True Facts

 

From https://www.allaboutbirds.org/guide/Barred_Owl/id

12 TRUE FACTS ABOUT THE OWL (Channeling Morgan Freeman):

A baby owl is called an owlet.

The most common owl in RI is the barred owl.  That’s barred with a double “R”, not to be confused with Shakespeare and our Shakespeare in the Park and Roger Williams National Park.  I think heard a screech owl there.

A group of owls is called a Parliament.  Kind of what Canada has.  I want to move to Canada…

Owls borrow other birds’ (or even squirrels’) nests in the winter to lay eggs.

Owls are raptors and hunt prey, crushing it in their strong talons, swallowing their prey whole, and coughing up a pellet of fur, feathers, and bones.

Owls are zygodactyl, with two talons in the front and two in the back, and can exert 500 lbs.of pressure per square inch.  Do not shake hands with an owl.

Some owls bob their heads to better locate prey through sound.  This is called the night moves.  Okay, it’s not.

The great horned owl’s “horns” are feathers, not ears. 

Owls can’t move their eyes.  Instead, they turn their heads up to 270 degrees, kind of like the child in the Exorcist movie.

Most owls have asymmetrical ear holes.  Asymmetrical ear holes.  No, that’s not a Ska band.  No.  Put one hand over your ear.  Now put your other hand somewhere else.  That’s how an owl do, to triangulate the location of prey.

Throwing food out your car window kills owls.  Rodents and other animals go into the road for the food, and the owl swoops in, and…  Owlsare not Batman.

Owls are not the fastest raptors, but they have specialized soft feathers that make them the most silent.  Silent is deadly.

For more facts like these, comedy, poetry, live music, games, raffle, silent auction, and snacks, come to the 15 Minute Field Trip Show THIS FRIDAY!

More info here: https://www.eventbrite.com/e/support-15-minute-field-trips-tickets-29717210978

Tickets also available at the door.

FREE SEEDS!!!

Free Seeds!

URI MASTER GARDENERS and Ocean State Job Lot are giving away FREE seeds

Saturday, February 18, 10am - 2 pm
at the Hempe House, East Farm

Spring is coming and this snow is adding wonderful moisture to the soil.  Get ready by stopping by Hempe House on Saturday, Feb. 18 between 10 and 2 and picking up free seeds. Take as many as you can carry.  Bring your own bags.  Start them at home, with a scout troop, at a community center...  Pay it forward by planting some herbs to give away to friends, a senior center, or a food pantry. 

Check out how we grow herbs at our school: Milk Pot Plants.

There's still tickets available to our fundraiser!  Note the new venue: https://www.eventbrite.com/e/support-15-minute-field-trips-tickets-29717210978

Our GoFundMe page is here.

Loving Nature

What do I love about nature?  The calm it gives me?  The complex network of interactions and food webs?  The excited look in a child's eye as they hold a worm or discover baby pill bugs?

My fourth graders have been studying detrivores and trees, from rotting logs up to the tallest habitats.  This week, they imagined they were shrunk down to the size of a shrew, then a millipede, then got to soar as a bird through an activity in the Project Learning Tree Environmental Education Activity Guide.  We then drew, colored, and cut out animals that are part of that food web.  In May, all three 4th grade classes will take a bus to a manged forest as part of the Wheels to Woods grant I succeeded in getting for our school through RIEEA.  They are very excited!

I hope their love of the tiny and the tall leads them to protect these habitats when they are able to act as adults, through legislation, running for office, voting, participating in clean ups, and supporting environmental agencies.  

Meanwhile, I will continue to teach them, continue to work on my field guide, continue to love all of this.

There is a fundraiser March 3rd to support publication of a field guide, supplies, perhaps even non-profit status!  It will be moved to the Mediator, at 50 Rounds Ave. Providence, RI, from 6-10.  We'll still have live music and games, but home-made snacks instead of a sit-down dinner.  (Ticket sales were too low to have it a Twelve Acres.  There goes my deposit...)  We also have a GoFundMe page here.

Imagine this:  You have a school garden, a summer camp, a scout group, an after-school program, and you don't know a lot about the animals and plants all around.  What do you do?  15 Minute Field Trips has been providing educational resources through its website, blog, and workshops.  Now we want to create a field guide with easy-to-use infographics that tell you all about the outside world!  

There'll be a page on ant behaviors your group can look for, all the wonderful facts and uses of dandelions, how seeds travel, how to identify native bees, what's a host plant, what can moss and lichen tell us, how do detrivores work, why goldenrod is a good plant and NOT an allergen, how to look for animal clues, what's the deal with food webs, can caterpillars be raised indoors and released as butterflies and moths, how many life forms inhabit an oak tree, can you find an insect from all 12 orders, and much, much more!

This guide requires more research, a better camera, time, and your financial help!  Besides our GoFundMe site, we are having a gala where you can try out, bid on, and raffle for and possibly take home the above items and more!  It will be a great networking opportunity and great live, local music, games, and fun!

Tickets available for a limited time!!!

https://www.eventbrite.com/e/support-15-minute-field-trips-tickets-29717210978

Gala Event

Dear Readers,

I would like to share an event with you, featuring environmental activities I've learned from individuals here and ones I've developed myself.  It will be a gala of food, music, games, a silent auction, raffle, and 100 "fun facts" to go home with.  Tickets are $35 and cover meal, entertainment, and one raffle ticket.  Proceeds will raise money to develop a "15 Minute Field Guide™" of quick outdoor activities and citizen science children, adults, families, classrooms, camp groups, etc. can do!

I hope you can join me for a very fun night!  It will be a great networking opportunity as well!  We have fantastic musicians and a few surprises in store!

Tickets available here.

Mni Wiconi - Water Is Life

from phys.org

Life began in the ocean.  Unicellular creatures, algae, etc. evolved into surveying salamanders, pioneering lichens, and more and more complex plants and animals.  Today, algae and microscopic creatures still form the base of many food chains.  Sensitive frogs and salamanders are threatened by pollutants and invasive species.  The warming seas recently lead to the death of TWO THIRDS of the Great Barrier coral reef, also the base of a large food web.  Without water, there would be no life.  Without clean water, biodiversity and all it connects with suffers.  What can be done?

I showed my students a picture of Peanut, a red slider turtle who got caught in a soda ring while she was still quite small.  Without opposable thumbs and access to scissors, she continued to grow, but growth of her shell was constrained by the thin plastic ring.  While her limbs have not been affected, her lungs, which should be oval-shaped, look like butterfly wings.  This affects her breathing.  And most noticeably, her shell is shaped like a peanut!

More info  here.

I had the third graders try to figure out how she got like that.  Some thought her shell got squeezed. Eventually, they figured out she had been in that soda ring for many years.  Then we brainstormed how to prevent this from happening to another animal.  We could cut and recycle the soda rings, buy soda that doesn't come in rings, keep our trash tightly covered so wind doesn't carry it into waterways, and help clean up at creeks and beaches.  Some companies have even created "edible" soda rings that will break down in water!

Huichol Yarn Painting

The third graders wanted to protect the animals they met at our creek field trip, so we made art based on Huichol yarn paintings, using parallel lines of marker on square paper instead of yarn pressed into beeswax on wood.  We hope to get funding to make some of these into permanent signs by the creek, asking visitors to "Leave No Trash Behind", "Make Ripples: Pick Up Trash", and "Save Our Stream".  Here are a few of my favorites:

 

 

Keeping trash out of the water is one important step.  But more is needed.  What about warming oceans causing wildlife to move away or die out, lead in the pipes leaching out from untreated, corrosive water in Flint, Michigan and many other places, oil pipelines under rivers that water protectors are trying to block, fracking polluting ground water?  If we don't protect our water, we doom ourselves as a species.

The Standing Rock Sioux tribe, along with many other tribes, others across America and globally, and now several hundred veterans have taken a stand to protect water.  Some have stood in the blizzard, some have collected a blizzard of signatures.  I wrote to our president to stop the DAPL and sent money to the Standing Rock medical team.  The DAPL is nearly completed, but it can still be stopped!  Banks have pulled out from the investment.  People have sold off their stocks in the companies involved.  It's many drops of water that carved the Grand Canyon, and you can be one of those drops!

In Rhode Island, residents are fighting approval of a power plant that would affect the air quality in Burriville.  (The project was green-lighted before any committees had been consulted.)  Corporations and government officials may make unilateral decisions, but they are not all-powerful.  It may take a lot of people, but change can be made and our resources protected.  Even now, I am following a bill that would allow the government to seize Native American land for its own purposes.  It hasn't even gone to Congress yet, but I wrote to my Senator.  Another project I'm watching is a possible pipeline from Nova Scotia to Block Island.  I'd rather help get it stopped before it gets started.  Water is life.

15 Minute Field Trips™ FUNdraiser!!!

15 Minute Field Trips™ FUNdraiser!!!

15 Minute Field Trips creates environmental literacy programs, combining Art with STEM, training teachers, reaching out to families, organizing school and camp events, and running a blog and website of free resources.  We need your help to publish a "15 Minute Field Guide", update my used camera, replace expendables such as bird seed and art materials, continue offering free hand-outs at events, renew our Creative Cloud subscription to make the best publications possible, and have other funds for research and travel.  We regularly have "15 Minute Field Trips™" with various classrooms, exploring the schoolyard in search of leaf or seed varieties, evidence of tracks, scat, and shelter, raising caterpillars we find, and planting and harvesting healthy vegetables.  This past year, we had our first field trip outside of the school, partnering with BLCT and ASRI to learn about the fauna of Annawamscutt Creek and help monitor and protect its water quality.  Help us continue this work by attending our event or donating now!

GET TICKETS HERE!!!