Life in a Forest Seep
Week of August 13, 2023 – August 19, 2023 by Bridget Jones, Environmental Educator Have you ever come across a patch of mud in an otherwise dry forest? Perhaps you felt the ground start to squish beneath your feet while hiking, or noticed a color difference where leaves were suddenly saturated with water. While finding mud in the forest may seem unremarkable, it is worth a closer look: you may [...]
Summer Spiders
Week of August 6, 2023 – August 12, 2023 by Anna Stunkel, Environmental Educator On any summer day, you may come across a great variety of spiders. They crawl, pounce, spin silk, and sit in wait for their prey. Some have fuzzy bodies with a stout appearance, while others hang suspended from their webs on long, spindly legs. They often capture and consume insects that we consider to be pests. [...]
The Hunt for Crayzilla
Week of July 30, 2023 – August 5, 2023 by Tom Meier, Camp Director & Program Manager Legend tells of a giant crayfish lurking in the waters of Baltimore Woods. Accounts differ on just how large this freshwater crustacean is, where it came from, and what species it might actually be. If you ask our 6-year-old campers this week, Crayzilla is at least 3 feet long; the 12-year-olds would tell [...]
The Amazing Slime Mold
Week of July 23, 2023 – July 29, 2023 by Bridget Jones, Environmental Educator As I’ve been walking in the woods this summer, a particular kind of creature has been catching my eye. These creatures are small, grow from soil or decaying wood, and come in a fascinating array of shapes and colors: bumpy bright red globs, smooth pink beads, clusters of brown threads, bright yellow networks. While they appear [...]
Marvelous Moths
Week of July 16, 2023 – July 22, 2023 by Anna Stunkel, Environmental Educator One of my favorite nature happenings of summer can only be observed under cover of darkness, and is best seen very late in the middle of the night. On a warm and dark summer night, if you hang a white bedsheet vertically and illuminate it with a blacklight, a beautiful diversity of moths and other nocturnal [...]
Why Do Worms Come to the Surface When it Rains?
Week of July 9, 2023 – July 15, 2023 by Sunny Guyette, Environmental Educator We have been getting quite a bit of rain recently and a recurring question I’ve had is ‘why are there so many worms on the surface when or after it rains?’. Ever since I was young I would see about fifty worms crawling on the sidewalk after a rainy day, but I never really thought to [...]
Appreciating the Rain
Week of July 2, 2023 – July 8, 2023 by Elizabeth Suzedell, Environmental Educator Last week, we had lots of scattered showers and thunderstorms across the region- a true sign of summer. I love the weather, so seeing the towering cumulus clouds grow, hearing the booms of thunder, and watching the flashing lightning was pretty exciting for me. However, I have to admit that I was starting to get a [...]
The Transitions of Nature
Week of June 25, 2023 – July 1, 2023 by Sunny Guyette, Environmental Educator Over the past week we had our final sessions of our homeschool and preschool series, our final lessons in Nature in the City Classrooms, and our final on-site pond and stream field trips of the year. For the last Pond and Stream field trip, we take the students to the pond and the stream where they get to [...]
Connections to Distant Natural Spaces
Week of June 11, 2023 – June 17, 2023 by Bridget Jones, Environmental Educator This week, smoke from the Canadian wildfires covered our region, transforming the world outside our windows. The fires have caused devastation and evacuations in Quebec and impacted air quality as far as the midwest and southern United States. Although we are not experiencing the wildfires themselves here in Central New York, for many of us, the [...]