I hope everyone is looking forward to the 2011 season at the Tallgrass Prairie Preserve. We begin with Docent Reorientation on February 26, 2011 at the Research Station from 10 a.m. — 4 p.m. As usual, bring a lunch. Bob Hamilton will bring us up to date on the happenings in 2010 and what the future holds. New Docent Recruiting will take place in Bartlesville on Thursday, February 24, 2011 at the Bartlesville Public Library in Room B from 7-8 p.m. I want to invite all of the docents in the area to stop by and support Betty Turner in this effort. New Docent Recruiting in Tulsa, OK will take place on Sunday, February 20, 2011 at the Hardesty Library (93rd & Memorial) from 2-4 p.m. All Tulsa area docents are invited to stop by and support Barbara Bates.
I am looking for people to fill the following positions: Docent Scheduler, Reorientation Coordinator and Recognition Luncheon Coordinator. If you are interested, please let me know. Any and all help will be appreciated.
See ya’ there!
The winter months are a great time to see Bald Eagles at the Tallgrass Prairie Preserve. During the 2010 Christmas Bird Count I was fortunate to see five Bald Eagles (4 mature and 1 immature). The white head and tail are distinctive field marks on the mature eagle and are difficult to miss even at a distance. A mature Bald Eagle can have a 6 to 7 foot wingspan. Adults can measure 3 to 3½ feet tall and weigh from 8 to 15 pounds. Bald Eagles are one of the largest birds of prey in the world.
The five eagles I saw were on the northern part of the Preserve. It is not uncommon to see eagles perched in the upper parts of large dead trees surveying their surroundings. In fact during the winter Bald Eagles will often roost in these large trees during the night in communal groups.
Fish make up the bulk of a Bald Eagle’s diet. Hence, the best place to see large numbers of Bald Eagles congregate is on the tail-water of impoundments where they spend the day gorging themselves on dead and dying fish which have been run through the turbines. I have seen large numbers of eagles on Kaw, Keystone and Oologah Lakes during the winter months.
On the Preserve you will normally see one or two eagles perched in a dead tree or in the air looking for prey. Over the past two years I have seen eagles on a cow carcass and a deer carcass. Both times there were two eagles working the carcass. In both instances a large female had possession of the carcass and the male was nearby waiting his turn to feast on the remains. Most sources indicate that dead or crippled waterfowl and other wildlife become important food sources in midwinter. Eagles have fantastic eyesight, which aids them in spotting food of any nature as they soar over their domain. It has been estimated that an eagle’s eyesight is five to six times sharper than a human’s.
Winter pushes birds from the north down to other southern areas as water freezes up. The Oklahoma Department of Wildlife has estimated that as many as 700 to 1500 Bald Eagles will winter in Oklahoma this year.
Bald Eagles mate for life and will return to the same nest site year after year. Nests are large structures usually built near the top of trees not far from water. A record nest measured 20 feet deep, 10 feet wide and weighed over 4000 pounds.
A nest is tended by both adults between April and July. Normally 2 eggs are laid, rarely 3 and they are incubated for 35 days. At 10 to 12 weeks the eaglets are fully feathered and almost fully grown and can fly from the nest. Wild eagles can live up to 30 years. Immature eagles are patterned with dark brown and white, it will take a young eagle up to five years before it exhibits the white head and tail of a mature Bald Eagle. During this time an immature Bald eagle can be confused with the Golden Eagle, but a sure way to distinguish the two is to zoom in on the feet. A young Bald Eagles legs are bare of feathers for about 1½ inches above the feet while a Golden Eagles legs are feathered.
Prior to 1990 there were no known pairs of nesting Bald Eagles in Oklahoma. Between 1985 and 1990, the Wildlife Diversity Program assisted the George M. Sutton Avian Research Center with the release of 90 eaglets in Eastern Oklahoma. The eaglets were hatched at Sutton from eggs which were collected from Florida Bald Eagle nests and ultimately released in Oklahoma. Today there are now 60 known breeding pairs in the state
It is estimated that at the inception of the United States there were 20,000 nesting pairs within the continental United States. By 1963 only 417 nesting pairs remained in the lower 48 states. By 2007 that number had increased to 9789 known nesting pairs. In that year the Bald Eagle was delisted from the threatened species list. It is truly a remarkable story how the Bald Eagle was brought back from the brink of extinction in the lower 48 states.
This winter drive up to the Tallgrass Prairie to spot Bald Eagles or take advantage of the dams to see congregations of eagles feeding in the tail-waters. It is a breath taking sight to see this bird perched or flying and you will never forget the experience,
Real science has the potential to not only amaze, but also transform
the way one thinks of the world and oneself. This is because the process
of science is little different from the deeply resonant, natural processes
of play. Play enables humans (and other mammals) to discover (and
create) relationships and patterns. When one adds rules to play, a game is
created. This is science: the process of playing with
rules that enables
one to reveal previously unseen patterns of relationships that extend our
collective understanding of nature and human nature. When thought of in
this way, science education becomes a more enlightened and intuitive
process of asking questions and devising games to address those
questions. But, because the outcome of all game-playing is unpredictable,
supporting this messyness
, which is the engine of science, is critical
to good science education (and indeed creative education generally).
Indeed, we have learned that doing real
science in public spaces can
stimulate tremendous interest in children and adults in understanding the
processes by which we make sense of the world. The present study (on the
vision of bumblebees) goes even further, since it was not only performed
outside my laboratory (in a Norman church in the southwest of England),
but the games
were themselves devised in collaboration with 25 8- to
10-year-old children. They asked the questions, hypothesized the answers,
designed the games (in other words, the experiments) to test these
hypotheses and analysed the data. They also drew the figures (in coloured
pencil) and wrote the paper. Their headteacher (Dave Strudwick) and I
devised the educational programme (we call i, scientist
), and I trained
the bees and transcribed the childrens’ words into text (which was done
with smaller groups of children at the school’s local village pub). So
what follows is a novel study (scientifically and conceptually) in kids
speak
without references to past literature, which is a challenge.
Although the historical context of any study is of course important,
including references in this instance would be disingenuous for two
reasons. First, given the way scientific data are naturally reported, the
relevant information is simply inaccessible to the literate ability of 8-
to 10-year-old children, and second, the true motivation for any
scientific study (at least one of integrity) is one’s own curiousity,
which for the children was not inspired by the scientific literature, but
their own observations of the world. This lack of historical, scientific
context does not diminish the resulting data, scientific methodology or
merit of the discovery for the scientific and non-scientific
audience.
On the contrary, it reveals science in its truest (most naive) form, and
in this way makes explicit the commonality between science, art and indeed
all creative activities.
Principal finding: We discovered that
bumblebees can use a combination of colour and spatial relationships in
deciding which colour of flower to forage from. We also discovered that
science is cool and fun because you get to do stuff that no one has ever
done before. (Children from Blackawton)
.
Read the six-page Royal Society Biology Letters paper on-line here, or read it in PDF format here.
Be sure to watch the 17-minute podcast here.
This is what science is all about and what we tried to do in a small way with our interactive information kiosk. We engaged children in play and accomplished something worthwhile on multiple levels.
For those of you unfamiliar with development of the kiosk see these back issues of the Newsletter:
Last year we improved our docent coverage by a couple of percentage points over the previous year. Let’s try to do a bit better this coming year.
Here is the latitude and longitude of the Visitor’s Center that you can give to visitors for entry into their GPS navigation device.
Here we provide some links to other docent programs.
The manufacturer’s instructions for cleaning the touch-screen recommend use of a soft dry cloth only. This proved inadequate for smeared fingerprints. Soft-paper kitchen towels work well, slightly damp with a small drop of soft handsoap. Application of a dry kichen towel removes any residual moisture.
Over time, a matter of several weeks continuous operation, I have noticed that calibration of the touch-screen drifts away from the initial set-point. If you notice that the cursor isn’t under your finger when you touch the screen then restart the kiosk by unplugging it from the wall, waiting a few moments and then re-inserting the power plug. It will restart and recalibrate.
This link points to the complete Kiosk Maintenance Manual.
Some printed back issues of the Docent Newsletter, to February 2009, can be found in the two green and one blue-black zip-binders, stored in the Perspex rack by the file cabinet in the office of the Visitor’s Center.
All back issues are available electronically via the links shown below. All newsletters prior to December 2007 are available in Portable Document Format (PDF), which means that you will need Adobe Reader installed on your computer to read these files. All newsletters from December 2007 onwards are in HTML format that is easily read using your web-browser.
2011—January
February
March
April
May
June
July
August
September
October
November
December—2011
2010—January
February
March
April
May
June
July
August
September
October
November
December—2010
2009—January
February
March
April
May
June
July
August
September
October
November
December—2009
2008—January
February
March
April
May
June
July
August
September
October
November
December—2008
2007—January
February
March
April
May
June
July
August
September
October
November
December—2007
2006—January
February
March
April
May
June
July
August
September
October
November
December—2006
2005—January
February
March
April
May
June
July
August
September
October
November
December—2005
2004—January
February
March
April
May
June
July
August
September
October
November
December—2004
2003—January
February
March
April
May
June
July
August
September
October
November
December—2003
1995—January
February
March
April
May
June
July
August
September
October
November
December—1995
Deadline for submission of articles for inclusion in the newsletter is the 10th of each month. Publication date is on the 15th. All docents, Nature Conservancy staff, university scientists, philosophers, and historians are welcome to submit articles and pictures about the various preserves in Oklahoma, but of course the Tallgrass Prairie Preserve in particular.