At St. Gabriel Parish School in Hubertus, WI, students gathered for a Nature Club educational program called “Creatures of the Night.” Laudato Si’ Project led the program for 24 students from K4 to 4th grade. The focus of the program was on the cool adaptations these nocturnal creature have. To start, we dressed up our brave volunteer in all the adaptations you see in nocturnal creatures: big eyes (sunglasses), good hearing (antlers representing ears), good sense of smell (nose and whiskers), echolocation (headlamp), silent wings (wings), and great sense of touch (mittens).
Dressed up with all the adaptions
We began to discuss one of the best examples of nocturnal adaptations, Owls. (see our Post about searching for Owls during an Owl Prowl.) We talked about eyesight, hearing, and silent flight. Students got to see the feather structures on owl wings that make them silent and compare the feathered feet of owls to that of other raptors like hawks.
Students then learned about bats and the different types of adaptions they posses for hunting at night. To demonstrate how parent bats are able to find their own young amidst colonies numbering in the thousands to millions, we played a scent game. Each “baby bat” had a unique scent that matched a “parent bat.” They were then scent off, pun intended, to find their young.
Raccoons were the next topic because of their amazing tactile sense in their paws allowing them to find prey in the muddy waters they hunt. To simulate their abilities, we blindfolded groups of students and had them search for specific “prey” by feel alone. Not as easy as it sounds.
We ended the program with students being able to identify adaptations of a nocturnal creature they chose to represent. They then tried their best to look like their animal by striking a pose.
St. Gabriel’s Nature Club
A special thanks to volunteer parent, Ann Schellinger, for all her help and support of Nature Club!
What is Phenology? It is nature’s calendar; when cherry trees bloom, when a robin builds its nest and when leaves turn color in the fall. In Fact, Phenology is a key component of life on earth. Many birds time their nesting so that eggs hatch when insects are available to feed nestlings. In turn, insect emergence is often synchronized with leafing out in their host plants. For many people, allergy season starts when particular flowers bloom—earlier flowering means earlier allergies. Farmers and gardeners need to know when to plant to avoid frosts, and they need to know the schedule of plant and insect development to decide when to apply fertilizers and pesticides. Many interactions in nature depend on timing. In fact, phenology affects nearly all aspects of the environment, including the abundance, distribution, and diversity of organisms, ecosystem services, food webs, and the global cycles of water and carbon. (National Phenology Network).
Sugar Maple Tree with 2 Taps
Boiling off the Sap. On the left is the concentrated syrup, Right is the Sap
February and March
Maple Syrup: February means one thing, maple syrup time. My son Nathaniel and I tapped around a dozen sugar maple trees and immediately upon drilling the hole for the spile, sap was flowing. In my experience, having days around forty and sunny with nights below freezing produces the best flow. When temperatures reach high forties and fifty the flow actually stops. Every year we tap the trees around this time but usually we are ahead of any flowing. This year, the warm weather week of Valentines Day even produced sap. Maple syrup sap is being sent up to the tree twigs to help produce leaves in the coming weeks. The sap is about 2-4% sugar and will be boiled down to about 66% sugar which we then call syrup. This boiling can be slow going as you may have to evaporate off 50 gallons of water to get 1 gallon of syrup! Sugar Maples are the most common tree used for syruping but other maple family trees can be used; silver, red, boxelder. In Alaska, without maple trees, they utilize the sap of birch trees to make syrup!
American Woodcock
Aldo Leopold “Sand County Almanac
WoodCock Sky Dance: Other signs of spring include chickadees doing their “cheeseburger” mating song, Canada geese heading north, and even a sandhill cranes displaying. Red-winged blackbirds and grackles gather in the hundreds and create a cacophony of noise when resting in a tree. On these spring evenings, just before dark you will begin to hear the “peenting” call of the male Amercian Woodcock. Without knowing this, you might write it off as a silly insect buzz but what follows is truly a spectacle of nature. The male continues his “peenting” call for several minutes before taking flight. Then begins a circular flight into the sky, during which you will hear a high pitch noise as they fly made by the sound of their wings. They continue these concentric circles until they are several hundred feet in the air and then continue with their “falling leaf” display. This consists of erratically falling through the air while making high pitch vocal tweets. Their sky dance ends with them swooping silently to the ground where they originally took off and continue their “peenting.” This mating display continues well into the night and sometimes in the morning as well.
I remember first learning of this natural feat after reading Aldo Leopold’s account of it in a chapter of The Sand County Almanac. Sure enough, a buddy showed me a local park where this was taking place near my house where I grew up. My whole family would venture to experience this little known ritual happening nightly. Fast forward several decades, and I am blessed to be able to hear and see nearly a dozen of these birds displaying on my property with my wife, son, and daughter with me to experience it. When you are plugged into phenology, you will begin to appreciate these small but amazing gifts of nature- as a result, your view and attitude towards it changes.
Camouflage
To see a video, audio, or more information click here
Bloodroot, a spring ephemeral flower
Trillium
Marsh Marigold
Cut-leaved toothwort
April and May
Flowers: We can’t forget our spring ephemeral flowers. These beauties carpet our forests and do most of their life cycle before the tree leaves come out on the trees and shade them out. These flowers are a crucial nectar and pollen source for our early awaking insects.
Edible Morel Mushrooms
Morels: Early May brings new life to our region. Even with some nights dipping low into the 30’s, life is springing up everywhere- you just need to what to look for and where to look. Pictured above are some Morel mushrooms. If you are unfamiliar, Morel mushrooms drive thousands of people into the woods in search of these delicacies, which can fetch a hefty price if you want to sell them. These small mushrooms range in size from 1 to 8 inches and continue to evade our ability to cultivate them. Thus you need to search for them in the wild. Your best bet is to look near dead elm trees but of course, it is not only correct identification of trees that you need to be concerned with. Mushroom ID always requires caution. You can read more about finding, identification, and cooking of morels Here.
Wild Turkey Nest
The great thing is all the other unexpected things you see and find while out in the woods looking for Morels. Possibly a deer shed antler from February, warblers migrating through, or even a turkey nest like this one.
“God has written a precious book, whose letters are the multitudes of created things in the universe” Pope Francis
It was a cold and windy day near Horicon Marsh, but a burning desire to help restore parts of nature to its former beauty and diversity was in the hearts of the MUHS boys that day. At the beginning of the day, Ronny, a member of the Apache tribe, lit a braided piece of sweet grass, said a blessing for safety and for Mother Earth. With our arms out and hands facing the heavens he wafted the smoke between our arms with an Eagle’s feather and sent our prayers toward the heavens. Jim Uhrinak, the secretary of the Milwaukee Audubon Society, was the leader and had organized 5 volunteers from various places as well as 8 Marquette High School boys and myself.
Our task was to help cut and burn trees in a thick forest with rich soil so that only the oak trees remain, recreating an oak savanna. Oak savannas are the least preserved ecosystem today but were once very prevalant in the time of the Native Americans. Most Oak Savannas in the last 200 years have been converted to agriculture fields due to their rich soil or have been over grown with other trees and plant species since the repetitious burning of the prairies and the savannas has been stopped. Overall there were three groups in different areas of the Audubon land near Horicon Marsh where we cut down trees and burned them in fires. The Marquette group stayed with Ronny and helped him clear a little less than an acre of land from 10AM – 2:30PM. The boys worked hard and enjoyed the huge fire that we created. It was a great feeling at the end of the day to see a couple of 7 or 8-year old bur oaks be free without constraints to go forward into the future to spread their branches and acorns on the land. We helped revive part of the Savanna ecosystem from the past.
That was not the only reward. At the end of the day, the boys and I hiked to the Niagara Escarpment which was a half of a mile away from our work site. The Niagara Escarpment is a nearly 1,000 mile long cliff that begins in east-central Wisconsin, running northeast along side Lake Winnebago, forming almost all of the Door Peninsula and continuing north east through Canada and into upstate New York. There is a hand full of places where the rock that makes up the escarpment is visible above ground- near Horicon Marsh, WI and Niagara Falls. We climbed and traversed through crevasses and enjoyed the natural beauty around us.
Catholic Ecology Center Blog 