2/24/12 John James Audubon Refuge

I hope you guys had fun at Audubon's house!  We had a lot of fun doing a scavenger hunt and seeing Sammy the screech owl.  Screech Owls are smaller than other species like the great horned owl.  You can learn more about owls like Sammy if you click here.  We also took a small tour of John James Audubon's house.  My personal favorite room was the room with the hats, eggs and bird collections, and taxidermy animals.  The woman leading our class, Miss Linda, said that it wasn't bad to collect the eggs but collectors would gather hundreds of eggs and only keep 2 or 3.  The reason they did this was because they wanted the best eggs and not the ones with spots and "defects".  Without really knowing it they would be killing hundreds of birds just for one perfect egg.  Below is a biography of John James Audubon and his house from the Audubon society website.

Audubon's First Home in America
Mill Grove is the first home of John James Audubon in America and the only true Audubon home still standing in this country. The lovely estate, located in Lower Providence Township, Montgomery County, Pennsylvania was owned for 17 years by Audubon's father, Jean, a French sea captain. In 1803, Captain Audubon sent his youthful son John James to Mill Grove to supervise the estate that included a working lead mine.

The home, now a museum, is on the National Register of Historic Places. It contains the complete editions of every major work published by Audubon including the extraordinary and world famous Birds of America , printed and hand colored from copper plate engravings produced in London between 1827 and 1839.

John James Audubon, eighteen years old at the time of his arrival, spent a majority of his time roaming the wooded hills along the Perkiomen Creek and the Schuylkill River hunting, observing, collecting and sketching. It was during this period that he experienced early stirrings of a fascination for wildlife that was to become his all-absorbing life interest. Inspired and captivated by his new surroundings, Audubon became a pioneer in portraying birds and other wildlife in natural settings. During his time at Mill Grove he built a substantial base of interest in ornithological art, and his experimentation resulted in rapid development of his skill as an artist.

While at Mill Grove he made many drawings and performed the first recorded experiment of bird banding in America. Also, he developed his “wire armature,” a device that gave life to his freshly shot specimens and his drawings of the birds. This unique method of holding his specimens put him years ahead of his contemporaries. Many believe that in spite of the advantages of photography and state-of-the-art technology, no modern bird painter has equaled his achievements.

 

2/10/12 Ridley Creek

 Today we went to Ridley Creek State Park for our Nature Walk.  In the picture on the left you can see the group that came to Nature Club today.  There weren't many of us but we had fun!  We did a small experiment where you throw a stick into the creek to see where it goes.  We concluded that if you threw the stick farther it would travel along down the river not getting stopped by the rocks that were scattered all over.   

In the picture below you see a picture of lichen.  We saw this lichen (like-en) on a tree trunk.  The other lichen was on sticks and branches that were on the ground.  These are a few facts about lichen.  Lichen have a symbiotic relationship with the organism they are living on.  Lichens are fungi. You can learn more about lichens at Link for Lichens. 

2/2/12 Riverbend

Did you all have fun at Riverbend? I sure did! We went bird watching (although we did not see many) but we had a lot of fun hiking a small path. Did any of you see the old stone walls? They were from the Civil War Era. If you noticed the ruins of a house by the parking lot it was probably burned down. I thought it was pretty cool! The two birds are (left) a red tailed hawk (right) a duck. We did some comparing of the two species of birds. For instance, a duck eats fish but the hawk eats mostly dead animals.