The Magnifying Glass

The Dino-Bird Debate

Today is the last day of The Great Backyard Bird Count. We hope you have had the chance to get out and spend some time with your local feathered friends. Don't forget to report your numbers on the giveaway post for a chance to win the wonderful poster by Charley Harper.

We have had some fun encounters here is our own backyard with blue jays, chickadees and woodpeckers, along with a few other frequently spotted locals. The most exciting moment was a brief visit from a small hawk. I don't think the regular avian crowd would call in exciting. It was much more terrifying for them.

It was business as usual at the feeder and in the forest, chickadees chasing the juncos, gold finches darting about, the woodpeckers hopping around the trees trucks pecking away, the jays chattering high in the trees, when all of a sudden everything went quiet and everyone disappeared or froze. In the very next moment the doves, who I had not even spotted in the apple tree, went fluttering away and in flew a sharp shinned hawk. Silently it flew through the yard and landed just beyond the tree with the feeder. A poor little chickadee was frozen on the feeder perch. Sitting long enough for me to take note of it's features the hawk took flight and departed just as quietly as it had arrived. The wee chickadee on the feeder must have remained there for another ten minutes after the hawk vacated the yard. It took much longer for everyone to come out of hiding and for life at the feeder to resume. 

I imagine that the fear that hawk instilled in the feeder crowd is the same fear any other meat eater instills in potential prey. 

This encounter made me think about birds of prey. Which led me to thinking about our recent visit with a great predator of the past (to read more about the T-rex predator or scavenger debate click here.)

And of course this train of thought led me to the relationship between dinosaurs and birds. So there you have it... that is how my mind works!

It is amazing that the debate about the relationship between dinosaurs and birds has been going on since Thomas Huxley first suggested that birds evolved directly from dinosaurs in 1869. In 1861 a fossil called Archaeopteryx was found in Germany. The fossil had clearly visible feathers and wings but also had teeth and a tail that looked like a reptile. This fossil find and his own fossil and bird bone observations led Huxley to the conclude that there was a relationship between dinosaurs and birds.

Of course Huxley's suggestion led to a divide in the scientific community. The theory came in and out of favor over the years. If you are really interested in learning more about the history and theories Dr. Paul Willis wrote an informative article about about the debate. 

Most of the speculation has been based on comparing bone structure. The similarities are many (some count up to 85 according to Willis' article) but include hollow bones, similar anklebones and fused collarbones (called the furcula or wishbone.) In 2008 scientist who were studying a protein they said was recovered from T-rex bones claim that their "finding is the first molecular evidence that birds, not lizards or other reptiles, are the closest living relatives of dinosaurs..." Of course there are still skeptics out there.  

While the scientists are sorting it all out you decide. 

Is this guy related to T-Rex?

We would love to hear what you think!

~Dawn

On the Shelf: King of the Birds.

 

 

Since we are all about the birds here at TMG this week, I thought that I should share a book that has equal bird love to give. And, it just so happens that a book I recently brought home from the library at school, King of the Birds  by Helen Ward, fits the bill (no pun intended!) just perfectly.    

A clever and colorful retelling of a traditional tale, King of the Birds chronicles the events that take place when the birds of the world decide that they should declare a king of their kind.  The obvious questions that this task raises (Should it be the bird with the biggest beak? The most colorful feathers?) creates the perfect opportunity to examine some of the more wonderful features of birds, both unusual and ordinary.  In the end, it is intelligence that wins out over beauty, strength and speed, and a humble wren is proclaimed the bird of all birds.

As much as it is always nice to see the underdog rise to the top, the true pleasure in this book is in the beautiful illustrations of the varied birds and their features.  The end of the tale features coded maps of the book's pages, allowing the reader to look back through the book to find the names of birds represented there, as well as bits of information about the birds and some of their more noteworthy attributes. 

This book seems to be perhaps a bit tricky to find a copy of; bookstores and online may not actually be your best bet.  Indeed, I would reccommend a trip to your local library in search of this one, especially considering that it would be such a great companion to bird count preparation this week.  You could  talk with your kiddos about which birds you might expect to count in your yard, or which ones might appear in yards in other parts of the world.  Either way- enjoy!

Make-Along Microbe Biosphere, Week 2

If you’d like to join us and make your own microbe biosphere(s) at home, please read this post to collect your ingredients and then read this post to put them all together. Find Week 1 here. This is a long-term project so feel free to join in.

Our Jar, Week 2

Week 2 went by without much of a visible change in our jar.  The microbe colonies are (hopefully!) getting larger, but not yet so large that we can see a difference with our eyes.  That shouldn’t come as a surprise; as explained before, it generally takes at least 3 to 4 weeks to startto see microbe colonies in a Winogradsky column. 

 

Ingredient of the Week, and Why We Are Making Microbe Biospheres

Each week, we’re focusing on a different ‘ingredient’ in our jar and discussing why it’s so important.   Last week, we talked about water; this week, we’re focusing on carbon. Can you guess where the carbon in our jars comes from? If you guessed the newspaper, you are right (plus, there’s also some carbon in the dirt).

As we discuss carbon, we return again to why we are making microbe biospheres.  Although we can’t see microbes with our eyes, microbes are very much a part of our daily lives, whether we're aware of them, or not.

Carbon and Microbes

Carbon is essential to life as we know it. If you could be dried out (all your water taken away) and the rest of you was weighed, half of your body would be carbon.

We eat carbon every day, although we call it “carbohydrate” which means carbon mixed with water.  Carbohydrates are “sugars”—not just white sugar, there are lots of different kinds—and we eat them in all sorts of foods, like bread and milk.  From these carbohydrates, our body makes energy, energy that we use right away, and energy that gets stored in our bodies for later use.

Microbes use carbon for energy, too.  They love the same carbon-based sugars in foods that our bodies do.  But some microbes do what we cannot—they “eat” carbohydrates that are too tough for our bodies to use. Cellulose (plant fiber) is such a carbohydrate.

How does carbon get into plants in the first place? Plants take a gas that is floating around in the air—carbon dioxide (a combination of carbon and oxygen) and together with water and sunlight, turn it into carbohydrates, including cellulose.  Cellulose is the very building block of plants—it’s what makes plants strong, and stand upright, rather than flop over—their skeleton, so to speak.

We do eat plants (vegetables) and we do get vitamins and minerals from them. However, most of the cellulose from the plants (where the vitamins were stored) passes through our bodies, because the fibers are so tough. Cellulose helps smooth digestion of other foods, but our bodies can’t break it down.

Carrots at our farmers' market.

You might think that cows can digest cellulose; after all, they eat lots of grass. But guess what—they can’t—not all by themselves!  Can you guess how cows break down all that cellulose?  If you said microbes, you are right—microbes living in their rumen help them turn the carbon in grass into energy—for the cows and the microbes.

  
 People can't digest grass, and cows can't do it all alone.

We humans also take advantage of microbes’ love of carbon in plants when we make linen, a very sturdy (and beautiful) kind of cloth.  Linen fibers are spun from flax plants which have been cut and placed in water.  There (in a process called “retting”), microbes help soften the stiff flax fibers until they can be broken and eventually made into thread that is then woven into cloth.

 

Bringing us full circle back to our jar, trees are plants, and just like all plants, trees are made of cellulose.  As you might have guessed, microbes can be used to make various forms of paper by breaking down wood fibers into pulp. These days, chemicals are more often used because they’re faster. However, some people are investigating how to use microbes in paper-making again, because it’s more friendly to the environment. Microbes generally are still used to make homemade paper.

Not surprisingly, microbes are made mostly of carbon, just like we are.  Scientists believe that oil and coal could be partly made of microbes, including phytoplankton (ocean microbes that we can see as green ‘slime’).  These ancient microbes died long ago, perhaps as a sea dried up, and as they became buried under layers of earth (together with other matter), high heat and pressure is thought to have converted them into coal and oil.  When we burn coal and oil, we are burning the carbon—and releasing energy—stored in the past by microbes. 

All that from bits of newspaper and mud in a jar.

~ Nancy

A Quick Note...

Hi All!

Just a quick note to let you know that the second part of Nancy's series on the microbe biosphere project is a bit delayed due to weather.  Nancy is currently without power in her area of the country, and isn't able to publish her post as a result.  We'll have it up for you as soon as possible and in the meantime, let's all think happy, warm thoughts for Nancy and her family!

--- Annie

Annie--thanks for having my back!  We had a big snowstorm that knocked out our power for about 20 hours. Luckily we have it back and we're all safe & warm.  For those wondering about Part 2 of our series, the make-along microbe biosphere, please check in here and thanks for your patience!

--- Nancy

 

Make-along project: microbe biosphere

Last October, we attended a huge science expo near home. At one tent, we saw something pretty cool: a microbe biosphere (self-contained ecosystem) in a jar. Most remarkably, the biosphere (known technically as a Winogradsky column) was 12 years old!

The scientist there said we could make our own, using items we had at home: a lidded jar, dirt, water, newspaper, cooked egg yolks (or plaster of paris) and chalk (or egg shells).

Inside the jar were colorful layers of green, orange, black, purple, magenta, and white: all different kinds of microbes. Microbes are living creatures so small you can't see them without a microscope, but if enough of them grow together, you can see their 'community.'

No one knows exactly how many types of microbes exist; some think there might be 1 billion species. Microbes live everywhere--from extreme heat to extreme cold--in water, dirt, on rocks, inside plant roots, and even inside of us. In fact, each of us is home to millions of microbes.

Microbes can make us sick (and then we call them germs) but more often, they help us out. Microbes break down dead plants and turn them into compost. Microbes in our intestines break down food and even make certain vitamins.  We also use microbes to make yummy foods--yogurt, of course, but also bread (with the microbe, yeast), cheese, vinegar and pickles, soy sauce, miso, kimchi, kefir and quark, sausage, kombucha, sauerkraut, and even tabasco sauce.

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

We thought it would be fun to do this as a "make-along" project with other TMG readers. This week, gather your materials; we won't put them together until next week. Then, each Thursday, check in to see our progress.  If you want to join us, feel free to leave a comment or post photos of your own project on the TMG flickr pool. I'll include some of those photos in the next post.

 

What You'll Need For A Homemade Microbe Biosphere

* a large clean glass jar, 1 quart (or 1 liter) sized or larger, with a tight-fitting lid
* a 2 gallon bucket
* a stirring utensil
* a funnel
* optional: tin foil and rubber bands (not needed for a couple of weeks)

For all of these items, choose vessels that later can be sanitized with boiling water or recycled. We're using a 5-quart Ball-type jar with a rubber gasket (be ready to throw the gasket away at the end).

You can also use a 2 liter soda bottle (1 liter is about 1 quart)--cut off the top (to use as a funnel for this project). You'll also need some plastic wrap and rubber bands for your "lid."

For stirring, you could use a long stainless steel spoon or a wooden paint stirrer to throw away.

You can make a funnel using the top of a 2 liter plastic soda bottle if you'd like.

Then, you'll need:

* 1/2 sheet (1 page) of shredded newspaper per 1 quart / liter jar

1 sheet of newspaper = 2 pages of a standard-sized newspaper, about 28" x 24"
Or, use 8 1/2" x 11" paper (outside the U.S., A4); 3 sheets = 1/2 sheet of newspaper

For our 5 quart jar, we need 2 1/2 sheets of shredded newspaper.

1 sheet = 2 pages of newspaper

* 1 1/2 tsp blackboard chalk OR egg shells per 1 quart / liter of jar

1/2 piece of chalk = 1 tsp ground chalk
1 egg shell = 1 tsp ground shell (or more)

Let your kids do the crushing! For our 5 quart jar, we need 7 1/2 tsp (about 3 1/2 pieces of chalk).

Last, around the day before you plan to put it all together, you'll need:

* enough soil or mud to fill your jar 2/3 full

Collect dirt from one source: your garden, or a stream, pond, or forest. Use a container other than your jar. Take out rocks, sticks, or leaves from the dirt. If the ground is frozen, use potting soil.

For a 1 quart / liter jar you'd use about 2 1/2 cups of dirt.
For our 5 quart jar, we need a little over 2 1/2 quarts of dirt.

* an amount of water equal (in cups) to the amount of soil you're using.

If you collected soil from a water source such as a pond or stream, use water from the same source (in a separate container). If you're using dirt from your garden, you can use tap water.

* hard-boiled egg yolk(s) OR plaster of paris

You'll need 1/2 tsp hard-cooked egg yolk or plaster of paris per 1 quart / liter jar.
Generally, there's 2 tsp or more of hard-cooked yolk in one egg.
Plaster of paris is cheap (sold at hobby shops), but see if someone can share theirs with you.
For our 5 quart jar, we used 2 hard-cooked egg yolks.

* a well-lit place to store your biosphere out of direct sunlight or lamplight

You'll need to keep the jar at room temperature and away from the direct sun. Indoor lights are okay, just don't shine lamps on the jar, and don't let the jar get too warm.

 

Note for the ambitious: You can turn this into an experiment by using more than one jar and then collecting your soil + water from several sources. Or, you can use several jars and one source for soil + water and then store the jars in varying amounts of sunlight (full to complete darkness) to see the different effects. Be sure and label your soil and water containers accordingly. I'll talk about this more next week.

 

Hope you can join us! Have fun collecting all your 'ingredients' and we'll see you next Thursday when we put them all together.

~ Nancy

On the Shelf: A Child's Introduction to the Night Sky.

For those of us in the Northern Hemisphere, it may seem a bit strange to think about spending evenings outdoors stargazing this time of year, that much I'll admit.  But I also think that the night sky is sometimes the most noticeable during the winter months.  Think about how very brilliant the stars can look on a clear, cold winter evening and you'll perhaps know what I'm getting at.  Or, you can check out  A Child's Introduction to the Night Sky in anticipation of the return of the summer months and the warm, stargazing nights they will bring.  That's fair too.

A Child's Introduction to the Night Sky is like a non-fiction narrative and illustrated field guide rolled into one.  It is perhaps best suited to older children as a book for reading, but the clear and colorful pictures will appeal to younger children who are interested in space, stars and sky as well.  With detailed information about each of the planets, many constellations and the night sky throughout the seasons, this book is particularly good as a jumping off point for research when your child asks questions about the night sky and you need a reference book to answer them.  I especially like that this book is written specifically for a younger audience.  When she was very small, my daughter used to love to look through our own field guide to the night sky.  The pictures were enjoyable, but reading her the text didn't do much in terms of helping her to understand what she was looking at.  A book such as this one is the perfect solution to the challenges that sometimes arise when small people want to understand very big ideas.  Like the universe.

So, this season, why not bundle up, pack a thermos of hot cocoa and head outdoors on a clear evening to see what you can see?  We may just give it a go, even if we only manage a to stay out for a few minutes in this increasingly cold Vermont winter weather! 

 

 

On the Shelf: Bugs for Lunch.

Every so often my mom calls to tell me about a great picture book she's run across and is planning to send along for Mariam.  They are inevitably wonderful reads with beautiful pictures, and they usually have the advantage of being something that I might not have necessarily thought to get for her myself.  Such is the case with Bugs for Lunch by Margery Facklam.  Full of bright, bold illustrations and text that reads like a poem about science, Bugs for Lunch manages to be both interesting and informational.  In other words, just our sort of book. 

Bugs for lunch begins with pictures and words about different animals and the insects that are a part of their diets.  As the book moves forward, the author also shares a bit about people around the world who include insects on their menus, and from the perspective of the six year old member of our household, this is where it gets good.  This is also where the book provides a great opportunity to start considering the ways that people around the world work with their natural environment to provide themselves and their families with the nourishment that they need, sometimes from surprising sources.  The book ends with an appendix that provides a paragraph description about each of the animals featured in the book, including human beings.  This addition makes for a great supplement to an already fun read and really helps to expand the educational potential of the book. 

We used to live in a rental house owned by a retired entomologist who had been a professor at the local university.  One of the many interesting things that he left behind in the house when he moved out was a small collection of cookbooks stocked with recipes for eating insects.  I think that might have been the inspiration when my mom sent this book along, but I didn't need to give it all that much thought before deciding that we would just enjoy this book without considering any culinary ambitions.  I'm assuming that most of you will do the same, but in the event that you are particularly adventerous eaters, do let us know! 

---Annie

Owl Pellets

We spend a lot of time looking out for birds. We also look for signs of birds like nests, feathers and even scat. One thing we have not spotted is a pellet, an owl pellet to be specific. We have yet to spot an owl or it’s roost so finding owl pellets has been difficult.

Many birds regurgitate pellets. From our research we have learned the formation of pellets is most common in birds that eat prey whole. These pellets consist of indigestible parts of insects and animals such as wing cases, exoskeletons, bones, fur and feathers. These parts are formed into a pellet in the gizzard and expelled through the mouth.

You might be asking why we would want to find a pellet. Sounds a little gross right?

There are a few very neat things you can learn about birds by studying their pellets. Ornithologists dissect pellets to learn about a bird’s health and diet without causing any harm to the bird. Since prey is swallowed whole the contents of the pellet can be identified and tell researchers what types and variety of prey the bird has been dining on, which can give an overall picture of health. This gives scientists important information about the bird as an individual and about the ecosystem it inhabits. Pretty neat stuff.

While we have not had luck finding pellets in the wild we did get lucky on a recent field trip. We had the opportunity to visit an animal rescue center here in Nova Scotia and it just so happens that they were in the care of a few owls. It was very exciting to see the little Saw-whet owl they brought out to share and just as much fun to check out the pellets. After the presentation we approached one of the volunteers to ask if they had any owl pellets they would be willing to give us for dissection. She was happy to pass on a few for our little science project.

When we got home we baked our pellets to kill any bacteria that might be present. Then we set up a lab area away from where we prepare our food and set off on our dissection. We knew that the owls at the center were only fed mice so we already had a good idea of what we would find but it was still very interesting to come across such complete bones and study all of the hair that was in each pellet. The jaw bones with teeth still in place were by far the most exciting find for the kids.

 

It was a great project for the kids to learn about birds eating habits, the relationship between predator and prey and also the idea that everything is used in nature. After our dissection we learned that pellets support a whole network of insects that survive on the hair, bone and feathers found in the pellets. So fascinating.

If you would like to learn more this is a very interesting video showing a dissection with multiple types of prey in one pellet. 

You can also order pellets for dissection from the following companies (We have not ordered from these companies but in our research we found that these ones came up often as offering safe sterilized pellets):

Carolina Biological Supply Company (they also have interesting information under their teacher resources tab)

Ward’s Natural Science

Nature Watch

We have plans to use the bones we found to reconstruct a mouse skeleton this winter. That should be a good project for a cold snowy day.

Have you ever seen an owl or dissected an owl pellet? We would love to hear your story.

~Dawn

On the Shelf: Salmon Stream.

My mother lives in North Western Washington State on the Puget Sound.  Although we are originally from Washington (I was born and partially raised in Spokane), this is the first time that my mom has lived on the coastal side of the state.  When she first moved there last year, she sent us a few "local" treasures to help my daughter understand a bit about where she was living.  Among them, Salmon Stream, a beautifully illustrated book about the life cycle of the salmon, a fish widely associated with the Pacific Northwest. 

My daughter has a great fondness for non-fiction books that give way more information that you might guess anyone would ever want.  This book provides that, but the real informational bit comes as a sort of appendix at the end of the book, after a lyrical text that gives a flowing and easy to read overview of the life cycle of the salmon.  A perfect combination for the mama that likes to read a well-written picture book and the daughter that likes to read the encyclopedia.  

An additional benefit of this book is that it makes such a nice addition to the fall book basket.  If memory serves, Pacific Salmon swim upstream in the fall, making this season a perfect time to learn about the life cycle of these fish and maybe even to plan a little field trip if you happen to live in the right area.  As much as I love all the books about the changing of the leaves and animals nesting in preparation for winter, it's fun to provide a little balance by reading about what happens as the season changes in the non-woodland parts of our world, no?

----Annie

On the Shelf: Song of the Water Boatman

Every so often, we discover a new book at the library or at the local science center that makes me think "This book is so perfect for us.  How did we not know it was out there?"  Song of the Water Boatman, by Joyce Sidman and illustrated by Beckie Prange, is one of these.  A recent discovery for our family, it is a truly wonderful little book.  Song of the Water Boatman is a collection of poems dedicated to the subject of the pond and all that lives there.  Well written and beautifully illustrated, this book is like many books inside of one.  It is both poetry book and field guide, science text and picture book. 

Each page of Song of the Water Boatman contains a single poem about a single inhabitant of the pond (with the exception of the pages about the food chain), decorated with a hand-painted woodcut print of the plant or animal.  The poems are perfect little bite-sized bits; they are easily understood by a young audience and convey not only the beauty, mystery or humor of each animal or plant, but also some scientific information as well.  Accompanying each poem and picture, there is a short paragraph detailing a scientific concept related to the two.  This is generally a bit of an in-depth portrait of the plant or animal being discussed, and this a perfect companion to the short poems which will have peaked the curiousity of young ones.  

A book that is visually pleasing (the woodcut prints are stunning) as well as scientifically informative, this volume is perfect for making connections to watershed or wildlife explorations your family might have planned.  It would be idea for using as a bridge to writing or drawing from any seasonal observations of local ponds that you might be hoping to make.  Or, it can just be a delightful, quiet read-aloud after a long day of enjoying these waning days of summer sunshine.