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The School’s Campus
The diverse ecosystems on the TFS campus — from the creek to the grassy school grounds to the reforesting slope to the forested ridge — are well shown in this sketch. Diagram by C.J. (used with...
View ArticleOne Spring’s Month
A month in the spring can make a huge difference. Move your mouse over the image (or click the image) to see the difference between April and May on the Fulton School campus. The full sized images can...
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Windows and Warblers
Unfortunately, the method of the demise of the worm-eating warbler that flew into our window appears to be more the rule than the exception. David Sibley (2010) calculates that windows are the number...
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Turtle
Box turtle visiting the classroom. We have quite a number of box turtles on campus, but this visitor to biology class comes from Ms. M’s garden. You can tell the age by counting the rings on its shell....
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Searching for Life in a Drying Creek
Looking for life in the puddles. The puddles along the creek’s bed are getting smaller and smaller. Last week, Ms. Mertz’s class was out doing their ecological survey of the creek life lead by Ms....
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Bobcat?
Possible bobcat tracks. Ms. Mertz believes she found some feline tracks in the soft sediment next to the puddles in the creek that may belong to a bobcat. Or maybe a large housecat. Unlike canine...
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Arkansan Spiders
The Heifer Ranch is home to quite the variety of large spiders, including the tarantulas we found a couple years ago. Most of them work hard at keeping the insect pests down. Here’s a collection of...
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Outdoor Cats
Outdoor cats are probably the largest anthropogenic reason for declining bird populations in North America: it’s estimated that they kill a couple billion each year. You can see the cats in action at...
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Transit
NWI Instruments transit. This spring I was nominated by my head of school for a small, Teacher of Distinction award offered by the Independent Schools of St. Louis (ISSL). I proposed to get a survey...
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Our Microbial Symbionts
Rob Knight’s TED talk on the importance of our microbial symbionts. Sometimes I ask my students if we’re not just giant mechs for our microbial symbionts. After all, they outnumber us by about 10 to...
View ArticleTrophic Cascade: The Effect of Wolves on Yellowstone
The reintroduction of wolves to Yellowstone National Park resulted in enormous changes to the ecology: more plants and animals as the wolves reduced the deer population and changed the deers’ behavior....
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Identifying Birds by Sound: BirdNet
The Cornell Ornithology Lab’s BirdNet lets you upload audio files of bird calls and identifies the birds. I tried it with this file (BirdCall01.m4a) recorded near school, and it identified Red...
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