, with which classes saw or heard them noted by the teacher’s initial.

Canada Goose K
Mallard B
Great Blue Heron K, S
Black Vulture C, S, D
Turkey Vulture C, K, S, B, D
Red-tailed Hawk S, D
Killdeer K
Mourning Dove K
Chimney Swift C, K, S
Red-bellied Woodpecker C, K
Downy Woodpecker S
Hairy Woodpecker S
Northern Flicker B, D
Eastern Phoebe I saw when not with students
Great Crested Flycatcher S
Eastern Kingbird C, K, S, B, D
Blue Jay K, D
American Crow C, K, S, B, D
Tree Swallow S, D
Tufted Titmouse C
White-breasted Nuthatch I saw when not with students
House Wren C, S, B, D
Eastern Bluebird C, B, D
American Robin C, S, B, D
Gray Catbird K, S, D
Northern Mockingbird C, K, S, B, D
Brown Thrasher S
European Starling C, K, S, B, D
Cedar Waxwing C, K, S, B
Yellow Warbler C, K, S, D
Chipping Sparrow C, K, S, D
Song Sparrow K, S, D
Northern Cardinal K, S, B, D
Rose-breasted Grosbeak C, K
Red-winged Blackbird C, K, S, B, D
Common Grackle C, K, S, B, D
Brown-headed Cowbird K, S
Baltimore Oriole C, S, B
Purple Finch S
American Goldfinch K
House Sparrow C, K, B, D

Not a bad day for birds. The habitat at King is great. It’s interesting that we did not get black-capped chickadee or common yellowthroat. A few other birds that are probably at King are wild turkey, sharp-shinned hawk, kestrel, rock pigeon, ruby-throated hummingbird, barn swallow, field sparrow and eastern meadowlark.

Thursday, May 28, 2009

More Owl Pellet Data

In early May I was at the Leptondale Elementary School in the Wallkill Central School District where 4th grade classes took apart owl pellets. Here is the data from those classes.

Mrs. Dannemann's class - 9 pellets, 20 mice, 1 shrew, 0 moles, 0 birds
Mrs. Psilopoulos class - 12 pellets, 22 mice, 2 shrews, 1 mole, 0 birds
Mrs. Davis/Mrs. Gundersen's class - 11 pellets, 11 mice, 2 shrew, 0 moles, 0 birds
Mr. Zupan's class - 10 pellets, 29 mice, 0 shrews, 0 moles, 0 birds
For a total of - 42 pellets, 82 mice, 5 shrews, 1 mole, 0 birds

Later in May at the Altamont Elementary School in the Guilderland Central School District I worked with two fourth grade classes. Here the results from there.

Mrs. Vogel's class - 10 pellets, 21 mice, 5 shrew, 0 moles, 1 bird
Mrs. Sanger's class - 12 pellets, 30 mice, 1 shrew, 1 mole, 1 bird
For a total of - 22 pellets, 51 mice, 6 shrew, 1 mole, 2 birds

You can add up the results of the two classes with the other owl data that I've posted here.

I have one more owl ecology session to do this school year at the Lincoln Elementary School is Schenectady. After doing that class I'll write an entry reviewing the overall results for this year.

Wednesday, May 27, 2009

Leaf Litter Critters

My apologies to the 3rd grade students and teachers at Harmony Hill Elementary in Cohoes for the length of time it has taken me to make this entry. My recent visit to King Elementary in Warwick with 2nd grades got me moving to complete this.

Leaf litter offers a great chance to investigate terrestrial invertebrates. Any wooded area will do for a hands-on exploration. The dead leaves and branches found along the forest floor provide food and shelter for many creatures including centipedes, millipedes, isopods, insects, worms, snails and slugs. All you need is an old white sheet, some large plastic storage tubs, some white plastic food tubs (for example margarine or cream cheese containers), white plastic spoons and small paint brushes.

Collect a bunch of leaf litter in the plastic tubs and dump it on the white sheet. Using plastic spoons or small paint brushes look through the leaf litter and capture the creepy crawly creatures.

Here are some of the creatures that we captured.









Sow bugs are isopods that feed on dead plant material. They might be one of the most numerous of the leaf litter invertebrates. This one is a relative of the rolly polly that is seen in the video below. This isopod can not roll up to protect itself.

Millipedes are plant eating arthropods. The word millipede means thousand legs. Actually a millipede is an arthropod with four legs for each body segment. It looks like this millipede has about 50 segments. How many legs would it have?





Since millipedes are plant eaters they do not have to be as fast a mover as centipedes. Be sure to see how fast the centipede moves in the video below.









The harvest man are not true spiders, although they are closely related. Harvest men are hunters eating other small invertebrates. They kill their prey with a venomous bite. Many people think that harves men have the most poisonous venom of all spiders. This is not true.













Most people think of snails as water creatures. There are many aquatic snails, but there are also terestrial, or land, snails.





Here are two species. Note how they have different shell patterns.





Snails can not come out of their shell. When you find an empty shell, it is the remains of a snail that has died.



Snails eat plants.







Here is a crab spider. They are called crab spiders because the two front pairs of legs are larger than the back four legs. This gives the spider the appearance of have crab-like claws. Like all spiders, crab spiders are hunters, eating other small invertebrates.







Beetles are the most numerous of all insects. This beetle is one of the species of ground beetles. I need to do some research to find the family that this belongs to. When I have I will post it here.











Here are some videos of some of these leaf litter inhabitants.






Sunday, May 24, 2009

From Helicopter to Seedling

Most every schoolyard has a place where wind blown seeds accumulate – maybe in a corner of the schoolyard, along a fence or near a flower bed. On my recent visit to Harmony Hill Elementary School in Cohoes, NY we found just such a place with Mrs. Slater’s and Mrs. Brooks 1st grade classes. It was along a flower bed surrounding some trees in front of the school. Norway maple seeds had blown in and were germinating.

We discovered these seedlings as we were doing a schoolyard ecology field trip. In this one spot we found maple seeds – most of the students know these as “helicopter” seeds – in various states, from unsuccessful seeds to seeds that had started to germinate to seedlings that had grown to about 2 inches tall. Not only could we find the seeds and seedlings on the ground, when we looked up into the trees we could see newly forming seeds. It was easy to observe that each tree had hundreds of seeds. We explored how the seeds, when ripe, would be blown about by the wind. Many seeds might end up in bad places like the school roof, the sidewalk or the parking lot where they would not successfully grow. Other seeds might end up in what starts off as a good spot – the lawn, or in the case of our exploration, the flowerbed – where the seed can germinate and start to grow but never become a tree because it would be mowed or weeded out by school caretakers. Still other seeds might end up in a good spot, say in the bushes at the edge of the lawn, only to be eaten by a mouse or a chipmunk, or to sprout into a seedling and be eaten by a rabbit or a deer.

All those seeds – goners! No wonder when we observed the seeds on the maple trees we saw hundreds, probably thousands of seeds. Successful plants, like the Norway maple, produce many seeds each year. Thousands of those seeds never make it, but some will. These will grow into trees that will keep the species going. As a matter of fact, trees like the Norway maple are an invasive species. They are not native to North America. They were planted by people because they do better in urban environments. They are more tolerant of urban pollution so they grow well as a street tree. Over time, their seeds spread about and it does better than other native trees, ending up crowding out the native species. Check any urban park and you will see that the predominant tree growing in the forested areas is likely to be the Norway maple.

Check you schoolyard. There are lots of plants to investigate outside. There’s lots of opportunity to see live, in action, what students are reading about and studying in the classroom.



Can you count the number of seeds here? This is just one of dozens, perhaps hundreds of branches on this one Norway maple, each with just as many seeds. Why so many seeds? When these seeds ripen they will turn brown and fall of the tree.












The wind will scatter them far and wide. One of these seed will end up in a flower bed. It's seems like a great place for the seed to grow. There is plenty of sun, soil and water. Let's see what happens to that seed. We can see that the seed has started to germinate.












The first part of the seedling to grow is the tap root. Here we see that it has sprung from the seed which is still attached to the helicopter wing, called a samara. At this point there are no green leaves or green parts of the plant to produce food so the seedling is using food made by the parent tree that was stored in the cotyledons of the seed. That's why I say the seed is made up of two things, the baby plant and the baby plant's lunch box. First the tap root secures the seedling to the ground and then, to borrow a rhyme from Billy "B" (see Billy "B" link), "the root grows deep, deep into the ground, searches for water and drinks it when it's found"!















As the tap root grows it will send out many root branches, just like the main trunk sending out many branches above ground. Here we can see some of these rootlets. At the end of these rootlets there will be very small root hairs that suck up water and nutrients from the ground that will be used for the seedlings growth.


















Here is a seedling that has sprouted and is still connected to the "helicopter" wing. It now has a shoot of growth on the tap root with green leaves. The green leaves are now producing food - "green leaves make food" - that will be used by the seedling to grow.















The end result is this Norway maple seedling growing in a flower bed at the Harmony Hill Elementary School in Cohoes, NY. This may seem like a good spot to grow but not really. The seedling will most likely not become a mature maple tree because it will be removed as an undesireable plant in the flower bed. So what may have looked like a good place to grow ends up a bad place. Many of the seeds from the parent maple will end up in bad places like this, but since the parent tree produces so many seeds some will end up in good places and grow to become mature trees and keep the maple life cycle going.
You can see this story happening in any school or back yard. The life cycle of a tree for all to see and explore.

Wednesday, May 20, 2009

Soil

My school program schedule is as busy as ever. It’s been hard to keep up with this blog. I do have two posts in the works from my visit to the Harmony Hill Elementary School in Cohoes, NY. One of my difficulties is having to connect to the internet at home with dial-up, which really slows the process when I’m trying to upload video.

Well I’ve just got home from the Adirondacks after doing a Nature Tunes and Tales Campfire program for the Homer Junior High School’s Science Club. What a great bunch kids! The campfire program was a culmination for their four day exploration of the Adirondacks. I think they had a good time and learned some things from my presentation. I know I had a great time.

In doing my usual routine I introduced the students to one of the American Sign Language words for soil. This is done by holding both hands, palm towards ones self, with all fingers pointing upward, then rubbing the finger tips together. As is the case many times when I teach students this sign someone makes the comment “That’s the sign for money!”

When this happens I often go off on a tangential routine about how money wouldn’t exist without soil. Unfortunately I was pressed for time and couldn’t do it with my presentation, so I told the students I would post it on my blog. Here it is.

Yes, it is a “slang” hand symbol for money that many people know. If you stop to think about it, though, without soil we wouldn’t have money. You see money is a way that we have arranged to acquire things. You make money, you buy something from someone. They now have money so they can buy something else from someone else.

Take me for example. I’m wearing this cotton t-shirt that I bought because it had this cool message on it, “In wildness is the preservation of the world.” Someone silk screened the message on it and I paid them money for the shirt. They gave the money to a t-shirt manufacturer for shirts to silk screen. The t-shirt manufacturer bought cotton cloth from a cotton mill with the money so they could make the shirts. The cotton mill uses the money to buy raw cotton from the cotton farmers so they can weave it into cotton fabric. The cotton farmers buy cotton seed and farming equipment with the money so they can plant the cotton in soil to grow the cotton plants. No soil, no cotton. No cotton, no cotton cloth. No cotton cloth, no t-shirt. For that matter no cotton pants, socks or underwear! Oh, oh!

How about my belt? I bought it from a craftsman that makes leather belts. He bought the leather to make the belt from a tannery. The tannery buys the raw animal skins to make into leather from a meat processing factory. The factory bought the animals from a farmer. The farmer used the money to feed the animals food crops that were grown in the soil. No soil, no food crops. No food crops, no animals. No animals, no animal skins. No animal skins, no leather. No leather, no belt. My pants would be falling down. But wait, aren't my pants made from cotton?!?

How about the rubber that’s a part of the front of my shoes? I bought the shoes from a store. The store bought the shoe from a shoe factory. The shoe factory bought rubber to make into parts of the shoe from a rubber factory. The rubber factory buys the raw rubber from a rubber plantation. The rubber plantation grows rubber trees that have roots growing in the soil. No soil, no rubber trees. No rubber trees, no rubber sap. No rubber sap, no rubber. No rubber, my toes would be sticking out of the front of these shoes!

Even the cash itself – 1, 5, 10, 20, 50, 100 dollar bills, made from paper, made from trees that have roots growing in the soil. No soil, no trees, no paper money.

Ah, but you say you used a credit card to buy this stuff. The credit card is made from plastic, that is made from fossil fuels, that were once plants growing millions of years ago. Plants with roots growing in the soil!

Yes. The ASL sign for soil is like the slang sign for money. But without soil we really wouldn’t have money or the flow of commerce that we use the money for.