The First Day for the 2009 RSSE at Lafayette College

What a day! What a wonderful bunch of young naturalists – so full of excitement, enthusiasm and sense of wonder. Terrific parents, too, and fantastic adult and youth volunteer helpers!

My highlight for the day was the box turtle we found at Monacacy Park. Best part was that it was spotted by some of the young naturalist. One of the parents captured it for me and I had a great chance to talk about a somewhat rare turtle, not endangered, but one who’s numbers have declined. It was male about 25 to 30 years old – you can tell their age by counting the rings on the scutes, or scales on the shell on their back.

It was great to see all the bats, especially with me coming from New York State were there has been quite a problem with loss of bats to the white nose syndrome. The bat sound translator worked very well and we all got a chance to hear the ultrasonic bat sounds, both their navigating sounds and their hunting/targeting sounds. It was also exciting to have the bats eventually start flying right over our heads, seeking out insects that were probably attracted to all of us humans.

I was quite intrigued by the fact that there were still fireflies (you can also call them lightning bugs, but remember they are neither flies nor bugs, but actually beetles) flying and flashing about this late in the summer. I usually expect to see them in June and perhaps early July. I wonder if the cool rainy weather we’ve had this summer has anything to do with that. I also wonder if the cool rainy summer has anything to do with the lack of jewel weed seed pods – there definitely were very few seeds pods to pick and show their exploding characteristic – jewel weed, also called touch-me-nots (a name given for that exploding attribute) have seed pods that pop when disturbed thus casting their seeds about helping the young plants to spread out.

I also enjoyed the Pond Ecology session. It’s always exciting to find what creatures are in the pond environment. It is always changing as populations of organisms rise and fall; generations grow up, leave the pond, then later return to lay eggs and start the cycle all over again. Check out my blog in the archive for November 2008 for some photos and more information on Aquatic Macro-invertebrates. I’m wondering if any young naturalist will take up my challenge to video the aquatic worm doing it wiggle swim and set the video to some techno/electronic beat.

I’m hoping many of the young naturalists will be able to use the mammal skull key that we learned about to identify mammal skulls that they may find in the future. I’m looking forward to talking more about mammal bones and getting the chance for the scientists to investigate my collection of bones, perhaps sketching them and identifying what bones they are by comparing them to our own human bones. – ah, a little comparative anatomy.

You might be wondering about what some of these organisms look like – jewel weed, box turtle, aquatic macro invertebrates – check out my blog for October 2nd, 2006 for a run down on my favorite guide books and natural history resources.