Wednesday July 15
Today I had one student show up at 1. As I was setting up a video on the big screen, the room quietly filled with more campers—all masked and sanitized. I turned around to see them all happily waiting for today’s activities.
We started off with the question, “What is a scientist?” Students volunteered answers like, “Someone who studies something, “Someone who studies animals,” “Someone who researches,” and “Someone who takes pictures”. This was a great introduction to today’s activities, which focused on making observations in our environment and recording data based on those observations.
I passed out the “Count on It” activity and we talked about field guides and how to use them. We looked at the field guide excerpt on the activity and noted that none of us knew about the fork-tailed storm-petrel, and that must mean that we don’t get them a lot here in St. Paul. The rest of the seabirds in the field guide were familiar and the student scientists observed the cliffs just like a Fish and Wildlife biologist might to answer questions about Common Murres, Red-Faced Cormorants, Horned Puffins, Tufted Puffins, Least Auklets, Black-legged Kittiwakes, and Red-Legged Kittiwakes. When we started the count, we were getting different answers for some of the species. We realized that we have to count the chicks as part of the species, too!
“I have a question,” one student said, “Are we going to go outside today?” When I answered, “yes,” there was a “whoop” from the group. “But first,” I said, “we’re watching a video Ram made for us about how to take good pictures.”
The next activity was a Photo Scavenger Hunt. Students’ job was to go around town, being observant like a scientist, to find evidence of seabird habitats, like guano on a rock, a feather, a bird footprint, even beach debris that might harm a seabird. Before kids went out we watched Ram’s awesome video with parrots, chickens, tree-hugging, and tips for how to take great photos. The students said they didn’t already know a lot of the tips Ram gave them, so the video was a useful tool to learn things like tapping the screen to focus on your subject and filling 1/3 of the screen with your subject to make the photo more pleasing to the eye. We also had to talk about what guano is and why they should us the macro, or close up shots to capture a photo of the bird poop.
Interns are equipped with some fancy camera and sound gear. They took the students out in groups to help keep everyone safe and to help get great footage of each item on the list.
