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A Field Trip to Paradise
(Marysville Campout, August 2007)
by Auriel Van Der Laar, age 17
Driving along the stone lane, through the iron gate,
and past the fields full of butterflies gave you the
feeling of entering another world. Something out of
story books, or your dreams. But no, we were not in
a fairy land, or some distant country, we were in
Marysville Ohio, at the home of Donna and Tim
Daniel. Donna and Tim both work for the Ohio
Division of Wildlife and graciously allowed us to
camp on their property for the night, and explore
the 50 odd acres of paradise that they call home.
We pulled up by the house, built low to the ground,
of beautiful stone and wood. Donna and Tim were
sitting on the back porch with Donna’s sister,
Jessica Macke. After introductions we were informed
of the contest of the weekend, a scavenger hunt,
OYBC style. We had to keep track of everything we
saw, and match it up into certain categories, like a
bird for every letter in “Ohio Young Birder’s”, a
blue flower, and many other things. Sounded like a
good challenge, so we headed off down the drive,
watching as we went for anything that caught our
eye. Tim had set up some minnow traps in their
creek. We found, rainbow darters, flathead minnows,
Creek Chubs, Southern Red-Belled Daises and Stonecat
Madtoms.
Then the group was split, half of us went on a walk,
farther down the creek, we got to see the difference
between the channelized and unchannelized portions
of the creek. When a creek is channelized they dig a
new path for the creek, making it flow from point A
to point B in a straight line, this allows the
fields and other land around the creek to drain more
quickly, which in times of heavy rain, is beneficial
to the farmers.
It is bad for the land because it stops the natural
percolation of water (that’s the flowing of the
water through the soil). When the creek is straight
it doesn’t have all those curves to slow the water
down so it flows faster. Also, when they channelized
a creek they remove all the trees from around it, so
a lot more sun hits the channelized part of the
creek, this brings up the water temperature, warm
water holds less oxygen, which means less oxygen for
the fish and other creatures that inhabit the creek
to use. We measured the temperature at two different
locations, and the channelized part of the creek was
over ten degrees warmer then the unchannelized part.
The second group took a hay ride around the
perimeter of the property, by some nice cool-grass
prairies. We met up at the back, switched, and
headed back. Then we were free to roam. This was
actually really nice because adults always want to
make everything too structured all the time and kids
are rarely allowed to just wander around and take
our own time. Some of us headed up to the barn to
check out the bats, complete with bat cam. Others
walked through the gardens, chased butterflies, and
hiked one of the many trails through the woods.
About 5:30 we met up for dinner, hot dogs and brats,
along with many other goodies pitched in by the
group. Then it was time for a little session on
outdoor photography by Tim, complete with question
and answer time, which was quite enlightening. As
part of his talk he got out his “gilly” suit, a
method of camouflage developed by the army, or so I
am told. It is basically a very large mesh coat,
with scraps of cloth tied all over it. This gilly
suit was a fall one, so the cloth was brown. It also
had a hat with a flap that came down in front. Ethan
Kistler tried it on we all got a good chuckle. Then
Phil Chaon put it on and went off to hide, saying we
should try to find him. We weren’t very motivated,
so we just left him out there, waiting and
waiting….he came back awhile later, very hot and
sweaty, and wondering where we all had been.
A
bit before dusk, we all gathered around the barn,
and played with the goats, Phil got into a
head-butting contest with “Little black goat” and
received a good thump or two to the head. As the sun
went down we gathered our chairs around the main
door at the top of the barn, and watched hundreds of
bats as they emerged from the Daniels’ barn. They
flew out, Big Brown Bats seeming on a mission,
zooming out into the night, and then the Little
Brown Bats ducked out. Tim has a bat locator that
brought the bat’s echolocation down to a hearable
range for us, we listened to them flying around,
trying to hear the zipper like sound of their
feeding call as they caught an insect up above our
heads.
After the bat show ended, we spent some time around
the campfire, got to gorge ourselves on Donna’s
amazing Dutch oven cobbler. (I work at a summer
camp, and eat a lot of good desserts, this stuff was
phenomenal) Then we went over to check out the bug
lights.
Kenn Kaufman has a rather, elaborate set up for his
bug lights, mercury and black lights, a big sheet,
bug bait to smear on trees, the whole nine yards.
The results are amazing, there were so many crazy
insects everywhere, huge moths, little beetles, and
everything in between, the beauty of the day had
been replaced with the crazy variety of the night. I
was very tired, since the day before I had just
gotten back from summer camp, where sleep is
something you rarely take part in, and so I headed
off to bed. The rest of the group stayed up late
though, taking pictures of bugs and trying to
decipher their identities.
The next morning everyone woke up on their own,
whenever the sun hit their tent and the birds
started to prick their ears. We gathered the
campfire, discussing the day before, and what we
wanted to do in our few hours that morning.
Breakfast was doughnuts (that we probably should
have eaten faster) since the ants soon discovered
our sweet treats first.
Donna’s sister Jessica is an Archeologist, and she
gave us the coolest talk on what she gets to do. She
recently got back from a dig out west, and the
following week was bound for a dig site in New
Jersey. She got out her equipment, a shovel trowel,
screen and with her handy assistants, went to work,
digging a hole and sifting through everything. We
found some glass, an old nail, and lots of other
neat looking stuff. We were digging at the bottom of
a hill, Jessica explained to us that places like
that are the best for finding stuff because every
time it rains stuff gets washed down, so things that
were dropped at the top, are probably now at the
bottom. Plus, a small stream was only a few feet
away, and streams attracts people, and stuff.
Then we all sat down, and started to go through the
scavenger hunt list. What was assumed to be an
“every birder for them selves” event, soon turned
into us just shouting out our answers, and trying to
see if together we could fill out every category
that Donna had given to us. Then we packed up camp,
shaking dozens of daddy long legs off our tents, and
packed everything back into the vehicles, and of
course, things are always more difficult to get back
into the car when your trying to go home.
We said our farewells to Donna and Tim, thanked them
for letting us enjoy their wonderful little piece of
the world, and were on our way.
Another amazing trip with the OYBC! More critters
seen, more things learned, more memories made with
yet another group of amazing people.
Page last updated on
Friday July 25, 2008
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