Owl Pellets!

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The topic of the session at the two libraries in a nearby county was owls. Since it was the third event for our 3-person team of Missouri Master Naturalists, we were beginning to get better at it…although it was still hectic. This time we had a mounted owl and wing,

handouts,

a display on the wall showing the wingspan of various owls (click on the right image to see the list of owls by wing span), and

the equipment (tweezers, picks, plates, gloves, identification sheets, containers for bones) to dissect owl pellets).

And then the first group of children arrived at the library. There were 28 students and 12 parents. We had a short lecture that included listening to the sounds of the 8 owls of Missouri (4 year-round and 4 more in winter). One student had a Great Horned Owl near where they live. Then the fun began as we handed out equipment and foil wrapped pellets. The students thoroughly enjoyed teasing apart the pellets and finding bones – mostly rodents.

We packed up everything and left the room as we found it…and went to the second library…to set up a second time. It was disappointing that only 3 students came for that session. But we made the best of it and dissected pellets ourselves sitting across from the students.

These are the bones from my pellet!

We have one more session in our series for the library. They’ve been a learning experience for me as a volunteer. I am realizing that the volunteering I did in Maryland was skewed toward the actual event (rather than prep) because others had done the preparation and the audience from multiple schools rotated through experiencing the same program. It was easy to get very polished at presenting the program and the number of students reached was quite large. I’d like to find volunteer opportunities like that here in Missouri, but I am not sure they exist.

Missouri Master Naturalist Training – Week 5

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There were 2 training evenings and a Saturday field trip in week 5 of my Missouri Master Naturalist Training.

The first evening was about Lions (mountain lions), Tigers (tiger swallowtail butterflies), and bears (black bears) native to Missouri. The tigers and bears have established populations in the state whereas the lions are wandering males from other states (so far). The bears segment included a pelt, skull…and some videos of black bears enjoying a good back scratch (using a tree trunk) and a slides about how the research on the Missouri bear population is done/what has been learned. The largest concentration of black bears in Missouri is close to Springfield!

The second evening was about prairies, which was a good follow up to our field trip to La Petite Gemme a few weeks ago, and animal skulls. The animal skulls session was probably the one with the most new-to-me content; there as a collection of skulls that we were told to organize in a continuum from herbivore to omnivore to carnivore…what a great hands on experience. The most unusual skull was the one from the armadillo!

The field trip was to the Springfield Botanical Gardens. It was in two segments:

  • Focusing on the Roston Native Butterfly House and Caterpillar Buffet garden next to it…with the butterfly garden nearby where there were quite a few migrating Monarch butterflies (one of them that we watched being tagged).

  • Then a general walk around the garden with some commentary on the features of the garden, the challenge of vandalism, and lots of evidence of fall. I picked up a few leaves and a black walnut to add to my tree educational trunk. The sky was clear…so an excellent day for looking up at trees!

The day also included a presentation about the value of dark sky (also learning that St. Louis’ Stacy Park is an Urban Dark Sky Place) and dissection of a Barn Owl pellet. I found a complete mouse skull and backbone in my pellet (and pieces of an insect’s exoskeleton) along with a lot of smaller bones; I was one of the last students to leave because I was finding so many bones in my pellet!