Wordless Wednesday: Lady's Slipper

Photos taken 20 May 2012

Two Ways of Seeing Trees

Today features guest blogger Rebecca Deatsman.

Balsam Fir

Outside it was a cool, sunny, perfect morning, but for the moment my students and I were inside the classroom. They’d come to the nature center where I work on a field trip, and my job was to teach them about identifying local tree species. Before we looked at the trees themselves, they had to understand the tool we’d be using, a dichotomous key.

Thankfully, they were patient while I explained the basics of the key. A written dichotomous key consists of pairs of mutually exclusive statements to describe the object you’re trying to identify. You pick the statement that describes your object, and the key directs you to the next pair of descriptions to narrow it down further, until finally you arrive at your identification. To practice I had the kids each take off one of their shoes and put them in a pile at the front of the room, and we wrote a key to determine who each shoe belonged to. It went something like this:

1. Shoe is a left shoe… go to number 2
    Shoe is a right shoe… go to number 3

2. Shoe has red laces… belongs to Annie
    Shoe has white laces… go to number 4

We also had to go over enough botany vocabulary for them to understand all the words in the tree key – coniferous vs. deciduous trees, alternate vs. opposite branching, simple vs. compound leaves, etc. Finally we were ready to go outside and put their new skills to the test.

Paper Birch

This is my favorite kind of lesson to teach, where the students immediately get to apply their new knowledge in an authentic way. Ecologists use dichotomous keys in their field work all the time, and here was my group of middle schoolers doing the same thing. Each one had to identify three different tree species and record what species he/she found in his/her field notebook, along with sketches or descriptions explaining the characteristics used to identify each one. If you want to try a dichotomous key for yourself, a great interactive one for the trees of Wisconsin, where I live, can be found at (EEK!) Environmental Education for Kids; with a little Googling you might find something similar for the region where you live.

As a naturalist, I firmly believe that being able to identify and name your plant and animal neighbors is a useful skill. It strengthens your sense of connection to the place where you live and gives you greater awareness and appreciation of the diverse natural community of which you’re a part. However, I also know that names and facts aren’t the only way to get to know trees, which is why we ended the lesson with a very different activity. I had the students pair up and distributed a blindfold to each pair. The “seeing” partner chose a tree and carefully led the “blind” partner to it, and the blind partner had to use his or her non-visual senses (mostly touch) to get to know that individual tree. When the seeing students led their partners away again, spun them around to disorient them, and removed their blindfolds, they had to re-find the same tree based on their observations while blind.

Yellow Birch

The students took copies of the tree key home with them at the end of their field trip. I hope they keep them and pull them out to identify the trees in their backyards. I hope they take the time to hug those trees once in a while, too. And I really, really hope that even when they grow up, they see the trees in their lives as something more than a nice green backdrop to more important things.

Rebecca Deatsman is a graduate student in environmental education at the University of Wisconsin-Stevens Point. She blogs about the natural history of northern Wisconsin at Rebecca in the Woods and is on Twitter as @rdeatsman. 

Haying Experiences Turned into a Picture Book Manuscript

Virtually everyone who has ever tried to write a story has been given the advice, "Write what you know." This phrase means different things to different people- for example, some people have literally had an experience they describe in a piece of fiction while others may have experienced the emotion their characters are feeling, if not the same experience.

Lately, I've been immersed in the first scenario. That is to say, I'm writing a fiction picture book with made up farmers who need to bring in hay before a rainstorm, but I have experienced bringing in hay every summer for my entire life. I know what 'bringing in the hay' is like and therefore can write about it with authenticity and authority.

Many years ago, the seed of this idea was planted in my mind. It first came to me in September, so I started by writing from memory. In my mind, I went back to previous summers and recorded sensory details I remembered. Some came from my childhood, some from my adulthood, and some from memories of my children helping.  I have notes in my journal from these first attempts in September of 2006, and then in February of 2007 when I started to consider possible plot points. But the real work didn't come until I did "in the field" research. In June of 2007, 2008, and 2011 I brought my notebook to the hay fields and took notes in real time. I was amazed by the things I didn't include in my notes from memory. Most notably, I didn't include sounds, so I especially focused on those during last summer's research.

I simply recorded facts and details and let them percolate. Finally, after several fits and starts, the basic outline of a story came to me. I wrote it as quickly as I could and then I went back and reviewed all of my notes to see what I had missed. 

I'm now working on draft twelve of this manuscript and it's still not done. And when I say draft, I mean that each version is substantially different than the one that came before. Sometimes I changed the narrator, or the point of view, or I changed it from past tense to present tense. Other times I removed a whole scene or completely changed the ending or beginning. And this is a manuscript that at its longest has never been more than 1,000 words. Very few sentences (if any) are the same as they were when I first drafted this story. It's currently hovering around 650 words, though I need to rework the beginning again.

Some days I've been frustrated, sure, but mostly I've been excited. I LOVE revision because oftentimes that's when I truly find my character's story. And every time, I know I'm making it better. I rely heavily on my critique group and other trusted readers to to tell me when things are working and when they aren't,  but I always look to my characters to tell me if I'm telling their story "true."

Last Saturday my dad let us know he'd be taking in hay on Sunday, so you can be sure I showed up with my camera again. They had plenty of help, so I watched. I didn't take notes this time, rather I played my story in my mind as they worked. I asked myself if Kate (my main character) really could see the things I describe her seeing if she were sitting on her dad's lap driving the tractor. I watched the guys on the wagon stacking bales to be sure my descriptions were accurate. And I listened to the sounds again to see if I had them right. I also took loads of photographs for reference later.

I did all of this because setting is very important to me as a reader and as a writer. In many of my stories, the setting becomes almost another character- that's the naturalist in me coming out. I want readers to really feel like they're out there bringing in hay. 

Lest you think haying is all fun and games...check out those bits of hay heading straight to my son's nose. Hayfever anyone?

To learn more about haying, please read last year's post, Haying Season. In it, I share details of the process and suggest ways you can get involved.

To read about inspiration for a different picture book manuscript, please read Adoption Insensitivity.

Wordless Wednesday: Iridescent Beetle

Photos taken 7 May 2012

The Tree of Life

Today features guest blogger Patrice Sherman.

Credit: Library of Congress

Ever hear of the halliaeetus leucocephalus? Of course, you have.  Halliaeetus leucophalus is the scientific name for the bald eagle.  In Latin it means “white headed sea eagle”

John James Audubon drew the bald eagle you see here sometime in the 1820s.  Audubon spent most of his adult life drawing birds.  Between 1819 and 1846 he identified and drew over 435 different species of North American birds.

Why is identifying species important?  The scientific name for a species tells us how it relates to other life forms. Basically, the name is like an “address” on the tree of life.  The major category, or trunk, of the tree is “life “ itself. After that, living organisms are divided into domains and then into ever-smaller categories. The formal hierarchy looks like this:  domain > kingdom > phylum > class > order > genus > species.  So the complete name for our bald eagle is actually: Animalia > Chordata > Ciconiiformes > Accipitridae > Halliaeetus > Halliaeetus leucocephalus. 

Just as species are related to one another, so too are scientists—not biologically, but through their ideas.  This system of classifying species was first developed around 1735 by the Swedish naturalist Carl Linnaeus.  Audubon relied on his copy of Linnaeus’s book when identifying birds in America. In 1826, Audubon traveled to Britain and gave a lecture at the University of Edinburgh, Scotland. Sitting in the audience was a 19-year old student named Charles Darwin.

Five years later, when Darwin visited the Galapagos Islands off the coast of South America, he became fascinated by a species of small bird he called finches. On each island, he noted, the finch population had a different type of beak. His observations led to the discovery 15 new species of birds, and to a theory that would change science forever.          

The process of identifying new species continues to this day.  According to the International Institute of Species Exploration only 20% of all species have been identified. That leaves approximately 8.7 million out there waiting to be discovered.  Each year researchers identify between 18,000-26,000 new species.  Many exist in only remote areas.  Some are so tiny they can only be seen with a microscope. A surprising number, however, are hiding in plain sight.

Photo credit: Colin Osborne, USFWS

 In 2009, Jeremy Fineberg, a student at Rutgers University, discovered a new species leopard of frog on Staten Island. Fineberg knew that most local frogs made a series repetitive croaks, or “chuckles.”  When he listened carefully, this frog only made one chuckle at a time. Three years later, DNA tests certified Fineberg’s frog as a genuine new species. 

 You don’t have to be an expert to discover a new species.  Many are found by ordinary people willing to take a second look, or second listen, to the world around them.  The identification of species encourages us to get right up close to nature, to note the smallest details. 

  
It also helps us do just the opposite.  When we find new species, we are inspired to step back and take a look at the whole tree of life.   We humans have our place on it, too. That’s us, homo sapiens, perched on our own special branch.  In Latin homo means “man” and sapiens, “knowing.” Every time we name a new species, we add a new twig to the tree. And with every new twig we learn a little more about the diversity of our planet, making the tree of life, a tree of knowledge, indeed.

           

         

Patrice Sherman is the author of several books for young readers, including the book Conservation Heroes: John James Audubon.  She likes to enjoy nature at Fresh Pond near her home in Cambridge, Massachusetts.  You can find out more at her website. 

Would you like to be a guest blogger. Read this post to get the guest blogger requirements.

Polliwog by Polliwog

Have you ever heard the story that goes something like this...
A little girl on the beach sees hundreds of sea stars (starfish) stranded on the sand and begins throwing them back into the water. A man approaches and tells her there's no point. There are too many sea stars.  Her efforts don't matter. The girl looks at the sea star in her hand and says, "It matters to this one."

This story is often used as metaphorical inspiration when people think they can't make a difference. The message is basically 'start with one thing.'

Recently, I had a more literal experience of this story.

Not long after the wood frogs descended upon our nearby "frog pond," my kids and I went back looking for eggs (more appropriately called spawn). We collected one mass that we brought home to watch. We placed it in a large plastic jug with plenty of water and muck from the pond. We changed the water occasionally to keep the balance healthy.

Finally, on Monday of last week, I noticed tadpoles emerging. Unfortunately, the kids were at school, but I had some time, so I hiked out to the pond to see what was happening. We've been in drought conditions here in the Northeast, so when I arrived, I found the water level significantly lower than when I had last been out there. I also found this:

It's an area approximately two feet by three feet that is covered by spawn left high and dry on land as the water level dropped. My heart sank. Literally hundreds, maybe thousands of little polliwogs were in there.

Can you see the shape of one in the shadow on the left side of the photo? Click to make larger.

All of them would die if I didn't do something. So, like the little girl in the story, I gently scooped up each mass, picked my way out along these rocks

and slipped them into the water. Even as I was walking, tadpoles were emerging in my hands.

Can you see the gills? They're the little fin-like things on the sides of it's body.

This isn't a great photo, but every aqua mass you see is one I deposited. There are more on the other side of the rocks, out of the shot.

I sat and watched one polliwog after another squiggle off into the safety of the murky bottom.

I'll be honest, there were moments when I was ready to just quit. It was hot, I wanted time to observe, I felt an occasional light-headedness with all of the up and down and balancing on rocks. But, my readers know I love this place and I love frogs. You may remember how devastated I was by the logging that took place over the winter and early spring and how I worried about the fate of the wood frogs. I couldn't leave them to die. I just focused on moving one mass at a time until eventually all were back in the water.

Author Anne Lamott called this Bird by Bird. I think I'll call it "Polliwog by Polliwog."


What task in your life could you better manage if you remembered to take it one little step at a time? How could you help your children or students learn this same lesson?


(Science fact I need to share: I'm not certain these eggs are Wood Frog spawn. Amphibian eggs can look very similar. I also tend to avoid research-I'd rather learn from my own observations for something like this. So, we're simply watching the tadpoles in our jug carefully to see how they change over time. Soon, we'll return them to the pond because they won't be able to stay healthy in our porch. Hopefully they will have changed enough for us to ID them by then. That said, if you can definitively ID the species from my photos, please feel free to put it in comments).

Wordless Wednesday: Eastern Bluebirds

Photos taken 15 May 2012