Spreading your seeds

Have you built your terrarium yet for the Seeds of Life activity?

Most plants start life as seeds.  Seeds are produced by plants for reproduction!  These seeds help produce the next generation of plants, but in order to do that they need to disperse to new areas. After all, if plants just dropped their seeds right below themselves, the parent plant would compete for resources (water, sun, and space).

Dispersion is the relocation of seeds to a new location in order for them to find the resources necessary for growing.  Depending on the species of plant, they might use different forms of dispersal.  Lets take a look at these forms and see if you can spot any of them while you are on the hunt for seeds!

Wind: Some plants use wind to disperse their seeds! These seeds are usually smaller and lighter, making it easy to be carried by the wind.  They often have special structures to help them travel in the air such as fluff (like on milkweed or dandelions) or wings (like maple keys).

Water: Plants that grow beside water will often use water as a means to disperse their seeds!  Some of these seeds will have fluff to increase their ability to float, but all of them will be waterproof.

Fire:  These seeds will often be found in cones. These cones are "sealed" with a "glue" produced by the parent tree.  This glue then needs to be melted in order for it to come out of dormancy and sprout! The way to melt the glue?  Fire of course!

Fire is a very unique method of dispersing plants because it destroys the living plant material, making room for these new seeds to grow.  Because of this, seeds that use fire do not need to disperse, instead they grow right where they were created!  Seeds that use fire will have other special features about them.  For one, they have the ability to remain dormant for long periods of time (so instead of sprouting right away, they might lay on the forest floor for months, even years!) while waiting for a fire event.


Ballistic: Ka-BOOM!  Some seeds use an explosion to disperse!  These seeds will reside in pods and once these pods dry out they will burst, throwing seeds in every direction!

Animals: One of the most common dispersal strategies you may have noticed around your home is through animals!  Have you ever noticed an animal:

1) carrying a bur on its fur? Some seeds have latches or hooks on them that will get caught in an animals fur.  This will then be carried to a new location where it will then drop to the ground after the animal removes it from its fur.

2) cash (or hide) away food for the winter?  Many species, like squirrels, will often cash away seeds during the fall and throughout the winter, when food sources are low, eat these stored seeds.  However, they don't always remember where they were hidden!  So any seed that isn't found again has the chance to become a new plant!

3) eating fruit or a berry?  Well what goes in, must come out!  When animals eat fruit and berries, they will also eat seeds of that fruit! Many of these seeds are eaten whole and then when an animal later defecates (poops) these seeds will be dropped in a new location!

What seeds have you started to see on your outdoor adventures?  We are very excited to hear about how your activities are going!

Three cheers for dispersing seeds and buzzing bees! 

Spidey Senses

Do you ever see spiders and think "ew"?

 I used to too, but that was before I realized how cool spiders are!

Since many spiders don't have the best eyesight, they often use their "spidey senses" to locate their prey!  What are these "spidey senses"? They are vibrations that spiders can feel through the strands in their web.  

Credit: 2014 OSG

Spiders have different types of webs depending on how they catch their prey!  The most common that we see are the circular webs.  These are very sticky and capture insects instantly when they touch the web. Once the insect lands on the web, their movements pull on the strands of web alerting the spider to where the insect is!

If the insect is large, or if something else hits it such as a bird, the web can become damaged.  Some spiders will repair the web, while others will create an entire new one overnight!



While walking through a meadow for forest you may have seen a sheet-like web.  This web is spun horizontally across the ground with a few strands of web being vertical. The more vertical lines are not sticky and meant to knock insects downwards onto the more sticky ground web.  The spider then will be able to "feel" its way towards the trapped insect.

Credit: Tilman Piesk

A third type of web is called a funnel web. Just like a funnel you'd have in your kitchen, these webs are wider at the top and narrower as they go down.  Once a spider feels that an insect is on the top of the web, through the vibrations in the strands, it will pop out of its narrow hiding place and capture the pray on the web.

Credit: theschoolrun.com

Unlike Spiderman, spiders don't shoot out webbing out of their arms, nor do spriders swing from building to building using webbing. Instead, this webbing is used for web-making and for wrapping their prey.  Once an insect is caught, a spider will wrap its catch in silk (similar to their webbing). They will then injecting their prey with venom to paralyze it and then eat it!  

Spiders help to keep our yards and homes free from insects that we might consider to be pests. Take a look around your cottage or home right now, do you see a friendly neighbourhood spider? Has it caught any insects today?  Watch a insect fly into its web and see how the spider reacts, it's pretty cool!  Make sure when you see an insect in a spider web to check it off your 2017 Great Scavenger Hunt list! 

Three cheers for friendly spiders and bright birds!

How Does a Woodpecker Eat?

Have you ever seen a woodpecker foraging on a tree and think "Ouch!  That must hurt the woodpecker!".

Woodpeckers hammer into trees to search for food (insects and sap) and to excavate a cavity for nesting! But...how do they reach deep into these cavities and crevices to reach their food?

Pileated Woodpecker

Well... they have very special adaptations for this! An adaptation is how an animal has developed over time to gain special traits or features that it needs to survive.

One of these adaptations is a woodpeckers tongue!  Woodpeckers have incredibly long tongues in order to reach deep into the holes that they dig into tree trunks. Sticky saliva on their tongue then captures insects and is retracted back into their mouth!  With some species of woodpecker these tongues also reach in to grab sap!

As a human, our tongues are about the same length as our mouth. Woodpeckers have tongues several times longer than their bills!  WOAH!  So where do they keep it?

Woodpeckers have adapted to be able to store their long tongue around the back of their skull where it will then connect to either their right nostril or near their eyeball. How cool is that?

Can you name all the woodpeckers that we have here in Georgian Bay? Take a photo of one and send it in to us, we'd love to see your photos!

Three cheers for tall trees and honey bees! 

Everyone can be a citizen scientist!

Have you ever gone outside and counted the birds at your bird feeder?  How about counted monarch butterflies? Perhaps you’ve gone to a local pond to see what different frogs you can catch?  Well, you are on the way to becoming a citizen scientist!!

Citizen science is the collection of environmental data by members of the public (you!).  The information is normally part of a partnership with professional scientists.

The awesome part about citizen science is that you don't need internet! You can collect information throughout the summer and then submit it once you have internet access.  So get out your nature notebooks and let's be a citizen scientist!  Let's look at some projects you can help with and click the project name for more info!

FrogWatch Ontario:

If you love amphibians then this is the perfect project for you to help with!  Contact Adopt-A-pond to receive a FrogWatch package. You can submit observations randomly, as you see them (Level 1), or you can submit on a more routine schedule (Level 2).

 

MonarchWatch:

If you love butterflies or have a pollinator garden, than you may be interested in getting some hands-on experience with them!  MonarchWatch is the perfect citizen science activity that you can do with the help of an adult.  Order your Monarch tags online and once they arrive in the mail you can catch monarchs you see in your yard and place little sticker tags on their wings.  If this butterfly is seen again, this tag will identify it!  Visit their website to learn more about the Monarch, how to properly handle them, and purchase some tags!

Part of this year's Great Scavenger Hunt is to report a sighting of this butterfly! 

Yellow Warbler

Birds:

There are many citizen science programs that involve birds!  Two of the easiest include eBird and NestWatch! Both programs require you to create a profile, but data can always be submitted on a later date. Take out those notebooks and count the number and species of birds wherever you are to submit to eBird or find a nearby nest and help track the survival of the young!  If you want to keep going into the winter, another great project to be part of is Project FeederWatch! 

Species at Risk:

Blandings Turtle - Scott Gillingwater

Georgian Bay Biosphere has a citizen science page! Here you can support a variety of citizen science projects, however species at risk is one of them!  If you spot anything from a Monarch Butterfly, to a Foxsnake or Blanding's Turtle, to a Canada Warbler, submit information about them to us!  Submitting a report to us about a Monarch will even get you a point for your scavenger hunt!

There are so many projects that you can get involved with, visit our website to find even more: http://www.gbbr.ca/our-environment/species-at-risk/how-you-can-help/

Three cheers for butterflies and a beautiful sunrise!