You may have noticed that the chickens at NRT’s Sheep Pasture slow down their egg production dramatically during the winter months, but have you ever wondered why this change happens? Do other birds do this?
All animals, including humans, follow a circadian clock, which is an internal schedule guided by the 24-hours of the day and how many hours of light and dark there are. Throughout the year, the ratio of daylight hours to hours of darkness changes. We see the most hours of sunlight in the summertime and shorter days with less hours of daylight throughout the winter. These changes in light-dark transitions cause chemical changes within animals’ bodies.
For mammals who become inactive during the winter, either by hibernating or going into a state of torpor, shorter days indicate that it is time to start collecting food and upping fat storage within in their bodies. For many birds, the transition of shorter days in the fall is often a cue to start migrating, however; even before birds begin their migration journeys, their bodies have already picked up on the light-dark changes and many birds will begin molting and getting a new set of feathers for optimal flight conditions.
Although we miss fresh eggs in the wintertime, we also know it’s an important process in a bird’s life so that the energy that would normally be used for egg production can be used for molting, migration and keeping warm! We look forward to longer days in the spring and delicious eggs from our happy, healthy chickens when the time is right!
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 We are starting to get a taste of spring as temperatures rise into the sixties on some days and fall back into the 20s on other days here New England. Despite the lower temperatures over the past couple of days, there are still some sure fire signs that spring is nearing! One of which being that the first official day of spring is in four days on March 20th, but there is all sorts of other animal and plant activity that is also starting to take place. Some of our early spring migratory birds are back and calling like the Woodcock and the Red Winged Blackbird, and there were even a number of garter snakes spotted out and about over the weekend!
Well, here are some fun ideas for March journaling from The Nature Connection by author/naturalist Clare Walker Leslie!
Possibly the best way to experience spring through our nature journals is to just get outside and start making observations! If they make it into your journal, wonderful, and if you are just outside to enjoy the day with no journaling, that is okay too!  Winter is a time for resting and conserving energy for most animals, including humans! Because of animals’ need to seek shelter and use resources sparingly, we don’t see as much animal activity going on as we do during other times of the year. That being said, there are still animals who venture out into the cold when they can and even a couple of critters who aren’t really affected by cooler temperatures and snow-covered landscapes at all! Even though we may not see as much animal activity, there is definitely still a lot going on in the forests and other habitats throughout the winter. We know this because we can looks for signs that animals have been present in certain areas. One sign, that we have mentioned before in our blogs, is animal tracks, but there are all sorts of other clues and indicators that animals might be frequenting or just passing through a particular area during the winter.
As you are exploring this area, look for as many possible signs of animal activity as you can find! You can look for animal scat, broken branches, places where animals might have been eating, bark on tree that looks like it is scratched or rubbed, etc. While investigating, start to think about what kinds of animals might be the cause of what you are seeing. A good place to begin is to determine what animals are most likely to be active in the winter in the area you are exploring. There are many great resources online for determining which animals migrate, which animals stick around, and which animals go into deep sleeps for the season. You may need to do a little bit of investigating, but knowing which animals could be seen will definitely help to narrow down who the culprit of your winter animal activity signs could be.
Some signs to look for while out exploring are:
Snapped branches low to the ground
Possible feeding sites
There are all sorts of other signs that help us to determine what type of animal activity is happening in an area when we aren’t around, so do your best to note any oddities in your journals and try to make connections between your recordings. How you keep track of your findings is completely up to you! You can draw pictures of your observations, or keep detailed notes! Once you are done with your investigation, try to figure out what the signs are telling you about which types of animals are in the area. As always, happy journaling!  Sheep are sheep are sheep, right? Not quite! It’s pretty easy to assume that all sheep are the same, especially if you live in a place where sheep are few and far between. Even in Easton, there aren’t too many sites you can head to locally to check out these radiant ruminants. Sheep have some characteristics that are common among all species like the fact that they all have hooves that are split into two separate toes. Sheep are also all cud-chewing ruminants (along with cows, goats and other mammals who eat a lot of greens), meaning that they have four compartments in their stomach: the rumen, reticulum, omasum and abomasum! From the reticulum of a sheep’s stomach, their food is regurgitated in the form of cud where it is chewed for a second time before moving into the omasum! This is why whenever observing sheep, it often looks like they are chewing on bubblegum! Not only are they re-chewing their food, but sheep also don’t have any teeth on the front of their upper jaw, so they are grinding down all that cud with very flat, back molars, which just makes the whole process even more noticeable!  Diagram depicting the flow of digestion for ruminant mammals. Image taken from http://www.mun.ca/biology/scarr/Ruminant_Digestion.html All that being said, there are over 10,000 species of domestic sheep in the world all with unique traits and characteristics! Funnily enough, there are only six species of wild sheep roaming the world, two of which can be found in the U.S. along with a couple of subspecies. At the NRT’s Sheep Pasture, we are lucky enough to have two different species of domestic sheep, the Cheviot Sheep and the Jacob Sheep! The Jacob Sheep
There are quite a few characteristics of Jacob Sheep that make them unique, including their four horns. Both of the NRT’s Jacob Sheep have four horns. One of which has them all growing in spirals together that make it look like it has two, massive horns. There is variability among the number of horns that Jacob Sheep can have, but they are always an even number between two and six. You may think that because our two Jacob Sheep are horned that they must be males, but Jacob Sheep is a species in which both the males and females will be horned! It just so happens that both of our sheep are, in fact, male…
Another important trait of the Jacob Sheep is their black spots, which is also how they got their name! According to the Livestock Conservancy, Jacob Sheep are named for Jacob from the Bible who was known for breeding spotted sheep!
We love our Jacob Sheep not only for their good looks and preservation importance, but also because of their friendly and curious demeanors! Both Four-Horn and Big-Horn (see if you can guess who is who in the photos of our Jacob Sheep) love to welcome visitors, especially before breakfast! We currently have two Jacob Sheep living with us at Sheep Pasture.
The Cheviot Sheep
We love watching our four independent Cheviots go about their business each day with confidence! There’s no feeling quite like being stared down across the pasture by a cud-chewing Cheviot. For more information on Cheviots, check out the American Cheviot Sheep Society!
Next time you're at the Sheep Pasture property, be sure to stop by and say "hi!" to our Jacob and Cheviot sheep! They love the attention!  Getting out in harsh weather conditions to do nature journaling can be difficult! Thankfully, there are lots of awesome ways to keep up with nature journaling right from the comfort of our homes. Below are a few ways to continue journaling even when the motivation to get outside is lost. Journal entries written from home create opportunities to spend time practicing skills that we sometimes don’t have time to focus on when journaling out in nature! The first activity you can do while journaling from inside is to find anything in your home that is connected to nature. Whether it be a pet, a plant, a fruit, a nut, or even an egg, and start making observations! If the thing you found to observe is something that will stay still, spend some time trying to get as much detail as possible! For instance, if you are observing something like an egg, are you able to capture the texture of the egg? Is it smooth or a little bit bumpy?
The final journaling suggestion is to do a deep dive into a plant, animal, or something in nature that interests you that isn’t found locally. One great way to practice our sketching and coloring skills is to copy from photographs. After picking something that interests you, do as much research as possible to record some of the details of the plant or animals life! You can start by scouring your home for any books that might be helpful, and then, of course, you can turn to the internet for help.
If you are researching an animal, try to determine where it is native to, what it eats, when it is most active, what type of animal it is, and anything else you feel may be relevant, or that you just want to include! If you are researching a plant, you can look up what type of plant it is, where it is native to, in what weather conditions does it thrive, if anything eats it, and anything else interesting! Nature journaling from home can be an extremely cozy activity and offers a great break from the normal snow day activities. Be creative in your journaling and definitely don’t feel stuck to follow these guidelines. As always, the best part about our nature journals is that what we put in them and how we make entries is completely up to us!  We are wrapping up virtual owl pellet dissections with Easton’s third graders and it has been so awesome to explore all of the incredible ways owls are able to thrive in their environments! Many of us hear owls calling at night, but seeing an owl is much more uncommon. This is in part to do with all of the adaptations that allow them to know what is going on around them while being essentially undetectable by others. When looking at the physical structure of owls, everything about them is to help them to be successful predators.
The assumption that many of us make is that because owls have big eyes, they must have great vision. This is absolutely correct and not only do their big eyes equal great vision, but more specifically they allow for great night vision! Having larger eyes with larger pupils lets more light enter the eyeball. This means that in the middle of the night when things looks dark to most animals (humans too), owls can still see a lot of detail! In addition to being able to let in more light, owls' eyeballs have many more rod cells than most animals.
We often assume that all owls are nocturnal, meaning that they are most active at night, but some owls are what we call diurnal, meaning that they are active during the day. The local Barred Owl is a species that can often be seen during the day on overcast days as well as when they are raising their young and teaching them how to hunt. Additionally, some owls are what we call crepuscular, which means they are most active at dusk and dawn! Because of the size of owls' eyes, they have a special adaptation inside their skulls to keep their eyeballs from deflating! This modification is a bone called the sclerotic ring, which is actually inside the eyeball and offers much needed support to keep the eyes functioning at their best. Many birds and reptiles have sclerotic rings, making it one of the many shared traits that birds, reptiles and a number of dinosaurs have in common! Unlike other birds and reptiles, the owl's sclerotic rings are much larger and much sturdier. They are so sturdy, in fact, that owls are unable to move their eyes within their sockets to look from right to left and up and down.  Sclerotic rings in owl skull
Owl vision is only one aspect of what makes them such successful predators. They are also able to fly in complete silence due to modified, frayed wing tips, they have asymmetrical ears for pinpointing their prey, and hooked beaks for eating what they catch with their large talons! Not to mention the ability to produce a pellet in their first (of two) stomachs, the proventriculus, which is where the owl's body filters out all of the undigestible hard-parts like bones, fur and feathers of the animals they are eating. Once these hard-parts are filtered out, the nutrient-rich meat continues on to be digested in the owl's second stomach, the muscular stomach. All of the fur, feathers and bones are then compacted into a pellet in the proventriculus and regurgitated, or spit up, back out the mouth of the owl. Incredible!  Sometimes the most difficult part of keeping a nature journal is feeling like you have the right supplies. One way to combat running around trying to find pens and pencils is to create a “nature journal survival kit.” This is something I keep in my back pack that I take hiking with me, just like I do a first aid kit, to ensure all the supplies I need is with me when I am compelled to record something in my nature journal. Creating your own “nature journal survival kit” can be a fun way to enhance the nature journaling experience. It allows you to think about what kind of recording tools you’d like to have with you while making observations and which tools can be used later to add detail/go over your work with. While creating your kit, be sure to think about what your preferred style is when making observations and recordings. You’ll also want to think about, realistically, how much you’d like to be carrying with you and what kinds of tools you’ll actually use! I’m someone who likes to make quick field observations, snap some photos with my camera and then add additional details later! The first step in creating a survival kit is picking a bag or container that you are going to carry your journaling supplies in! To do this, I would poke around your home and gather up any extra containers, bags, etc. that might do the trick! Once you have a couple of options, as you add more or less to your kit, you can eliminate the containers/bags that will not work. These are the solutions I found that might work while creating my nature journal survival kit:
Once you’ve got the essentials, there are some additional materials that can be helpful to keep in your journal. The first is some kind of ruler, or tool for measuring. I like to keep a teeny, tiny tape-measure, but you can keep string that you know is a certain length, or anything that will help you to give some kind of scale to your pictures, or help you record dimensions! You can even create your own compact ruler using a piece of paper, ruler, and marker/pen. All you need to do is mark your units of measurement on it!   Another great thing to keep in your journal is any kind of supplies you like to use to color your journal with (if you like you to add color to your journal). When I’m in the field, I really only make pencil sketches, but occasionally I like to add water color to my work real-time so that I can get as much detail as possible and capture the color as best as I can. Often times, though, I will take a photo of what I am observing and add detail later, or even put the photo in my nature journal. That being said, I do keep a set of water color pencils in my “survival kit” so that I can use them if I feel like it. I’ve also found that since putting them in with my journaling supplies, I’m more compelled to spend time detailing color in the moment! You can add any kind of coloring tools you’d like to your kit be it markers, crayons, colored pencils or water colors! You can even add a little bit of everything. If you are including water color pencils or water colors, be sure to include a brush! Thankfully most of us bring water on our outer adventures, so you don’t need to worry about keeping water in your nature journal kit! Those are just some suggestions for how to create and awesome journaling kit to bring with you on your adventures, but as with everything in our nature journals, you can really do whatever works for you! I also like to keep a small notepad in my NJK (nature journal kit) in case I forget my actual nature journal. I take my nature journal with me many places, so sometimes it ends up leaving my hiking backpack, but as long as I have a small writing pad and my NJK in my bag, I should be able to journal whenever I am out exploring, no matter what!  In addition to all of this supplies, I’ve been trying to remind myself to add baggies and or something to collect any interesting leaf litter, or seeds that I don’t have time to draw/observe immediately, but want to take home for closer inspection! This is also what cameras can be really great for! Happy journaling!
 Have you been looking for ways to be more environmentally friendly? The new year is a great time to reassess and reevaluate areas of our lives that often get overlooked. Attached to this blog is a “Green Home Quiz” that you can do to roughly, emphasis on roughly, estimate how environmentally friendly your home is! There is also an attached “Hazardous Home Waste Bingo!” to explore just how many hazardous waste items might be lurking in your home! Don’t despair if you find items that surprise you, many towns have hazardous waste disposal plans set up because of how unavoidable some of these products are. Here is a link to the Mass.gov website with helpful tools on how to properly dispose of waste in your home if you are living in Massachusetts. It’s so easy to get stuck in the routines of our daily lives without taking stock of the impact our routines may have on the larger scale, such as how our day-to-day decisions add up over time. One area of our lives where we tend to get stuck in habits is how we clean our homes! It is so satisfying to find the perfect cleaner and watch dirt and dust disappear, but do you really know what your cleaner is made of? What makes it so effective? If you’re looking for alternative cleaning solutions, check out these cool home-made products from David Suzuki and Kathy Vanderlinden in their ECO-FUN book! For these projects, you will need: Empty spray bottles (reused are the best), small jar, measuring cup, measuring spoons, paper, coloring supplies, white craft glue
Glass Cleaner!Fill a spray bottle half way with white vinegar and half way with water. This will make a 1:1 water:vinegar solution! Perfect, you're done! Once you're done filling the spray bottle, make a label so that friends and family know what is in the bottle. You can even list the ingredients! When using this solution, be sure to wipe down surfaces with newspaper not paper towels or cloths. Using newspaper will ensure that your glass and mirrors dry streak free! Furniture Polish!For some eco-friendly furniture polish, you will need: 1 tablespoon of olive oil, 2 teaspoons of white vinegar OR lemon juice, and 2 cups of warm water. Mix all ingredients in an empty spray bottle. Before each use, heat the mixture and shake well! Once the solution is heated and mixed up, it is the perfect polish for any varnished wood. After applying the polish to your furniture or floors or whatever, rub the surface completely dry with a soft cloth for best results. Silver PolishHave silver in your home that has seen better days but don't want to bring harsh chemicals into your home? Don't despair! For this polish all you need is: 2 tablespoons or baking soda, 2 tablespoons of salt and 1 piece of aluminum foil. Mix all ingredients in a small jar and add 2 teaspoons to 1 quart of water to soak your silver in! The amount of water you use will vary with the amount of silver you are polishing. Keep an eye on the piece of aluminum foil because once it turns black, it means it is time to replace the foil. You should be able to see your silver changing from tarnished to polished the longer it soaks! Not sure you're ready to completely kick the old cleaning habits? No problem! Change happens one step at a time. Try making some alternative cleaning solutions and using them in between your bigger cleans as a way to slowly introduce the idea of using different methods of cleaning. You can also conduct an experiment between your old cleaners and your new and improved eco-cleaners! See what happens if you clean something half with store bought products and half with home-made products! Chances are, the results will be pretty similar. As mentioned before, below are two fun activities you can print out to see how green your home is and where you might have some hazardous waste lurking! These activities are meant to be fun and inspire alternative ways of thinking about how we use and reuse products in our homes!
 One fun one way to document the type of greenery that’s present in an area during a specific time of year is to create a collage of leaves, sticks and any small pieces of nature you can find that you’d like to save! To create a collage, you’ll need some kind of glue or tape to hold your pieces together and, of course, whatever material you find that you would like to collage with! Just as with anything in our nature journals, there are all sorts of ways to go about creating your collage and all of them will work. Before you create your collage, make a list of what materials you were able to find, where you found them and the date. You can add any other notes and observations about where your objects were found, if they were surprising to you, or if you have any questions about the objects. Can you identify everything that you found? Do your materials remind you of other things?
Additionally, you can play with the idea of creating a mixed media collage! A mixed media collage is when you use different types of mediums/materials to create an image. Adding watercolors, colored pencils, pens or anything else to your collage will add all sorts of depth and texture! You can also add notes about your collected items onto the collage if you wish! Can't get outside? Turn to magazines and newspapers! Look for images of plants or animals and use them to create a nature inspired collage. Nature journals are a great deal of fun because of how versatile they are. You can swap between making very meticulous, detailed observations and creating more abstract journal entries. No matter what kinds of entries you choose to create, make sure you’re always having fun with them! If you would like to share any of your journal entries with the NRT, please email them to education.nrt@gmail.com we would love to see your work!
 We often use the term invasive to describe any critter or plant that is causing a disturbance, but there are quite a few specific characteristics of a species that deem it truly invasive. For example, all people can vouch for the fact that mosquitos are frustrating and can cause harm to humans, but many species of mosquitos are native to the area, which makes them not invasive! For a species to be labeled as invasive, it must have some or most of the following characteristics: Non-native to the Area it is Invasive to This means that in order for a species to even be considered as invasive, it needs to be occupying a habitat or area that it is not native to. Many invasive species get to their new locales via human introduction and in most cases it’s a complete accident. Because of human beings’ ability to travel with ease from region to region around the world, the massive trade industry between countries, the manufacturing of goods worldwide and even the international pet trade, animals are constantly being introduced to areas where they are not native to. Some animals will be unable to transition to new habitats, some will survive but not cause much disturbance and others will completely take over. Harmful to the Economy, Environment or Human Health
An example of an invasive species that has caused economical damage to an area is the invasive Asian Carp within the Mississippi river. Four species of carp have taken over the river after being introduce from Asia. They are the Grass Carp, Black Carp, Bighead Carp and Silver Carp. Within the Mississippi river system, aside from costing money to manage, they have negatively impacted the biodiversity of the area, which has also negatively impacted the fishing industries. For 15 years, scientists, fishermen and community members have been trying to manage these aquatic pests spending a grand total of 1.5 billion dollars in an effort to keep them out of the Great Lakes, where their impact on the fishing industry could be irreversible. As of now, they are mostly managed by electric “herding”, which is when boats use sound waves and electric currents to drive the fish into 1,000 foot long nets. Female carp are able to lay up to 5 million eggs at a time, making it near impossible to manage the populations without continuously spending on resources and manpower. One idea for the future that may allow for some kind of long-term management, at least to keep the fish out the Great Lakes, is to create an underwater dam that blocks fish using the same electric currents and sound waves used to control them now by boats!  Photo from leafchronicle.com, submitted by U.S. Fish and Wildlife. Click on image to go to Leaf Chronicle article on the invasive Asian Carp. Ability to Reproduce Rapidly/Grow Quickly One of the characteristics that makes invasive species so difficult to manage, as mentioned with the invasive carp species of the Mississippi River, is their ability to reproduce rapidly and grow quickly. What this means is that many invasive species have a very short time between when they are born and when they are mature enough to reproduce themselves. Not only do they reach maturity quickly, but they also tend to have a large number of offspring. Individuals reaching maturity quickly and the ability to produce huge numbers of offspring results in the perfect storm for extreme population growth.
Wide Range of Adaptations
How can you help? Many invasive species get from place to place by hitch-hiking with humans. This can be from latching onto trade-ships, or even attaching to a camper on a weekend in nature. Some ways that you can help to prevent the spread of invasive species are by planting native plants in your yard or garden, cleaning off boots and clothes after a hike in an area with known invasives, rinsing off your boat after each use to get rid of aquatic hitchhikers, finding the appropriate way to manage household pets, reporting sightings of invasive species, volunteering with a removal project, and by researching invasive species near you! |
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