Missouri Master Naturalist Training – Week 7

/

The 7th week of Missouri Master Naturalist (MMN) training included one evening class and my first solo volunteer gig.

The class lectures were on

  • Forest Ecology and Management

  • Pondering the Pond as a Wildlife Habitat

Forest Ecology and Management was done by a Missouri Department of Conservation Educator; I would like to have the charts since he went through them very quickly! The last segment of the lecture was hands-on…passing out small branches from the tree to everyone and then using the dichotomous key in the back of the Fifty Common Trees of Missouri booklet to id it….a red maple. I photographed my branch’s buds, branches and leaf imperfections!

Pondering the Pond as a Wildlife Habitat was done by a person that has been a MMN for over a decade…and done a lot of videography at a pond in a hayfield (i.e. not used by cattle…with adequate vegetation around its edge). Her Youtube Channel – Nature in Motion is something I will be viewing over the next month! She showed over 100 species in 17 minutes of her talk…fast paced…prompted me to think later about the richness in the intersection of science and art.

The volunteer experience was an after-school event at a local school for gifted students…15-20 minutes sessions with two groups of about 12 students each…on two days. My theme was getting outdoors in the fall and looking at some things that could be found.

My table was set up with items to look at: pinecones (3 different kinds), acorns (3 different kinds), Osage orange fruit, black walnuts (in a bag complete with emerging caterpillars), goldenrod (in flower and seeds), magnolia pod, maple branches, and a holly branch.

It also included a hands-on experience with pressed leaves/small branches. Each student made observations about their leaf (color on both sides, holes, insect eggs, shape)…and then compared it to other leaves at their table. The leaves were mostly oak or maple although there were some that were unique (river birch, magnolia, oak leaf hydrangea, boxwood).

The time past very quickly!

Missouri Master Naturalist Training – Week 6

/

Week 6 of Missouri Master Naturalist (MMN) training was busy because I also did my first MMN volunteering too! I’m counting that ‘first’ as part of the training. The evening class was focused on:

  • plants and their pollinators. This was a great update --- particularly about native pollinators. I’d learned some things from my etymologist son-in-law (i.e. I had seen the video of buzz pollination and had observed nectar robbing behavior when touring a garden) but it was observational rather than an organized lecture. This lecture filled in the holes of what I had learned previously!

  • the educational trunk contents and the kinds of programs we do with them. There are bins (“trunks”) for bison, pelts, skulls, insects, birds, turtles, amphibians…and they are trying to develop a new one about urban pollinator landscaping. I got more ideas for the tree educational trunk I am creating…understanding more about how it will be used. I am not sure how often I will use some of the trunks, but it is good to know that they exist.

My volunteering at the MMN table at a fair of home schoolers was the highlight of my week. The 4-hour fair was held at a local nature center and organizations had tables of activities for the 300 families that had registered for the event. The MMN table was focused on Monarch Butterflies. We had life cycle puzzles for the students to work, 2 chrysalis in a mesh tent (one healthy, another parasitized), seeds for 3 kinds of milkweed, a coloring page, and a vocabulary word/definition matching page, lots of brochures, and a slideshow (I had put together the slideshow from some recent photographs I’d taken to play on my iPad…the charge lasted for 3.5 hours). By the end we had no seeds left and very few brochures. It was a well-attended event!

Missouri Master Naturalist Training – Week 5

/

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!

Missouri Master Naturalist Training – Week 4

/

There were 2 Missouri Master Naturalist (MMN) training evenings during week 4. The topics for the first one were migratory birds and wildlife management. Both lectures were informative, and I read 3 publications from the Missouri Department of Conservation afterward:

 Missouri Bird Conservation Plan Technical Section

Missouri Bird Conservation Plan Outreach Plan

Missouri Wildlife Management Plan

The topics for the second evening were Birds of Missouri (also Project Feederwatch), capstone projects and Botany. I took a bowl of show-and-tell materials that is the beginning of some collecting for my MMN capstone project (an educational trunk for trees). The red seeds of the magnolia that look a lot like red M&Ms and the size comparison between acorns (pin and white oak) and cones (hemlock and shortleaf) were the biggest hits…fun to share.

The follow-up from this class is to be ready to participate in Project Feederwatch at my house beginning in November; it will be something my husband and I will do together.

One of the handouts was a booklet Fifty Common Trees of Missouri (from the Missouri Department of Conservation) which I promptly looked at and checked the trees I’ve seen in the field in my Identifying Woody Plants class (30 of the 50 although the introductory lectures we have before going into the field have covered more of the 50).

I still need to browse the handouts from the two sessions.

There are also some things I can do to move along my capstone project…and I need to remember to keep track of the hours I am spending doing that.

Missouri Master Naturalist Training – Week 3

/

Week 3 of my Missouri Master Naturalist Training included my first Springfield Plateau Chapter monthly meeting. There is not an equivalent to it in Maryland, so it was a new experience. The first part of the evening was networking over a potluck light dinner. I met a Master Naturalist that teaches high school biology and got some tips on my capstone project that is part of the training.

Then there was a lecture on prairie reconstruction/restoration on private land that started in the mid-1980s. The target was established by a land survey done in 1835 that noted the types and sizes of trees at ½ mile intervals. Most of the area around Springfield tended toward savannah (prairie with some trees). Most of the trees noted in the survey were oaks and hickories. There are 385 plant species now growing on the reconstructed prairie…that has a Floristic Quality Assessment score of 4.2 which compares favorably with other restored/reconstructed prairies in the area. But maybe the greatest joy is from seeing red-headed woodpeckers returned to some of the snags!

There was a short break before the business meeting (more networking). I learned a lot about the chapter from the business meeting…the committee reports were enlightening and I talked with 3 of the committee leads after the meeting. I already have my first Missouri Master Naturalist volunteer gig scheduled…and have ideas on the committees most relevant to the type of volunteering I want to do. There are hours to support the chapter too that I need to think about since that type of volunteer hours is not something I did in Maryland.