Bats: Not So Spooky!

In the spirit of the spooky season, I give you: bats! Traditionally associated with vampires and Halloween, sucking blood and getting tangled in human hair, I know I don't have to convince you Young Naturalists that bats are extremely awesome and not at all scary once you know a little bit about them.

The Hinterland Who's Who website has a great fact sheet about bats, plus cool video clips, and even instructions on how to build a bat house. Check it out!

A couple of cool things I learned:

• Canada has 19 recorded species of bat, 17 of which are regular residents
• Bats can live to be over 30 years old! Ontario has the record for the oldest in Canada: a 35 year old little brown bat.
• Canadian bats typically eat somewhere between 50% and 100% of their body weight in insects every night.

Enjoy! And have a spooky and safe Halloween.

flying squirrels: September 2009 program summary

For those of you who were not able to make it to the first meeting in September, Kristina has very kindly written up a summary of events!

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Young naturalists from Laurel Creek and Guelph along with their parents and leaders gathered in the Laurel Creek Nature Centre. The air was full of excitement, and kids rushed for front row seating as soon as the lights dimmed. Steve the “Crazy Flying Squirrel Guy” as he introduced himself began his presentation for the eager audience. He told a story, explaining that he thought everything important had already been discovered, but if you just sit quietly in the forest, you can learn new things just by observing. When it came to introducing the stars of the night, his flying squirrels, he let the kids guess at where they were. He surprised the audience when he declared they were in his shirt. Shrieks and giggles of delight came from the younger part of the crowd when he pulled out a little gray creature that filled his palm. After being introduced to his two flying squirrels, Sabrina and Scooter, Steve explained more about the species and how special they are. Emphasis was placed on the fact that Sabrina and Scooter are not pets, they are wild animals. There are two species of flying squirrels in North America although many people never realize it because they only live in heavily wooded areas and come out at night. The presentation was enlightening about many aspects of the flying squirrels, and even included an interactive skit. Volunteers got costumes to show how important flying squirrels are, spreading an important species of mushrooms with their droppings. The grand finale was a gliding demonstration by both Scooter and Sabrina. They were timid at first but gladly glided to their “mom” Steve. It was a fantastic new experience to see and learn so much about a species rarely seen.

***

Thank you Kristina!

If anyone is interested in learning more about flying squirrels, check out Steve's website for videos, activity pages, nest box plans and tonnes more.

Blog for Vultures

This isn't the post about the schedule. That's upcoming. We're going to have one, never fear! No, this is a post about International Vulture Awareness Day. Did you know there was one? Because there is! I've written a little piece about my love of turkey vultures over at my other blog, so I thought I would link to it here. Enjoy!

Save the Frogs Day

Guys! Save the frogs! This is a really interesting website that may interest you. There are a couple of contests coming up that you can enter, such as a frog art contest and a frog poetry contest. But most of all, the idea is to spread the word about how the world's frogs are struggling. Raising awareness is the first step to getting people to protect our frogs -- by protecting habitat, limiting pollution, and other important steps.

ferrets and mole-rats and flamingos, oh my!

Has anyone been to the National Zoo in Washington? I've never been but I've heard it's wonderful. They have a great website, too, and I've been poking around there in the past couple of days because someone sent me a link to their ferretcam!

The ferretcam is a webcam trained on the home of Georgia, a black-footed ferret. They're one of the most endangered mammals in the world, and Georgia gave birth to a baby, called a kit, six days ago. Right now the kit looks rather like a little white sausage with four stubby legs. Georgia spends most of her time sleeping, because ferrets are nocturnal, but the kit is quite active so there's often something to see.

You can also access other webcams from the National Zoo's website, and there are a lot of very, very cool animals to see. In addition to the webcams, they have some great information on their site about animals from all over the world, good photos, and all sorts of activities and fact sheets.

today's forecast: extreme cold with a chance of dust storms

This is not related to nature on Earth, but...

Has anyone ever wondered what the weather's like on Mars? Now you can find out!

The data comes from the Phoenix Mars Lander, which landed on Mars on May 28, 2008. What's even more cool is that the meteorological station on the Phoenix Mars Lander was developed, built and tested in Canada by the Canadian Space Agency.

Today, when I checked, the maximum Martian temperature for today was -24 degrees Celsius, and the minimum was -70 degrees Celsius! The weather was sunny. Makes me almost glad of our plus 27 degree Celsius temperatures here today!

More Phoenix Mars Lander information:
http://www.space.gc.ca/asc/eng/exploration/phoenix.asp

great nature websites

We're getting some good feedback on the blog so far. Thanks everyone! I'm open to suggestions or ideas, so if you don't see something you'd like to see, please let us know (email or comments) and we'll see what we can do. There are some limits but this platform (Blogger) is pretty flexible.

As I said, I'd also like to use this site as a space to draw your attention to great websites with good, accurate information. A caveat: I have spent time on the following websites and I really like them. That doesn't mean I have fact-checked every single page, or even seen every single page on the website. They do come from trusted sources, but every source can make mistakes -- even books! So always be alert when you're reading something, and if you think something might not be quite right, double-check it with a different source.

All that said, some of my personal favourites:

• FrogWatch -- Need help identifying frogs or toads? This is a great source for Ontario frog and toad pictures and sounds.
  
• The Encyclopedia of Life -- A very ambitious project, this open source (meaning, free info!) website is attempting to catalogue all life on earth. Yep, even bacteria. Experts enter the information, and from what I have seen (for the species I know something about) it's accurate. A great starting point if you have to do a project on a particular species for school, for example!
  
• Cornell Lab of Ornithology -- As a birdwatcher, I think this site is completely awesome. It has links to pictures and species information, bird song, nest cams (see birds raising their young!), bird news... all things ornithological. If you're looking specifically for a picture or info about a specific bird, you'll want to start at the All About Birds Bird Guide.
  

If you have nature websites you really like and would like to include for other young naturalists to see, drop us a comment, tell me what you like about the site, and make sure to give me the address! We do reserve the right to post links or not post links as appropriate, and I should mention that KWFN is not affiliated with the above websites, and is not responsible for the content on the above sites.