Pond study and water quality - Sept 24

What a great turnout we had on Saturday. The weather was beautiful and perfect for gathering creatures from the pond!

It was nice to meet all the new members that have joined the Young Naturalists club this year and welcome back some returning members.
During the first part of our meeting we shared the following sightings: Piping Plover, Pileated Woodpecker, coyote, deer, snake, seal and gopher.

We're going to try something new this year. Each time we meet, we'll take a photo of the same spot at the pond so that we can see how that spot changes from season to season. Each young naturalist will also have a journal where they can write down the things they did and saw during each meeting!

While we were at the pond, we collected water to measure the water quality. The results were:
Air temperature: 20 degrees, Turbidity: 40 jtu, Water temperature: 18 degrees, Dissolved Oxygen: 4, pH: 7. Because of some problems with the sampling, the results were not submitted to the water monitoring website. If you would like to read more about water sampling, here is a link to the website: http://www.worldwatermonitoringday.org/

It looked like everyone had fun collecting creatures at the pond:

List of creatures collected:

crayfish

leopard frog

water scorpion

giant water bug

tadpole

scud

dragon fly nymph

damsel fly nymph

scavenger beetle

water boatman

water mite

fisher spider

backswimmer

water strider

stickleback

caddis fly nymph

See you in October!

Kelly

January 2010 sightings

Just a quick reminder: our special full-day extra event is this weekend! So hope to see everyone there. Please remember to bring lunches, warm clothes, and a mug for hot chocolate.

And without further ado, our sightings from last month's meeting (a fabulous winter list):

• snowy owls
• crows
• red-tailed hawk
• American bald eagle
• winter crane flies
• spiders
• coyote
• hawk
• deer
• screech owl
• great horned owl
• cooper's hawk
• sharp-shinned hawk
• long-eared owl (roadkill)
• red-bellied woodpecker
• pileated woodpecker
• downy woodpecker
• hairy woodpecker
• midges
• wild turkeys

Awesome work, Young Naturalists! Keep your eyes open as spring starts creeping up on us!

KWFN YN Fall Bird Count 2009

Here's the count numbers for our Fall Bird Count at the last YN meeting. Good spotting, everyone! We did really well. In total, we saw 17 different species of birds, and 124 individual birds, which is excellent!

American crow - 31
American goldfinch - 1
American robin - 14
Black-capped chickadee - 16
Canada goose - 2
Downey woodpecker - 3
Eastern phoebe - 1
European starling - 3
Golden-crowned kinglet - 5
Great blue heron - 2
Great egret - 1
Gull sp. - 36
Mallard - 21
Nuthatch sp. - 2
Ring-billed gull - 1
Red-tailed hawk - 2
Song sparrow - 1

Excellent work, birders! Thanks for your help.

sightings April 2009

Lots happening this month! I had a very exciting morning: I've heard my first warbler of the year! It was a black-throated green warbler. I didn't see him, but his distinctive zee zee zee zoo zee! was loud and clear.

I'm posting our sightings from the April meeting, but shortly I'll be sending directions to our May meeting to emails. If you don't get the direction in your inbox by May 10, please let me know and I'll send them again. Sometimes mass emails get caught by spam filters, and I'd like to make sure everyone knows how to get to the bird banding station.

Now on to more exciting things! During the month of April, Young Naturalists saw:

• ruby crowned kinglet
• moles (hairy-tailed?)
• fox sparrow
• rabbit
• white moth
• muskrat
• deer
• cardinal
• kingfisher
• Blanding's turtle
• red-tailed hawk
• squirrel
• mourning cloak butterfly
• comma butterfly
• Milbert's tortoiseshell butterfly
• red-winged blackbird
• robin
• turkey vulture
• bloodroot
• trout lily
• wild leek
• mallard duck
• osprey
• white-throated sparrow
• field sparrow
• fairy shrimp
• wood frog

Excellent list, everyone! See you in May.

sightings from January and February 2009

I have two months' worth of sightings to report here, thanks to the fact that I forgot the book at the Nature Centre last month.

January 2009

• snowy owl
• shrike
• fox
• northern harrier (marsh hawk)
• raccoon
• hawk (peregrine falcon?)
• 4 bald eagles
• cooper's hawk
• bay-breasted warbler??
• crows
• chickadee
• junco
• woodpecker
• nuthatches
• mourning doves
• white-winged crossbills
• pine siskins
• common redpoll

Not a bad list for what is generally regarded as a slow time of year! Same for the next one:

February 2009
From Cuba:

• palm warblers
• iguana
• very small boa constrictor

From Wings of Paradise:

• rice paper butterflies

From Canada:

• common redpoll
• pine siskins
• red-tailed hawk
• cardinal
• downey woodpecker
• red-bellied woodpecker
• ravens
• killdeer
• kestrels
• northern harrier
• skunk
• red-shouldered hawk
• raccoon (drunk on fermented plums!)
• mallard ducks

If you look at February's list, it's clear that our spring animals are starting to show up: killdeer, kestrels, and skunks are all either migrants or hibernators, and some of the very earliest signs of spring.

Good work Young Naturalists!

I'll be posting more information about our next program in a week or two.

October sightings

Reminder: KWFN YN tomorrow morning! Hope to see you all there.

As promised, our sightings from last month:

• Mourning cloak butterfly
• Rabbit
• Chipmunk
• Juncos
• Grackles
• Goldfinches
• Cedar waxwing
• Jelly cup fungus
• Golden-crowned kinglet
• Canada geese

See everyone tomorrow morning!

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.

itty bitty swallowtail caterpillar

Further to the last post, here's a photo of the creature that emerged from the egg, about a week and a half after it was laid. It's now been working on the carrot for about a week:


It's not quite as long as my thumbnail yet. Tiny! But the colours are starting to become noticeable. If you click on the photo you can see it a little closer. It's definitely patterned to look like a bird dropping, but as it gets larger it will develop a distinctive pattern of warning colours. I'll try to keep photos coming!

black swallowtail butterfly in my garden!

Summer sighting, very cool:

I was sitting in my garden this morning and a large black butterfly caught my eye: a black swallowtail! Now, it seemed to be hanging around my vegetable garden. I watched it for quite a while, keeping my distance (I didn't want to bother her because I suspected she was up to something) and once she had gone, I went and inspected my carrots.

Sure enough, there's a tiny little egg on one of my carrot plants. I have a confession: I don't really like to eat carrots myself. So when I planted them, I was secretly hoping that I'd end up with swallowtails! Carrots and other plants in the same family are host plants for the caterpillars of some species of swallowtails.

I thought about bringing the egg inside where I could keep it safe until it hatched, and feed the caterpillar, but I decided it was probably a better idea to leave it outside. Hopefully I'll be able to keep an eye on the egg and then the caterpillar as it grows. It might be a little hard on my carrot plants, but that's okay. I think the caterpillar can have my share!