Nature Walks at Smith Clove Elementary School, Central Valley, NY

I’m at the Smith Clove Elementary School in Central Valley this week and next. With the 1st grade students we’ve been ecologists studying “Who is who, what they do, how they grow and where they go” in the forest ecosystem. We are taking advantage of a beautiful nature trail that crosses a stream and circles through a mixed hardwood forest, with some fairly large black cherry, white ash and variety of oak trees.

We spent some time talking about habitat – the place where animals live because they can find “ FOOD, WATER and HIDING PLACES” (I think students can better identify with hiding places versus shelter).

Trees are a big part of our exploration, including identifying a locust tree (deep “V” shaped valleys in the bark, deep enough that you can hide your pinkie in them) and a cherry tree (the burnt potato chip or burnt corn flake bark tree). We do a Billy “B” verse (I look to do it as a repeat after me chant – "Who’s Billy “B”?" – definitely a great resource, check him out on the website link) “The roots grow deep”, “Deep into the ground”, “Look for water”, “And drink it when it’s found”.

We explore rotten logs and the concept of what happens to dead things – they “DECOMPOSE”. We found a red-backed salamander under one log. These amphibians are probably the most numerous land vertebrate in our woods. Later, going back to get some pictures of the salamander I found a slug that appeared to be eating salamander eggs. Is this common? I’ll need to research that more.

Here’s something to think about. The large earthworm pictured with the red-backed salamander is the very well known nightcrawler, Lumbricus terrestris. These worms are not native to our northern woods. Their introduction and spread may actually be a problem for the small salamanders like the red-backed. The nightcrawler is out competing the smaller native worms that the red-backs feed upon, resulting in a population of the large nightcrawlers that are too big for the salamanders to eat. Scientist are studying this situation to see how the red-backed salamander will fare. The moral to the story; if you have a bunch of nightcrawlers left over after a day of fishing don’t dump them in the woods.

We found lots of fungi, one of the organisms that help to “DECOMPOSE” things. The best ones were some puff ball fungi, which gave us a chance to see how they puff out “smoke” – the tiny, dust-like spores that will blow away and grow into more fungi if they land on some dead plant material.