Peekaboo! Some Nature Shots

As we walked along the river last weekend I noticed this ailing little tree and its occupants. On the return I tried to sneak up on the little guy. He saw me and scooted up through the holey bole and popped out at top (pic #1 below) to survey the situation. I waited and sure enough he scurried back down to the lower opening and posed for me there.

A female downy woodpecker found the neighbood cuisine delicious.

The same week I caught these birds on a field trip with my fourth graders:



A great blue heron sits by the shore of a beaver ruin.



A warbler visits a feeder station.



A trio of black vultures turn their backs to us in the tippy top of the dead pines.

o

An injured black vulture eats a thawed chick as he underges rehabilitation at the nature center aviary. My students, being fourth graders, are fascinated that the brilliant vulture has such disgusting adaptations. It defecates on itself, coating its legs with a white mixture of uric acid and feces that helps to cool the animal in warm weather and to kill bacteria it picks up from its rotting meals.

Our Nature Study Project

Saturday will be the first public activity of our year-long project of nature study at Armuchee Elementary School. We are sponsoring a Rivers Alive! Clean-up of our little watershed. If you are in the area come join us.

Those of you who have put up with my ruminations and machinations as I worked at planning and writing up the grant proposals for the project might be interested in seeing this presentation about the project.

My daughter, Lillian, helped me put this together back in July for our Meet the Teacher night at school. Take a look:

They liked it!

On the very last day of school, with only an hour left in the school day, I pressed the all-call button in our school office and made the big announcement: Our nature study grant has been approved by the state with FULL funding!

Wow! In addition, a local lumber company has promised some free materials for the construction of the bridge and stations along our trail.

I had hoped to get up to half funding and make up the rest from local school and civic groups.

They liked it, they really liked it! (Apologies to Sally Field.)

When I first started thinking about it, the project was just a modest extention of the current little nature trail. Then as I read, talked to naturalists, professors, other teachers, my students, -- I began to realize that what I really want is more than that. We want our kids to learn more. We want them to do real science, to write from real experience, to learn to appreciate and protect resources, to use math in real situations, to read with an immediate purpose, to tie our community into the history they are studying. We have seen studies that show learning that takes place in the context of the real world around you, sticks.

So the nature trail extension became a small but necessary part of the first year of a new component of our continuing program of using the environment as an integrating context for learning.

Now I have some work cut out for me this summer as we plan the implementation of this new effort.

The Best Wildflower Walk in Georgia

If you have an interest in the flora of Northwest Georgia, find a way to get to the Pocket Trail on Pigeon Mountain near LaFayette in the next few days. (Do not confuse this with the Pocket Trail in Floyd County.) Here's the map -- only use it if you swear to be a good citizen in Eden, no apples!

If you have sworn, pricked a finger, and spit over your left shoulder, then take Ga 193 west from LaFayette to Davis Crossroads; turn left onto Hogjowl Rd; just past Mt. Hermon Baptist, slow way down (you can't see to turn till you are nearly past the turn!) and turn left onto Pocket Rd, which soon turns to gravel, and go till you can't go any farther. Park.

What a show! Our friends Richard and Teresa Ware, editors of Tipularia, the journal of the Georgia Botanical Society (Richard is a past president of the group.) spent the day showing us their favorite wildflower walk. Richard is one of the most knowledgeable botanists in Georgia and leads botanical excursions all over the state; what a treat to have our own guided tour. The Georgia Botanical Society will have a field trip to Pigeon Mountain next Sunday.

I took 149 pictures. Here are only a few favorites - click on a pic to enlarge it:

Cercis canadensis (Eastern Redbud) There is a parking area near the trailhead. The path by the redbuds leads to the boardwalk through the bluebells to the waterfalls. The path to the left leads to the top of the falls and on to other trails.

What a lush array of floral displays. The blue is Mertensia virginica (Virginia Bluebells)


The Virginia Bluebells have pink buds that turn to blue when they open.



A carpet of flowers draped down the hillside. The yellow is Stylophorum diphyllum (Wood Poppy).


Dicentra cucullaria (Dutchman's Breeches)


Phacelia bipinnatifida (Phacelia)


Cystopteris protrusa (Brittle Fern)


Trillium flexipes (Bent Trillium)


The falls area.


Phlox divaricata (Wild Blue Phlox)



Do you see the moth?


Aquilegia canadensis (Wild Columbine) I had to do a little rock climbing to get to these guys.


The view from the top of the falls.


Erythronium americanum (Trout Lily)

From the Pocket Trail we drove around the mountain to the east side where we found more wonders:

Conopholis americana (Squaw Root)


Jeffersonia diphylla (Twinleaf) - the only spot in Georgia this is known to grow.


Blue Hole (This water comes from deep within Pigeon Mountain in Ellison's Cave -- and Ellison's Cave is a story itself! (Here is one fellow's tale of a trip to the bottom of the "Fantastic Pit" in Ellison's Cave.)



and even more Trout Lilies!