It's ages since I last taught at Five Rivers, so I was quite nervous getting back to it this morning. But I had a great, cheery group of 3rd graders (8-9 year olds - my favourite grade), good conditions (fine and warm, but not too hot) and we easily found a whole lot of animal signs, which was the purpose of the expedition. The kids were somewhat disgusted by goose scat and spittle bugs, but really got into discovering vole tunnels and spotting fish and frogs from the floating decks on one of the ponds. And we were dive-bombed by swallows out on the field trail, which is always entertaining.
The children were quite knowledgeable about nature - they knew lots of bird names, for a start, and recognised a deer hoof-print without any trouble. One of them suggested we might find a "poisonous playtypus", but I think that was probably just some sort of slip of the tongue.
They were very thrilled to know that the centre has been visited by a bear recently. Five Rivers staff are not so thrilled - the bear has been quite destructive around the bird feeding station (all birdfeeding has been suspended until winter). In the UK urban foxes are common. Out here increasingly there are problems with urban bears as their proper habitats are diminished and they come in search of the easy pickings left around by humans.
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