LEARN ABOUT CREATURES

(IN OUR OWN NEIGHBORHOODS)

this project is called LOCAL BIOLOGY (until we think of something better)

People who are learning about biology and nature in their hometown attend events, and then write reports about those events.

36th Street Oak Savanna seed planting

Seed planting, 36th street oak savanna
some of the seeds we planted
flowers in the prairie bowl
crumbled up culver's root seeds

This afternoon, I walked over to the 36th street oak savanna. I had signed up to help plant seeds.

We were met by super nice & well-organized Mississippi River stewardship coordinator Karen Solas. There were about 15 or so people from the Twin Cities who had come to participate, including a woman who was doing the seed planting for her birthday!

Link to Event: 
Oak Savanna Seeding

Tour of a native oak savanna

big bluestem seeds

Link to Event: 
Blogger Bioblitz September 20-27
Guided Landscape Walk, Plant ID and Ecology Talk

Walk: Rocks in Thousand Oaks

The Berkeley Path Wanderers offered a Sunset Walk on Monday, August 25th. We met at Great Stone Face Park in the Thousand Oaks neighborhood of North Berkeley. Our walk leader, Dave Weinstein, asked us to imagine that we were not walking through a neighborhood of houses, but through a large regional park. Apparently at one time the whole North Berkeley area was proposed to be a park, but was covered with houses instead.

Link to Event: 
Berkeley Rock Walk

Preparing for an Urban Nature Walk

When my friend Francois asked me if I'd like to help him lead a nature walk as part of a zine festival, I said yes right away. But once I started to think about it, I got nervous.

I used to work at a zoo, so I would lead classes all the time, but I haven't done it in years. Plus, we would be walking around the San Francisco Botanical Gardens, which are filled with thousands of plants that I know nothing about. So I was nervous. I figured the best way to prepare would be to do a trial run and figure out a few things to say.

Link to Event: 
Nature Walk

Birds 'n Bars

A Minneapolis bird blog to check out: http://www.birdchick.com/

So tonight there was this event at a bar near my house, 'Merlin's Rest.'

A few months ago, I had heard that there was this girl in Minneapolis who was really into birds and that there was this thing every month where you could go drink beer with birders. So tonight, I finally checked it out.

Link to Event: 
Birds 'n Bars

Evolution 101 - conference

This week, I am attending Evolution 2008 - a conference of evolutionary biologists.

Today there was a pre-conference for K-12 teachers, about teaching evolution.

What I took away from this is that it isn't the role of the science teachers to teach anything but the scientific method of problem-solving. Any dialogues and problems with teaching evolution vs. intelligent design can remain in the domain of comparative religion, philosophy and other humanities.

Link to Event: 
Evolution 2008