Monarch Watch recently put out this great video of Chip Taylor, who is the Director of Monarch Watch and will be featured in my upcoming book on citizen science, capturing a honey bee swarm. Check it out:
And, while we are on the topic, now would be a good time to order tags for the 2011 monarch butterfly tagging season. You can learn more about tagging itself at the Monarch Watch Migration & Tagging page, and you can order tagging supplies at the Monarch Watch Shop.
They’ve bloomed! They’ve bloomed! Our Lemon Queen Sunflowers have finally bloomed! And that means the kids and I can begin tracking bees for The Great Sunflower Project. Here’s a peek at our very first recorded visitor, a carpenter bee:
© Loree Griffin Burns
Isn’t she a beauty? Sorta makes me want to grill up some burgers and set off some fireworks!
Ladybug season has officially begun! My daughter and I celebrated yesterday with our first 2010 ladybug survey…
Sweeping the meadow
Exploring the haul
Cycloneda munda (polished ladybug)
Harmonia axyridris (Asian multi-colored ladybug)
Recording our discoveries
Intrigued? Find out more at the Lost Ladybug Project website.
All photos © Loree Griffin Burns
© Loree Griffin Burns
Remember this post? When I told you all about The Great Sunflower Project and how easy it was to help bees by participating in this important citizen science initiative? Well, it’s time for step three … planting your seeds.
What’s that? You don’t remember the steps? Okay, then, here is a quick review:
1. Register yourself at The Great Sunflower Project website. (You can do this today!)
2. Order some Lemon Queen sunflower seeds. (You can do this today, too! If you don’t want to wait for seeds to arrive by mail, check your local garden center; many carry the Lemon Queen variety.)
3. When the time is right where you live, plant your seeds.
4. When your sunflowers bloom, watch them for fifteen minutes each week, recording how many bees that visit while you do.
5. Send your data to Dr. LeBuhn and her team at The Great Sunflower Project.
I started my seeds a few weeks ago, in a fit of impatience, but you can start them any time now directly in the garden. Today I transplanted our seedlings into the back of my herb garden, right near my office window. With luck, I’ll soon be watching bees from this very desk, reporting to The Great Sunflower Project scientists (and to you) what sorts of bees are stopping by for Lemon Queen nectar and pollen.
Happy planting!
© Loree Griffin Burns
“It is vital that we understand how and where bees are declining in order to start to help them. Having healthy pollinators is important for both natural systems and our food supply.”
Dr. Gretchen LeBuhn, a professor at San Francisco State University, is the wise woman behind these words. She is also the creative mastermind behind The Great Sunflower Project, a simple and powerful initiative to get men, women and children outside helping our bees.
How exactly do you help bees?
It’s easy, really:
1. Register yourself The Great Sunflower Project website.
2. Order some Lemon Queen sunflower seeds.
3. When the time is right where you live, plant your seeds.
4. When your sunflowers bloom, watch them for fifteen minutes each week, recording how many bees that visit while you do.
5. Send your data to Dr. LeBuhn and her team.
In just two years, the Great Sunflower Project has recruited over 50 thousand participants, and the data they’ve collected is helping Dr. LeBuhn document bee pollination in the United States and develop strategies to protect and restore native bees where they are threatened.
Do I even need to tell you that I’m in?
And why not? I like to eat, and bees are a pretty crucial part of food production. I’ve also written a book about honey bees; helping bees feels like a fine way to celebrate its upcoming release. As luck would have it, I’m in the process of writing a book about citizen science, too; GSP will be great field research (er, backyard research?) for me. Above all, what’s not to love about fifteen minutes of forced downtime –in my own yard—every week?!
So, what do you say? Wanna join me? (You can say no, of course. But I’ll undoubtedly be blogging about our Great Sunflower Project experience in the coming months. Your sort of in-by-association whether you like it or not!)
© Ellen Harasimowicz
It’s that time of year again, folks: time to count birds in the name of science. I’ll be participating in MassAudubon’s Focus on Feeders event, along with a gaggle of fourth graders from our local elementary school. Got feeders in your backyard? Looking for an excuse to get ouside? Well then, by all means, join us …
If you live in Massachusetts, you can participate in MassAudubon’s Focus on Feeders event on February 6 and/or 7.
For those outside of Massachusetts, Audubon’s Great Backyard Bird Count will take place the weekend of February 12-15, 2010.
Both events are free and can, if necessary, be squeezed into an already busy weekend. Kids who participate learn to identify common backyard birds and get to practice field skills like observing wildlife and recording data. More importantly, at least to me, young birders are forced to slow down, breathe cool winter air, look closely at the trees and bushes growing in their backyards and wonder, perhaps for the first time, who might be living in them.
All the information you need to get started is available at the websites linked above. If you’ll be birding with kids, I highly recommend a general bird guide (one of my favorites is WHAT’S THAT BIRD?, by Joseph Choiniere and Claire Mowbray Golding) and a regional field guide specific to where you live (we use THE YOUNG BIRDER’S GUIDE TO BIRDS OF EASTERN NORTH AMERICA, by Bill Thompson III). And if you are really feeling crazy (like me!), you can gather materials for a simple and natural bird feeder that your young birders can make on the day of the event. Details on that little project in a separate post. Until then, Happy Birding!
OH! And don’t forget I’m raffling a copy of the picture book LIVING SUNLIGHT. Not many entrants yet, so you’re odds of winning are still pretty darn good.
Yesterday, in need of a little pull-the-chapter-together inspiration, I re-read Fred Urquhart’s 1976 National Geographic article, Found at Last: the Monarch’s Winter Home. It’s an important piece of the history of Monarch butterfly research, and I’ve read it several times. It’s funny, though, how old research shines anew when you mix in a few new experiences…
For example, having recently done a lot of reading about Monarchs (and even written a manuscript about the Monarch life cycle), I was struck by the well-circulated Monarch factoids that date back to this article. Like this bit on the growth of a Monarch caterpillar, which has appeared in so many articles and books since:
“Within two weeks the larva will have multiplied its original weight by 2700. A six pound baby that grew at the same rate would weigh eight tons!”
I’ve also seen the Monarch’s winter home since I last read this article. And so I was struck more deeply with Urquhart’s description of butterflies that “filled the air with their sun-shot wings, shimmering against the blue mountain sky and drifting across our vision in blizzard flakes of orange and black.”
Oh, yes. I remember that.
When I was done with the article, I chipped away at my chapter. But then I shut down the computer, grabbed my boys, my butterfly net, and my MonarchWatch tags … and set out for the nearest meadow. In honor of Fred Urquhart and Monarch biologists everywhere, and in celebration of the chapter that shall soon be complete (maybe by the end of the morning?), we captured, tagged, and successfully released one fresh male Monarch:
© Benjamin Griffin Burns
© Loree Griffin Burns
I’m leaving in a few hours on the final leg of a year-long, four-leg citizen science research journey …. and I AM VERY EXCITED!
I’ll be shadowing Dr. John Losey, ladybug scientist at Cornell University, as he hunts for lost ladybug species.
Curious, are you?
Well, then, go listen to Dr. Losey explain his super-cool citizen science project . After that, you’ll probably want to get outside and find some ladybugs yourself. Have fun … and be sure to bring your camera!
Then again, it is Monday. If all this sounds too taxing, then just have yourself a short game of Ladybug Pacman and rest up until I get back. I will have tons and tons and tons to tell you then …
Spring is springing here in Massachusetts, and for me, at least this year, spring means frogs …
© Loree Griffin Burns
Yep. I’ve got more citizen science to explore, and this time it’s an amphibian monitoring project known as FrogWatch. After tagging butterflies and counting birds, monitoring frogs and toads will be a unique challenge … this work is done in the dark and by ear. We don’t look for the frogs, we listen for them, and the best time to hear them is after dark near a suitable water source when the males begin calling for females. Of course, in order to know who is calling you’ve got to learn the calls of all the frogs and toads in your area. (Are you intrigued yet?)
Surprisingly, learning frog calls is pretty straightforward. The official FrogWatch website has everything you need to get started, including photographs and sound clips for every frog and toad in your part of the country. Here in Massachusetts, we have ten species. Learning their calls is tricky, but not impossible. Anyway, check out this page to find a list of all the frogs and toads that live near you. Go on, give it a try.
As if all this weren’t exciting enough, one of my amphibian mentors is also a vernal pool certifier. She’s agreed to let me tag along as she certifies vernal pools in the coming months … and she’s got an extra set of waders.
I LOVE SPRING!
© 6th Happiness (via Wikimedia Commons)
Last summer I spent a glorious week in Boyds Mills, PA. Among the memories I brought back from that week was this curiousity: firefly activity there was much higher than in my own backyard. Are there more fireflies in Pennsylvania? Are they more active? Did I simply sit and watch for fireflies more there than I normally do at home? Are fireflies in my own backyard on the decline? Happily, I now have an opportunity to examine these questions more carefully …
FireflyWatch is a citizen science project hosted by Boston’s Museum of Science. Its goal is to help scientists “learn about the geographic distribution of fireflies and their activity during the summer season,” and anyone can participate. You’ll find more information at the FireflyWatch website.
As some of you know, I am working on a book about citizen science. The number of organized and easy-to-use citizen science projects I have found over the past year has been staggering; I plan to continue introducing them here, because I will never, ever fit all of them in my book. Please help me spread the word by sending teachers and others who might be interested in these activities here. A click on the citizen science tag will bring up a handy page with all the relative entries.
Happy exploring!
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