Tuesday, April 21st EARTH DAY

Hey
there students of the world! How did testing go? I hope you are reaching deeply into your noggin and doing your absolute best to perform to the best of your ability. That's what I hope.

Today is Earth Day my friends! Please do some nice things for Mother Earth today. A little garbage pick up perhaps? Hug a tree maybe? How about singing Natural Resources?

To answer a few questions for both my students (thanks Alyssa for your concern) and Mr. Hull's students in Paradise:
My foot is feeling much better...I'm sure I just strained it after about 20 miles of hiking!
Mr. Hull's student gave a great post; I put those comments on the previous day, check it out! In a nutshell, we have learned that the ticks here aren't dangerous, and even with all the ticks on us as a team the other day, none of us got bitten. However, take a look at a picture below and notice my pants and socks. Great ideas also about how if summers are longer, we'd see a change in how the food web works, and an increase perhaps in disease, insects, and other negative changes. That being said, we are seeing an interesting change here and Dr. Newman commented yesterday that some critters try to make an early start on Spring. They get active, come out and try to feed, but then they get caught by the bad weather that moves in. This tends to weed out the weaker ones maybe, but it's a great example of animals being affected by changes that take place in climate.
We picked up owl pellets today too. We've seen many garter snakes. We know there are voles and mice. We've been counting deer and hare droppings. There are many, many coyote droppings. Could you draw a food web diagram? Of course you could. What animals are in Bidwell Park, in our food web, that I didn't mention? See, there are some differences!!

Great speaking with you kids this afternoon. I'm hoping you all are enjoying the blog, the skyping, and the fact that I'm not yelling at you all the time! Hah hah!!

I do miss you all though, as Alyssa asked. It's very nice to have a home base, it simply just feels good. This is quite an adventure here, but I'm looking forward to normal home activities....well, as normal as you might expect from me!

Here's some pictures from today:






























If those videos don't work for you at school, or whatever, just go to youtube and search for ppembroke and you'll find all of my videos. I've never used youtube before so the ones I've made are strictly related to this Earthwatch experience.

Next: Comment on the pictures.

1. Ex: Why are my pants tucked in my socks?
2. Mr. Long Voelkner and I were making some hiking trails. We were cutting some new trails and we had to cut down some big trees. We're sitting on the tree we just cut. We've used the hand saw. Earthwatch wants us using hand tools, and that is perfectly understanable. What tool would we have rather had?
3. There's a tick on a finger. That tick came off my pants. It is a wood tick. Are they a dangerous tick to humans?
4. The group is gathering in the clearing to pull a vole out of a trap. You can't see that it is raining. We're all rather damp at this point. If it rains when we have field trips, we'll go anyway. List the things that you'll want to have so you can be comfortable. And by the way, I was comfortable because I had the right gear!
5. The English Quadrat Poles really did come from England. They are a two meters in length. That's two times the meter stick I use in class all the time in the front of the room. Why are they meters and not yards?

By By.