September 2008: Bug Hunt!

Thanks again to everyone who came out for our first meeting of the year! We had a great time, despite the rainy weather. After sightings, we played the insect punch game outside, and then we took our nets and our jars out into the damp morning and did a very thorough search for critters without backbones -- the invertebrates.

I'm happy to report that our list was long and impressive, despite the weather! We saw or caught:

• white faced meadowhawks
• other meadowhawk species
• white-marked tussock moth caterpillar
• a different species of tussock moth caterpillar
  
• bumblebee
• blow fly
• spread-winged damselfly (male)
  
• milkweed bug nymphs
• aphids
• long-horned grasshopper (female)
• a species of eupelmid
• several different leafhopper species
• cucumber beetle
• yellow jacket wasp nest
  

Very impressive for a cool, rainy morning!

In addition to the invertebrates, Young Naturalists also caught or saw:

• tadpoles
• leopard frogs
• a spring peeper
• minnows
• great blue heron

We're off to an awesome start for the year!

Remember, our next meeting is going to be about Nature Photography. If you have a digital camera, please remember to bring it. This is a rain-or-shine program; if we can't go outside, we'll bring nature inside. More information will follow!

Sightings September 2008

It was great to see everyone at the meeting this weekend! We'll be making sure to post our sightings after every meeting. So here's the list of things Young Naturalists saw over the summer:

• black swallowtail butterfly (egg, caterpillar and adult)
  
• red-bellied snake
• cicada (cases)
• ruffed grouse
• deer
• groundhog
• great blue heron
• raccoons
• rabbits
• woolly aphids
• yellow warblers
• bats (hoary, little brown and big brown)
• timber wolves
• flying squirrel
• star nosed mole

If we've missed anything, let us know! Also, if you have a sighting you want to report before the next meeting, leave a comment and we'll make sure to post it on the site.

September program

All right! Some of you are probably wondering what the plan is for our first meeting, which is Saturday, September 27th, at 10:00 am at the Nature Centre.

This month we're going to be doing a program on insects.

We will be catching insects, including (hopefully!) lots of butterflies, praying mantis, dragonflies, beetles, and more. We have great nets, jars and terrariums, as well as a microscope and some magnifying glasses. We'll be using field guides to identify as many of the critters as we can. We'll create a list of the insects we catch and/or identify for our sightings book, too!

We'll also be playing a great insect game, and depending on time and weather we may have a craft as well.

If you have an insect field guide that you like to use, feel free to bring it along! Otherwise, you don't need to bring anything. Please remember to dress for the weather!

Early fall is a great time to be looking for insects. Praying mantis, for example, are in the process of finding mates and laying eggs; monarchs are starting to store up on energy in preparation for their trip south. Dragonflies are mating and laying eggs so that their nymphs will hatch before winter, during which they'll hibernate before becoming one of the first aquatic critters to be active in the spring time.

Looking forward to seeing everyone there!

a little Big Bang

A quick update on the state of the world: we have not been sucked into an artificially created black hole. Hooray!

In other news, the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) started today. I mention this on a website dedicated to nature because it's the world's biggest experimental facility for physics, and the "natural history" that we study is all here, and so are we, thanks to the sorts of things physicists study. The scientists using the LHC are hoping to figure out fundamental physics questions like what happened during the Big Bang, and what kinds of other dimensions are out there.

I'll admit, I'm not a physicist and I know very little about physics. But even I think an experimental particle accelerator that is long enough to span the entire border between France and Switzerland, 100 m underground, is pretty cool. I don't understand what a hadron is, but I know they're now colliding them at high speeds, like a sub-atomic demolition derby. This is a great opportunity for physicists, and all of us, to learn about the forces that created our universe.

Pretty nifty, I think.