Rose Mallow

Our intrepid Jr Rangers, Nicholas and Raymond set off this morning to look for ripe Blackberries, didn't find any... yet.  Found this Rose Mallow and some other cool plants.  .    

Two Posts from Raymond M.

Osprey

When Osprey are born its survival of the fittest because when offspring of Osprey are born the biggest usually gets the food. Once the babies leave about a year later they mate.  Osprey eat a diet of fish like small striped bass and blue fish.

The end

Kayak

Yesterday we went kayaking in the pond where we set a minnow trap for golden minnows which were introduced in to the pond by the past owners because he liked to fish very much and the golden minnows are good bait for all different kinds of fish but not pumpkin seed or bluegill they like small bait like worms.  When we were kayaking we saw black crowned night heron and kingfisher, red winged blackbird, finches and sparrows. We may have almost tipped into the pond but it was a good kayak.

the end

My Master - Courtesy of Le Gigi

My Master

My Master! I jump, I bolt, I dash!

I’m ecstatic, chaotic and frenzied!

I dart in-between the legs of his peoples!

My Master! I crash, I smash, I roll!

Everyday new scents come and go

But there’s one scent that always stays the same…

My Master’s! I collide, I create collisions, I excite!

Everyone, from the smallest pup to the oldest fossil pets me

But I won’t sit for it.

I want

MY MASTER! Ooof. I didn’t see him there.

He moves so quietly I bump him a lot.

His mate and littermates call him Lenny,

But I call him

My Master!

My Master walks away and slowly calls my human name and waves a flying enemy.

SWEGEN! I obediently obey, but an unseen enemy wraps around my neck!

Now I can’t save him from the flying enemy.

The unseen enemy yanks me up the up-path.

My Master struggles with one end of the unseen enemy

as I struggle with the other end.

If we work together we can defeat the unseen enemy together!

DARN IT, SWEGEN!

My Master is mad. I don’t know why!

I think he wants to be the Alpha Male and defeat the unseen enemy by himself.

But he is not strong enough.

 The unseen enemy yanks me into My Master’s kennel and My Master has to leave me.

He will be back later to defeat the unseen enemy and then we can defeat the flying enemy together.

Slowly all of the new coming and going scents leave and I await the creek of the kennel door that means

My Master! He has come to save me! Now we go out into the field and terrorize all of the enemies.

I’m glad My Master is mine. He needs a strong Beta Male to help him because he is a weak Alpha Male.

 

- Le Gigi

Last week

This was the group that took the walk with us on Thursday.  I think we might have met some future Jr Rangers.

Thomas G.

Thomas G. Nicholas M. and Lenny

(insert caption here)

We left GiGi alone in the lab for a few minutes and this happened.

I asked Nicholas what occurred, he said he wasn't sure.

Gigi hard at work on a new blog entry, probably about her love of puppies.

All About Blueberries

Henry F.

7/18/2013

All About Blueberries

Blueberries thrive in states like New Jersey, Oregon, North Carolina, Washington, California, Florida and Michigan but the largest blueberry producer is Maine; even though these states have lots of berries blueberries can grow all across America.

Recently blueberries have been found out as good to eat because they have lots of antioxidants.

There are two types of berries highbush and lowbush, highbush blueberries are found mostly in Michigan while lowbush berries grow mostly on the ground; highbush blueberries usually grow to 13 ft .

On the east coast you will most often see blueberries in the summer although they grow year round, in places like California and Florida you can pick blueberries throughout the year.

-Tips for blueberry picking:

-Have a bucket

-Only pick the blueberries that are dark blue and that they are firm but not soft      

-When you pick blueberries be gentle you do not want to bruise them

-If the berry does not come off the bush easily it is not ripe and will taste sour

Wild blueberries picked on Nantucket

Alien Invasion

Henry F.

7/22/2013

Field Station Under Close Watch

Beeep, Beeep, Beeep! I open my eyes and I realize that today is the day I have been waiting for but shoot I am going to be late good thing my alarm woke me up.  I rush downstairs grab some nectar and rush out the door.   I run down to the P.W.S.E. which stands for the paper wasp space exploration.  My job is to go out to other planets and get information so the warrior wasps can go down and take over their planet. Only a few of usare picked we have to pass  the PWTs,  the paper wasps trial.  We are handpicked to handle tough situations.  Because some planets have huge things and weird creatures.  Before we go on the shuttle we must get briefed on our mission it is boring but we learn that the planet we are going to has oxygen in the atmosphere so we must wear helmets.  We also learn these creatures are hundreds times bigger than us so we must be careful unlike any other mission where we go in and come out the same day this might take weeks if not months.  

Two hours later after the shuttle has taken off the wasp techs inform us that it will take longer than they thought because the left jet that makes the shuttle go hyperspeed broke down.  So it will be twice as long and take up twice as much gas we might even have to land on a island 200 miles from where we were supposed to land.  The techs are crossing their fingers that they won't stop in the middle of the ocean.  Two hours later they find themselves running out of fuel on the island but nowhere near where they meant to land.  The techs think we are going to crash in the side of a building so we are ready for impact.  Who knows if we'll survive.  

One hour later I wake up after being unconscious the world around me is so large there are weird things sticking up out of ground with what looks like a protective shell it also has a weird green thing at the top.  And we are stuck in the wall.  I am the first to wake up I look around to see the debris we won't be able to leave anytime soon, whatever there is so much to record.  After everybody wakes up we start making a hive inside our shuttle it is kinda like our home.  Later on some humans come.  They go in a building they call a house and hang out.  A few minutes later two new humans arrive, I hear all of them talking.  The humans go different directions go somewhere, my boss Dr Oktay the best paper waspresearch scientist in the galaxy sends me out to go watch them.  There are lots of flowers where we go filled with nectar, I thought only our planet had nector.  After a while they gather together with new humans..  They go back to house and I report back to my boss.  A whole crowd of humans arrive.  I follow them as they go on a walk in the woods their are lots of birds I use my ray gun and kill them all.  While the walk is going on I stop for a snack of nectar to keep me alert.  We head out to this sandy place humans call a beach.  Their a child waves her hand and tries to kill me.  I narrowly avoid and think should I use my super weapon. My Super weapon is a stinger. I can take down enemies instantly but it will also rip out my insides leaving me with nothing to report to the doctor. SWAP!! Another hit barely misses me I am forced to kill myself, I am going in.  As soon as I begin my fatal attack Doctor Oktay arrives in the shuttle and takes us off of Earth.  The techs had fixed the engine and they were trying to contact me.  I did not answer so they came to find me.  We headed back home and decided to conquer this planet another day.

Recycled Deer Flies

Seeweed and Anaconda take a cookie break while creating their latest work.  A portrait of a deer fly in pastels and deer flies.   

The Nantucket Pond Kraken by Nicholas M.

The Nantucket Pond Kraken

The Nantucket pond kraken is a very strange and elusive creature. Its habitat is the muddy ponds of Nantucket, it makes its home underneath the mud and only a single kraken each lives in a pond. Its main diet consists of the lower digits of young Homo sapiens. It has 16 tentacles and each tentacle has what looks like a snapping turtle on the end. They use these to confuse their prey.  Each tentacle has a mouth and all of them lead to the stomach of the creature. The kraken has two eyes on a tentacle that it sees out of. The nutrients in the toes it eats improve its eyesight helping it see through the mud. It gets the nutrients through the bones in the toes and the rest of the toe is just for food. The pond kraken can go years without a bite to eat making it incredibly great at going through long periods of time without food. When it eats the toes they are not digested because of its lack of stomach acid but they are sealed in cocoons by the spider like bacteria in its stomach. Once its stomach is full the stomach ejects from its body and the kraken dies but after all the years in its stomach the toes evolved into the equally elusive Nantucket yo-ho. We are busy studying the habits of the Nantucket yo-ho and will have more information later. As you can see the pond kraken is an amazing creature.

FIELD STATION by Molly A.

Full of life

Italian ice

Eager to learn,

Lenny is stern, and for

Danger we yearn.

Swatting flies

That greenhead dies

An osprey glides as

The seawater slides

Into the marsh

On a nice day, in

November.

Horseshoe Crab - Thomas Glover

Horseshoe crabs

Limulus polyphemus

Horseshoe crabs are found in intertidal to subtidal areas from 0 feet to 75 feet. The unmistakable body shape of the horseshoe crab has not changed in thousands and thousands of years, a tribute to the evolutionary masterpiece. The body of the horseshoe crab is covered in a hard reddish-brown to grey shell. It has five pairs of multipurpose legs, used for walking, swimming, and moving food into the mouth. Female horseshoe crabs can reach 2 feet in length, whereas the males are smaller. When horseshoe crabs grow, they have to molt, or shed their shell and grow a newer, bigger one. The horseshoe crabs mouth is located in the middle of the animal on the bottom. The crab uses its legs to bring food into their mouth.

-Thomas Glover

Works cited:

Wikipedia, . N.p.. Web. 19 Jul 2013. <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Horseshoe_crab>.

Gosner, Kenneth L. Atlantic Seashore: A field guide to sponges, jellyfish, sea urchins, and more. New York: Houghton Mifflin Books, 1978. Print.

Le Spotted Knapweed - Paper Courtesy of Le Gigi

Spotted Knapweed – By Gigi Glover

Centaurea maculosa

Quite recently Kelly Omand of the Nantucket Conservation Foundation spotted some Spotted Knapweed growing outside the lab. Spotted Knapweed is an invasive species that originally comes from Eastern Europe, but has been introduced to North America and is now considered an invasive species in much of western America and Canada. Spotted Knapweed is about 2 to 3 inches high, has grayish lance-shaped leaves and thistle-like pink or purple flowers that bloom from July to September. The Spotted Knapweed has become an ecological threat because it takes over dry prairies, oak and pine barrens, and dunes and sandy ridges, the last of which is more relevant to Nantucket. Spotted Knapweed is also poisonous to other plants. Spotted Knapweed is a MDA Prohibited noxious weed in Minnesota. “Prohibited noxious weeds are annual, biennial, or perennial plants that the commissioner designates as having the potential or are known to be detrimental to human or animal health, the environment, public roads, crops, livestock or other property.” – The Minnesota Department of Agriculture. That means that the Minnesota Department of Agriculture thinks that Spotted Knapweed is dangerous to human health, the environment or other important things. Some ways that you can help get rid of Spotted Knapweed are that if you spot it while it is in its early stages you can pull it, you could also mow it so the plants cannot seed, or you could try prescribed burning, but a con of burning is that only extremely hot burns are effective which may also damage some of the native plants which are actually helpful to the environment. A biological way is if you use Seedhead weevils, root-boring weevils, or seedhead flies, as they are commonly used. Thanks to Kelly’s discovery we caught the Spotted Knapweed early and could eliminate it.

Works Cited

Minnesota Department of Agriculture. N.p., n.d. Web. 19 July 2013. <http://www.mda.state.mn.us/plants/badplants/noxiouslist.aspx>.

Minnesota Department of Natural Resources. N.p., n.d. Web. 19 July 2013. <http://www.dnr.state.mn.us/invasives/terrestrialplants/herbaceous/spottedknapweed.html>.

"Spotted Knapweed." Wikipedia. N.p., n.d. Web. 19 July 2013. <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Centaurea_maculosa>.

"Spotted Knapweed." Salt Lake County. N.p., n.d. Web. 19 July 2013. <http://cf9.slco.org/weeds/html/weedinfo/id/spottedKnapweed1.html>.

Le Gigi looking tres chic in her bug resistant chapeau.