Seabird camp on St. Paul started with a bang! Teams of campers raced to collect all of the things that seabirds need to raise a chick. The successful parents found space, food, water, shelter, an egg, and a chick.
Campers tested their knowledge with a “Who wants to be a Millionaire?” pre-test. The groups answered all sorts of questions about seabirds, invasive species and the Alaska Maritime National Wildlife Refuge. They remembered so much from past seabird camps that they left little room for improvement! Most of the teams went home millionaires (with a wealth of knowledge).
Our next activity, “Bird on your Back,” focused on seabird identification. Kids took turns asking questions to figure out which St. Paul seabird picture hung on their backs. They will look for these field marks during today’s field trips!
After snack break, we learned a lot about life on the Commander Islands through pictures and pen-pal letters. Mrs. Kushin even tricked us into thinking she can read Russian! We will write back to our Russian friends later in the week.
The kids gave Ram lots of ideas for two extravagant theatrical productions; “The Foxinator” and “The Outsmarted Hunters.” These are going to be really fun plays! We will perform them on Saturday at 7:30 p.m. at the Rec Hall.
It was time to get outside again; this time for a food chain relay race! Teams had to be both smart and fast because the winning team’s food chain had to make sense. No puffins eating reindeer!
Next, it was time to get messy. And I mean really messy! Puddles of wheat paste formed everywhere as the kids applied sticky strips of newspaper to the masks they will wear for Saturday’s plays.
Older students attended an evening session where they learned about seabird diets and oceanographic measurements. The group went out to the docks to collect ocean conditions data and plankton. Two plankton tows yielded a soupy mix of phytoplankton and zooplankton. We will try to identify the plankton under microscopes this evening.
If it seems like a packed day that is because it was!