Friday Seabird Fun

We started Seabird Camp today with an exploration of bird eggs. Campers tried to match a wide variety of birds to the eggs placed around the Science Room. Some matches, like the murre to murre egg, were very easy for our budding seabird biologists. Identifying eggs for birds like Common Loon and American Robin took longer.

Today’s younger breakout session began with a game called Murre Egg Relay. The students learned about Murre nesting and feeding habits, and then had to figure out how to transfer an egg from one partner’s feet to the other person’s feet. The challenges to the murres grew greater and greater as foxes, partners not returning from their feeding trip, and humans who gather eggs for subsistence were added.

Next, Courtney presented the food chain/food web lesson. Students were able to throw a beanbag attached to a string from one level of the food chain to the next level (representing an arrow showing direction to which energy flows).
The younger group then took a brisk walk up to the Rec Hall to join the rest of our Seabird Campers for a group photo before having a dress rehearsal for tomorrow’s performance.

The final crafting activities for the younger group included making the feather dusters with the colorful feathers that they had collected on Day 1 aboard the Tiglax. The other craft was a paper plate kittiwake. Students could choose to make black-legged or red-legged. A few students got extra creative and made colorful kittiwakes with their leftover feather duster feathers.

The older kids finished up their dress rehearsal and then headed to Lukanin Beach to do a pseudo-COASST survey and a beach (marine debris) clean up. It was a beautiful day and students took the time to play with the waves and look for shells, sand dollars, and feathers to bring home.

Next, the older kids reviewed their science experiments. Campers were particularly excited to review the trail camera photographs. We returned to all of our study question and determined whether the results matched our hypotheses. In some instances they were very close. The campers guessed that it would take 5 hrs for the fox to find the food samples. It took 6 hrs 21 minutes. They estimated the fox would visit its den once in 24 hrs. It visited twice. Campers concluded that the experiment would be even better after the pups are born because the fox would bring them food and we would get photos of pups and prey items. Seems like a good idea!

A game of “Puffin Family” Mad Libs followed. The campers seemed skeptical at first but found the results very amusing. There was a lot of clamoring for MORE MAD LIBS!

We rounded out the older kids’ session with a rousing review game of Jeopardy! to review the week of learning.

The evening program started with an egg drop contest; a follow-up on some concepts explored in the murre egg experiment. We moved on to build a bonfire near Salt Lagoon. Camp Leader Ram relaxed off to the side and looked like he was dosing off. He woke up an hour later, all alone, next to a put-out fire. It had been a busy week!