Earth Day Volunteering at the Schrader Center — April 20, 2013

Like the outdoors? Want to spend a little time helping improve the exterior grounds at the local nature center?

Schrader Center staff will host a volunteer work event in honor of Earth Day on Saturday, April 20 from 10:00 am – 3:00 pm at the Schrader Center. We’ll be pulling privet, and other invasive species, planting trees and clearing walkways, cleaning up around the butterfly garden, and more! We encourage volunteers all of ages to participate for any amount of time! Volunteers should wear long sleeves, work pants and boots. Work gloves will be provided, but volunteers may bring their own. Coffee, tea and snacks will be complimentary.

Bird Walk – We’ll start the day out with a morning bird walk hosted by Brooks Bird member and Bethany College Professor of Biology, Jay Buckelew, from 9:00 -10:00 am. Meet in the lower parking lot of the Schrader Center near the trail head a few minutes before 9:00 am.

Astronomy Day Activities — Other activities include Oglebay Astronomy Club’s Astronomy Day program with two sessions. The daytime session will be held from 1:00 to 4:00 pm at the Speidel Observatory and includes solar viewing (weather permitting– many sunspots are currently visible), meteorite display, space science demonstrations and activities, and Speidel Observatory tours. The nighttime session will be held from 8:00 to 11:00 pm, also at the Speidel Observatory, and will include telescope astronomy (weather permitting–Jupiter is spectacular now!), night sky tour of the constellations and special Speidel Observatory tours.

Call the Schrader Center at 304-242-6855 for more information.

Sap is Flowing at the Schrader Center!

By Erica McGrath–The sap season has begun at the Schrader Center and naturalists have been hard at work preparing for our upcoming harvest of maple syrup. During the warmer months, maple trees produce starches, which they store in their roots throughout the winter. As spring approaches the tree converts these starches to sugars which are carried to the rest of the tree in a fluid called sap. Sap flows through a portion of the outer trunk called the sapwood which is pressurized during the spring when temperatures rise above freezing during the day and drop below freezing at night. These fluctuations cause the sap to rise and allow us to safely collect sap without damaging the tree.

This sap, when collected and processed becomes the maple syrup we all enjoy. Here at the Schrader Center, we are putting the finishing touches on this year’s first batch of maple syrup. Sap was collected from our local stand of Sugar Maples (Acer saccharum) and processed by boiling the sap in a metal boiling machine called an evaporator. The evaporator boils away the water from the sap and leaves behind sticky, sweet syrup. It takes about forty gallons of sap to produce one gallon of syrup. In the video below, naturalist Greg Park discusses the final steps of producing a batch of syrup:    To learn more about maple syrup production and its history, and to enjoy a hot pancake breakfast, be sure to come out to our Maple Sugaring Day on Saturday March 23. The event is held at Camp Russel in Oglebay Park and runs from 9am to 1pm. Admission: $7/$6 OI members. Call 304-242-6855 to book a one-hour tour.

Winter Activities for the Whole Family

If you’re in need of something to do over the long months of winter, look no further!

Trek on up to the Schrader Center to participate in many of our fun, family outdoor and indoor activities over the winter! Not only do we have native snakes, turtles and fish that you can see and touch, we have an interactive video game that features a hike in Oglebay’s forest through the eyes of salamander, and even includes a boss fight with a snake! Or, you can fly over the forest on the wings of dragonfly.

On the first Saturday of the month from 12-4pm, families can discover more about the natural world by participating in our Scavenger Hunts that are free to all ages. Our children’s playroom is always open and filled with puppets, books, puzzles and games that are nature-focused. For the littlest naturalists, we offer youth programs like Preschool Days and Budding Naturalists every other Friday that teach children to act in a caring and responsible way towards their environment, themselves and others with hands-on educational activities.

And, for the shoppers in the family the Holiday Art Show & Sale, featuring local artisan’s hand-crafted items in a variety of artistic styles is the best place to find one-of-a-kind holiday gifts.

If you can’t make it to the Schrader Center over the busy holidays, here are some ideas for fun, simple crafts that you can do with kids of all ages. They’re easy to do, require minimal supervision and will help get you and the kids in the holiday spirit. Be creative and remember to utilize recycled items around your house such as old ribbons or ties, twisties from bread bags, pine cones from your yard, old socks or material and metal cans.

Enjoy the winter days!

Arrows are Flying at the Schrader Center!

Archery is the art or skill of propelling arrows with a bow toward an intended target. A person who participates in archery is typically referred to as an archer or bowman, and according to Wikipedia, one who is fond of or an expert at archery can be referred to as a “toxophilite”. While archery has traditionally been the sport of  huntsmen, in modern times it has become a recreational activity enjoyed by all age groups. The Schrader Center’s resident toxophilite is none other than our own Greg Park, senior naturalist and birder extraordinaire.

There has been recent rise in the popularity of archery attributed to movies such as The Hunger Games and the success of 2012 Olympic silver medalist and American archer Brady Ellison. According to the Associated Press, NBC ranked archery as the most popular sport of any that it aired on its cable networks during the first few days of the 2012 Olympics– bigger even than basketball.

So what’s really got us going at the Schrader Center these days? You guessed it — archery! With the addition of two youth archery programs, that completely filled within the first two weeks, we’ve set up the targets and are preparing to see the feathers fly (arrow’s feathers, or course!) during the months of September and October. The programs, taught by Greg Park, are targeted to students between the ages of 9-12. Students meet on Tuesday or Wednesday from 4-5pm and are instructed in proper shooting technique, stances, form, range estimation, safety and more.

Several corporate groups visiting Oglebay Park have booked archery programs through the Schrader Center as team-building experiences for employees. Imagine being lined up beside your boss, suited up in archery gear with a bow and arrow?

We hope to be able to add additional archery courses that are available to the public in the spring 2013. Check out OI’s website for updated listings. Give us a call at the Schrader Center at 304-242-6855 for more information.

Monarch Metamorphosis

Here at the Schrader Center we get to see a lot of cycles.  The weather cycles of winter, spring, summer and fall bring with them ever-changing environmental events.  We celebrate the signs of spring with our Maple Sugaring event, seize summer with our collection of camps, say aloha to autumn with our annual R.E.A.P. program, and withstand the winter with pre-school day programming and free Saturday Scavenger Hunts.  Currently we are capturing an up-close view of one particular process – the life cycle of a monarch butterfly.

The evolution of a monarch butterfly takes about 30 days in its entirety.  The four-part process starts with an egg, and the relationship between monarchs and milkweed begins.  Depending on the temperature, it can take the egg 3 to 5 days to hatch into the second stage of the monarch’s cycle:  the caterpillar.  Monarch caterpillars constantly consume food (the milkweed plant) and produce frass (caterpillar solid waste) until they shed their exoskeleton, also called their cuticle, four times.  This shedding is once again individual to environment, and this pre-pupation can take 14-18 days.

The third part of the process is the pupa stage.  Also known as “the hanging J,” the caterpillar will spin a silk button to suspend itself,  fastened upside down.  The chrysalis will form and become firm and this “jade green jewel” dangles for about 10 days before a butterfly begins to break through.   The fourth and final factor then forms.

The butterfly emerges but its wings will not expand.  It must push hemolymph, butterfly blood, into its body for another hour or two before the wings will work.  The butterfly will then depart from its former dwelling and fly away.  You can see this entire process at the Schrader Environmental Education Center, as well as view our Monarch Rabble Butterfly Display and Memorial, and explore on your own in our butterfly garden. – By Sara Fincham, Schrader Center Customer Service Representative

What Makes Objects Float?

This week, the Junior Rangers teach team helped out with Nature Day Camp by teaching a lesson about water. H2O was this week’s theme and our team had prepared a lesson about buoyancy, surface tension and cohesion – aka what makes certain objects float. Buoyancy is defined as the upward force exerted by a liquid that opposes the weight of an immersed object. Each member of our team was responsible for teaching a section of the material. Junior Ranger Luke Knollinger introduced the topic by showing campers how to calculate the density of an object. If an object is denser than the water, it will sink. We also talked about animals that use surface tension to float, like the Water Striders (Gerridae). This group of true bugs distributes its weight to make it less dense and allow it to glide on the surface of the water.

During the lesson, the campers treated us to a rousing chorus of The Water Cycle Song – a song about how water is recycled through evaporation, condensation and precipitation. It was great! After we explained why things float, we needed to test out this new knowledge. The campers broke up into teams and constructed their own boats, using what they had learned to make them buoyant and fast. Once the boats were built, campers were able to race them against the other teams. Even though the power went out shortly after we left the building, we all still had a blast. ~Jr. Rangers Teach Team

Jr. Rangers Awarded Grant to Replant Native Species in Oglebay Park

For those of you who haven’t been following the process of our junior ranger grant project, we have been awarded $100 to pull out invasive plant species and replant native ones in the area.  We started replanting trees by digging holes for arrowwood viburnum seeds.  Then we took tree cuttings from box elder, red osier dogwood, and arrowwood viburnum and dipped them in rooting compound and put them in pots.  Today we dug holes to plant our native species of trees in.  While digging we noticed that 4 native species (wingstem, poke weed, White Ash, and box elder) were starting to grow where we cleared privet.

Poke Weed

Phytolacca americana is the scientific name for Pokeweed, which is native to North America. It is a herbaceous perennial plant. Pokeweed can grow up to ten feet in height. This plant is highly toxic to livestock and humans, that’s why deer probably won’t eat it. Pokeweed plants are usually found in edge habitats, meaning they are on the edge of forests where there is lots of sun and disturbed areas. That is why pokeweed is growing in the area we pulled privet.

White Ash

Acer negundo commonly known as Box Elder, is a species of tree that is part of the maple family.  It grows from 10 to 25 meters tall and stays less than 1 meter in diameter.  The Box Elder is fully dioecious, meaning separate male and female trees are required for reproduction.  It grows across the United States and Canada, even as far south as Guatemala.  It is generally a bottom land tree, meaning it grows on heavy wet soils, and requires full sun to partial shade.

White Ash (Fraxinus americana) is native to the Eastern North America from Nova Scotia to Florida, and west to Texas.  It grows up to 25 meters tall and grows very rapidly in hardwood forest gaps.  It readily grows in high light and well drained areas.

Wingstem

The fourth plant we found, Wingstem (Verbesina alternifolia), is a very tall perennial herbaceous plant that can reach up to 3 meters tall and has bright yellow flowers.  It prefers pasture, field and roadside habitats with high light, and is found from the East Coast to Texas.  Some people consider it weedy, but we consider any native plant an upgrade from privet.

The discovery of these plants is good news, because it shows that native plants are growing back where we removed an invasive species.  Even though we plan to plant some tree in the area, these native pioneers will help stop privet from re-invading the area before our planted trees get large! ~Jr. Ranger Trail Team

Spark Night at the Schrader Center!

Join members of the Kids+Creativity Network for an evening of environmental education, as we explore the importance of outdoor play!

Spark Night will emphasize the relationship between outdoor play and creativity, and the unique bond between children and nature. It will feature a presentation of educational activities available at the facility by Schrader Center director, Eriks Janelsins,  as well as a tour of the grounds and a reception. Attendees are welcome to extend their visit to Oglebay Park after Spark Night by joining in one of the public programs offered at the Schrader Center on Thursday nights st. Join the campfire at 8:00pm for singing, story-telling and marshmallow roasting, with Astronomy in the Park following at 9:00pm.

When: Thursday, July 12, 2012, 6:00pm – 8:00pm

Where: Oglebay Institute’s Schrader Environmental Education Center, located in Oglebay Park, Wheeling, WV, 26003 (465 Lodge Drive)

This event is free to attend, but registration is limited. Be sure to RSVP! Feel free to call 412-325-0646 with questions.

Lady bug…wait…Butterfly…no, wait…Lightning bug!

To begin our day we worked on saving our newly planted trees by adding blue tubes to the top of their protective coverings to stop deer from eating them. We covered up Red Oaks, American Beeches, and Sugar Maples; we didn’t have to cover up the cherries because the deer leave them alone due to the cyanide that is produced in that family of trees.

During our hike we found a lightning bug, which we were unable to identify. We used www.discoverlife.org to find out it was in the genus Photuris. The Photuris lightning bug was consuming another lightning bug likely of the genus Photinus. Female Photuris lightning bugs are able to mimic the blinking patterns of other female lightning bug species to lure in males and consume their faces (and the rest of their bodies). A quick fact is that you can tell different species of lightning bugs apart by the flashing pattern of their abdomen.

After we identified the lightning bug, we went farther down the trail. Walking down the creek, we discovered a mole… a disoriented mole… a “rolly” mole.  The mole was rolling around in the road and was almost hit by two cars.  Brave and courageous Erica walked into the street and saved the mole by putting it in her shoe and transferring it to a safer location.

Our hike ended with a visit to the waterbot located in Waddel’s Run, you can see the data we collected at www.waterbot.org, select the waterbot labeled 0015.

On our way back to the Schrader Center we discovered that our rolly mole had rolled away. ~Jr Rangers Trail Team

Nature Journaling: Fun and Functional!

I remember reading a few years ago about a girl who sent out 100 gifts. She eagerly did an experiment in which she took the time to send out 100 notebooks to see if anyone would be to reply. She included an informative explanation of her intent and proceeded to give others the gift of sharing their stories. Out of the 100 notebooks that were sent out, she received three in return. Those three responders excitedly told her where they found the notebook, why they responded and how happy they were to do so.

This story intrigued and inspired me. Personally, I have kept all of my journals from childhood as a reminder of not only my thoughts, feelings, and perspective during that particular part of my life, but because journaling is personally valuable to anyone that partakes. It’s therapeutic, it’s stress-relieving, it’s informative, and yes – it’s educational! Nature journaling can teach you not only about yourself, but how much of a life-force that nature can be and all the ways in you can connect.

Nature journaling is a creative way to combine many educational elements efficiently. It compliments science, the languages, math and art. The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service currently provides a Kindergarten – 6^th Grade curriculum that allows students to participate in a field activity, record their data and discoveries, and share and reflect upon their results.

John Muir, the inspiration for and first president of the Sierra Club wrote in his journals about nature. Muir’s journals provided plenty of recorded experience, of which 10 books and over 200 articles were published. The journal was Henry David Thoreau’s tool and technique for writing. His journal, 14 printed volumes, detailed descriptions of the plants and animals he encountered every day. The Sierra Club, successful writers and the Smithsonian salute this activity, and so does the Schrader Center—kids have come here to journal for years!

One of the many summer activities the Schrader Center supplies for our guests is our “nature backpacks”. Each backpack is pre-filled with specific items based on the backpack’s purpose. There is a backpack for the pond with crates to catch critters, one for the butterfly garden with nets to see how many butterflies you can snag, and more!  The common thread through all of the backpacks is that each one contains a journal for hikers to record conclusions about what they captured and for us to listen to what they learned about nature and themselves.

• On June 27, 2009, Oglebay Lodge visitors “caught multiple Cabbage Whites, two silver-bordered Fritillary, one painted lady, one silver spotted skipper, and three bumblebees (accidentally)!”
• On September 22, 2009, on what they entitled the “Family Expedition,” Mama, Beatrice, Agnes, Myles and Lucy saw “no signs of turtles or frogs” around the pond, but did see “a nut in the water” and “dragonflies.” They also collected “yucky leaves” in their net.
• On July 4, 2010, Kelly, Stacy, Jordan and Tyler “caught lots of tadpoles and two mini blue gills.  We saw three deer and heard the bullfrog taunting us. We also saw several bass.”
• On June 11, 2010 a family from Woodstuck, GA – Lucas, 4, with Mommy and Grandma – “caught one female Cabbage White.  It was hard to catch!”
• On July 17, 2011, Lydia and Alex saw “a waterfall that cascaded over a cave, with a deer’s footprints in the dirt.”

The best page, though, was on August 24, 2009 and it proclaimed, “Today my daughters, ages six and three, and I had a fun and educational day communing with nature…the best part was watching the joy on their little faces, and watching the glorious insects go free to be captured another day.”  Signed, “Truly Yours, Nature Lover.”

To start off our summer 2012 season, Amy, Ben and Emma Wade and Chloe and Wyatt Toland arrived for an adventure on the trails at Oglebay. They took a backpack for bugs and one for butterflies. Upon their return, they not only provided hand-drawn replications of what they found along with shared their stories, they also provided us with action pictures.  Come enjoy our nature backpacks, one of many daily activities this summer at the Schrader Center!

By Sara Fincham, Customer Service Representative at the Schrader Center