Day 4...home-schoolers :)

We had a beautiful start to our morning! Alejandro Apis Mallifera, Jordan Jay Bird and I got up early with the ornithology students to band some birds! Once a week the students, along with their professor, Lisa, will be going out to put bands around the bird's ankle. By doing this, they will be able to track migration of the birds as well as tracking where they choose to live year after year. They set up a few nets to catch the birds and then wait until they get some. Then, they carefully take the bird out of the net and take all sorts of identification measurements, place a band around their ankle, and then set them free. I was so happy that those students along with their professor let us join them! I learned some new kinds of birds as we caught them. We caught a female cardinal, a female red winged black bird, a few yellow warblers, a Baltimore oriel, quite a few grey cat birds, quite a few common yellow throats and a rose breasted gross beak bird. What a great experience!

The picture to the left is me holding one of the grey cat birds we caught!

We also saw and caught some Baltimore Oriels! They are such beautiful birds with vibrant colors.

The picture to the left is of the Rose Breasted Gross Beak bird. I was amazed by this bird's colorful feathers as well as his bite! (The professor got bit a few times...left quite a mark!)

After our morning with the birds, we headed off to the farmstead area to meet up with our home schooled students who came for a visit today. This was a much different group, not only because they are home schooled, but also because they were of all different ages! We had kids running around ranging the ages of 2 years old to 12 years old. We split up in to two groups; one group was with the students in the 2 to 2nd grade range, and the other group containing students in 3rd through 6th grade. The younger students experienced our nature hike and exploring session. I was with the older students. During their time, we did a lesson about macroinvertabrates. We started off learning about our macros as well as our wetlands. Then, we went out to the wetland and caught some macros. Once our tubs were filled, we came inside the garage and tried identifying what we found.

One fun thing I found a lot of was toads! All the male toads were singing loud to impress the lady toads so it was a bit hard to talk over them, but it was fun trying!

I taught the students about our snake friends again and then it was time to say goodbye. Both the students and the parents seemed to enjoy their time out exploring Merry Lea so I would say the day was a success.

Stacy Squirrel and I hiked back to Reith Village from the learning center and had a blast noticing all the new life as we walked back. Trees are gaining green leaves and plants are blooming. It is so incredible to think that just a week ago (maybe even less) the trees were completely bare! I am loving the opportunity to be outdoors almost all the time and I am learning to appreciate God's beautiful creation more and more.