Today was my first day teaching students out here at Merry Lea. We had a group of rambunctious pre-schoolers who were extremely excited about being outside. It was so refreshing to see their smiling and excited faces. We kept it simple because we noticed that the students were fascinated at every single thing that they experienced. We started off observing things in the air as we walked to the vernal pool. We found lots of crawdads, mosquito larva, and a few salamander tadpoles in the vernal pond. From there, we walked along and used some of our other senses like smell and touch. We used water to make the object smell stronger. On our path, we found many deer, or as the students called them, dinosaur footprints! The only rough patch we hit was when one student fell and scraped her hand up. The good thing was that it wasn't anything some "special spray" aka water and a few band aids wouldn't cure!
While hiking with Stacy Squirrel, we ran into two very different kinds of habitats! The first one (above) we thought might be some kind of ground bee nest. The picture below is a picture of a great home that could be used by deer or other large animal. We also heard two Barred Owls, saw 2 beavers (1 in the water and one running on land), 2 wild turkey foul, a deer carcass, and many other things we cannot identify...yet!
As supper was coming to a close, we, once again, found 8 of the 14 chickens roaming around Reith Village. They do not like staying in their fenced in area that they set up for them. They would much prefer roaming free to get into things and get lost. Throughout my time here I have had to capture the chickens many times...apparently the fence is not working! This time, they were not too happy and tried fighting back, but not worry, we still remain in charge of them!
Can't wait to see what is in store for us tomorrow!
Not a bee nest - believe it or not its a crayfish chimney! http://www.americaswetlandresources.com/wildlife_ecology/plants_animals_ecology/animals/invertebrates/crawfish.html
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