Oak Lake Science Camp

Sunday-Day 1

This science camp isn’t like a figure skating camp, or a gymnastics camp, it’s in the middle of nowhere. It’s really good if you like nature, which is why I like it. 8 campers came this year on Sunday. The counselors’ names are Kendra Hill and Nathan. Nathan said that he came here also to learn about science. We enjoyed a supper of sloppy joes after getting acquainted with each other. Next came the task of building our plant presses and constructing our bug boxes. Bedtime was 10:30, but we stayed up way past the time limit. The girls’ and the boys’ dormitories were buzzing with talk, laughter, and MP3 players. By the time we all got settled down, it was well past 11:00, and still the girls couldn’t stop giggling. After finding a cricket the size of a peanut, we were finally able to fall asleep.

End of Day 1. Please continue onto day 2(027).

 

Day 2(027)

First thing Monday morning we were treated to a breakfast of cereal, toast and juice. Right afterwards we had a plant lesson with Gary Larson. We collected different plants including grasses, weeds, and flowers. We walked almost down to the lake, so Dr. Larson could show us what poison ivy looks like. He also showed us what stinging nettle looks like. Last year, I had a bad experience with stinging nettle- it touched my finger and my arm and I got bumps on there for days and it itched like crazy!!! We also learned that you can eat chokecherries and wood sorrel. I

learned that the 4 major native prairie grasses are Big Blue Stem (also called turkey foot), Indian Grass, Switch grass, and Little Blue Stem. When we got back to the classroom we put all the plants that we could fit into our plant presses and practically ran down the Dining Hall for lunch (most of us were starving by then). Lunch was meat sandwiches, chips, and juice or milk.

After lunch was the GIS and GPS units lesson with Nels Troelstrup. GPS- Global Positioning System It enables you to find your position and find a point. GIS- Geographic Information System It’s basically a map on the computer, like Google Earth. We were instructed on how to use a GPS unit and a Kestrel and then told to find a pole. The pole had an orange marker on it and a bag of candy! Patrick’s and mine we had spotted earlier on our “plant walk”. (And yes, we were allowed to eat the candy on the way back to the classroom) With the Kestrel, we were told to measure humidity, air temperature, and wind speed. When we got back to the classroom, we had to put all our information that we gathered onto a website and then it displayed it for us using different colored dots at our points. The humidity was the lowest in the forest (65.8%), and the wind speed was zero where we were. The air temperature was 26.0 degrees Celsius.

Continuing after the GIS and GPS lesson, Kendra taught us how to use a secchi disk and how to take sight depth measurements. We

first used mini-secchi disks and tested them on green-colored water. Each canister of water had different amounts of food coloring put in them, so as time grew on, it got harder and harder to see down farther.

 

Sight Depth

 

Drops

Centimeters

Average

0

Infinity

Infinity

8

15     15

15cm

18

9     9

9cm

30

7     6

6.5cm

 

After learning that lesson, Kendra took us down to the lake to take the actual measurements of the water and air. Let me just say one thing: Oak Lake is not a very clean lake, so we weren’t able to see down very far. Anyway, if we completed those measurements, then we were allowed to swim! However, only the 4 girls swam, the boys didn’t even touch the water! (Don’t ask me why)  To the right is a picture of me and my brother, Patrick at the boat dock down at Oak Lake. The picture on the left shows 2 of the girls swimming and me wading while the boys and Kendra sat on the dock.

After showering, we all headed back up to the classroom to finish our web pages and update the blog. Another thing we did was look at phytoplankton under microscopes. First, we were taught how to hold and carry a microscope, and then we were told to identify 3 types of plankton. There were buckets of water from Oak Lake, and Nathan taught us how to put together a slide with lake water on it. I had to switch slides often, because I never really had anything interesting on mine. One time, however, I had something on a slide that was transparent (you could see what looked like its stomach and what was in there) and it was moving! That was pure luck! This continued until 9:00, at which time we trooped back up to the bunk house for some root beer floats and a rousing game of charades (I wanted to play Pictionary, but they said next time). We picked a subject (well-known movies), wrote some down on some slips of paper, dumped them in a hat, and then a person was chosen to pick one and, well, you know how charades goes. If you drew the slip of paper that you wrote, you had to put it back and choose another slip. If you figured out what movie it was, and you had written it, then you couldn’t guess it either. This continued until way past our bedtime. Finally, we finished the slips in the hat, got ready for bed, and fell into our bunks (except for the people on the top bunks, we had to climb up and then plop down).

End of Day 2(027). Please continue onto Day 3(3819),

 

 

Day 3(3819)

I woke up late on Tuesday morning, but I still had plenty of time for breakfast and a few other things. Breakfast was the same old, same old, cereal, fruit and toast (Booorrringg!). No offense to the caterers. That morning we learned about birds with K.C. Jensen. Here are some facts that I learned about birds:

1.        Only larger birds have hollow bones (to help them fly better), and very small birds don’t have hollow bones.

2.       Having feathers makes birds more aerodynamic.

3.       A human’s normal body temperature is 98.6 degrees Fahrenheit, a bird’s is 107 degrees Fahrenheit.

4.       A human’s heart beats 60-70 beats per minute, a bird’s heart beats about 1500 beats per minute.

5.        Birds don’t get infections as easily as humans.

6.       Birds have 3 eyelids.

7.       If a bird has a bare patch, it’s a female.

We caught 6 birds: 2 Least Flight Catchers, 2 Common Yellow Throat (warblers), and an American Goldfinch. We also caught another bird that we couldn’t identify, but we had to let it go, because it had somehow gotten all the feathers ripped off of its head. The feathers could reattach themselves in time, but we couldn’t study it. All of the birds except for the unidentified one were females. We also caught a barn swallow in a net that we had set up by the classroom. We didn’t have enough time to band it, though, and Dr. Jensen thought that we had banded enough birds for now. We did have time to observe it, though. Another thing I learned was the “3 M’s” as Dr. Jensen called them. They were: molting, mating, and migrating. All of them require huge amounts of energy, so birds have to time when they’re going to do them. Another thing I learned when we got back to the classroom was how to identify different types of feathers that you can find on the ground. If one side is bigger than the other, then it’s wing feather. If both sides are the exact same width, then it’s a tail feather.

Tuesday’s lunch was the exact same as Monday’s: sandwiches and chips along with fruit rollups and nuts. Our next activity that we did was associated with the lake. We were going to study aquatic insects with Nels. We had duct-taped a kitchen strainer to a meter-long wooden pole and we were going to use that to grab the insects. The strainer filters out the water, but the insects, bugs, and little shells have to stay in there. We split up into two groups. The first group stayed behind at the shore and caught aquatic insects, while the second group went out in the boat with Nels and lifted the mud off of the bottom to look at the insects. The cattails at the shoreline were where most of the water bugs were located, so group 1 was pretty successful. We found a lot of large crayfish. A little while later, we flip flopped. Group one went out on the boat, and group two collected insects. Patrick and I were the first pair up to lift some mud up off of the bottom. Then we had to shake and twist the bottom of the bucket in the water to get most of the actual mud back into the water. Then, the only stuff that was left were all stuff that lived in the mud. I thought that the mud was pretty gross, but Nels said that it was therapeutic (meaning it was good for my skin). I didn’t believe him. I washed it off. My favorite part was when Nels cranked the boat up to high speed on the way out and on the way back. http://www.auburn.edu/~webbeec/limnology/mussel.htm

Fried chicken was what all the campers ate for supper that night (like the kind you can get from Hy-Vee). It was really good! Tuesday night was also the night we got to play Pictionary, our version! As usual, we stayed up past our bedtime until Kendra ordered us to go to bed.

End of Day 3(3819). Please continue onto Day 4(16383).

Day 4(16383)

Wednesday’s breakfast was the same cold cereal, fruit, and toast that we had for the past couple days. That day’s morning activity was making our insect collections. Paul Johnson was our instructor for that activity. Here are a couple things I learned:

  1. Entomology is the study of bugs/insects.
  2. The three parts of the typical insect’s body are the head, the thorax, and the abdomen.
  3. Lepidoptera, Coleoptera, hymenaptra, Diptera, Hemiptera, and Odonota are some of the different groups of insects/bugs.

After learning a couple of things about insects and entomology, we (well equipped with our nets and poison jars) headed out to catch some insects. We walked across a little bit of prairie catching a grasshopper here, another one there, and then we headed down the hill into the forest. After that, there was a large meadow at the bottom of the hill, so we stopped there to catch some bugs. I was very successful. My only regret was that I didn’t catch any butterflies. Doug and Bryant were the only people who caught some (1 each). At the top of the meadow (it was on a hill) we stopped for a 5-minute break. Then, we realized that Bryant didn’t have his notebook. He hadn’t forgotten it, he had lost it! We hiked back down the meadow to look for it, but we didn’t find it. Bryant offered to catch a butterfly, or some other bug and give it and one of Patrick’s honey buns to the person who found his notebook. We didn’t find it. After a little while, we headed back to the classroom. Some of the bugs weren’t dead yet, so some of us had to wait a little while before we could start pinning and identifying our bugs. Bryant’s bugs stayed alive even after he had pinned them, thinking they were dead!

Lunch was the same thing: sandwiches, chips, fruit, and fruit rollups.

Our next activity involved tie-dye. We split up into two groups: Group 1 searched the upper prairie and hiked down the hill to search for Missouri goldenrod. Group 2 drove down the road to the chokecherry trees to gather chokecherries. After gathering so many berries and goldenrod, we flip flopped. Group 1 went over to gather chokecherries, while Group 2 went into the meadow to look for more goldenrod. Bryant didn’t get to gather the berries, because he went out into the meadow as well to look for his notebook. He didn’t find it. After collecting a fair amount of chokecherries, group 1 got to ride in the truck bed back up the hill. That’s the reason I hiked down. Bryant had to hike back up, too, but only part of the way. When we got back to the classroom, we guessed how much they berries would weight, none of us were right. Then Kendra boiled water and prepared the dye for us back at the bunkhouse. Then we tied our pieces of cloth with rubber bands into whatever we wanted. For instance, Madelynn did a ball and I did a long, twisted one. Then we put them in the boiling dye and waited. Later, Kendra took out the bandanas and laid them out to dry on a table. The yellow ones turned out really nice, but the chokecherry ones had practically no color on them. Later four of us had to redo our bandanas, because, well, there wasn’t any color on them except for the yellow. The berries only turned out as a very light hint of a navy blue. Kendra said she would have to try it out with a different metal, not aluminum.

Our next activity was trap setting. Laura came to help us set up a turtle trap. But first, we had to:

  1. drive down to a marshy area
  2. climb under an (supposedly) electric fence
  3. walk down a very, very long and steep hill
  4. walk onto a rickety bridge with only one handrail, and
  5. try not to fall

The only funny; part was when Nathan had to climb in the water to help set the trap. Check out the pictures.

When we got back to the classroom, we broke into teams and set out to set up our traps. These traps were for small mammals such as the ground squirrel and mice. The forest groups set theirs up in the forest, and the prairie groups set theirs up in the prairie. Last year, we didn’t camouflage our traps. This year we did. Laura had some suggestions: like putting them under fallen logs and almost hidden in shrubs. We were hoping that we might catch something, but, you never know.

Brendon said that we were having tuna casserole for supper. I didn’t quite believe him. I mean, not everybody likes tuna casserole, but he seemed serious. I asked Nathan, and he said it was pizza night. Boy, was I relieved! It was AWESOME! After supper, after completing our nightly 2-hour catch up time, Mary did yoga with us! In fact, me and some of the other girls enjoyed it so much that we asked Mary if we could do it tomorrow morning! And she said yes!

End of Day 4(16383). Please continue onto Day

Day

Today is the second to last day that we have to have cold cereal, fruit, and toast for breakfast (thank goodness!). Tomorrow we leave and then on Saturday I can have a real breakfast, like waffles, or pancakes. Anyway, before I ate breakfast, Sadie, Madelynn, and I woke up and hour early to do yoga with Mary. That was so much fun! I actually had a much better day because I was more fully awake rather than when I slept in right to 8:00. I think yoga also wakes me up, because we did it last night, and I wasn’t that tired until I lay in bed for a little bit.

Anyhow, Thursday morning was spent with Jerry Krueger. Jerry studies, not herbaceous plants, but woody plants (a.k.a. trees). One of the things that I learned was that trees grow the same time of the year that herbaceous plants grow. However, herbaceous plants die come winter, but a tree resists. It doesn’t grow during the fall and winter, but it survives until next year to grow some more. Here are some trees that Jerry told us about and my notes:

1.        Bur Oak

2.       Box Elder- poison ivy-shaped leaves, OK (not poisonous)

3.       Green Ash- lacy bark

4.       Chokecherry-berries, rose family

5.        Black Locust- Alternate compound

6.       Plains cottonwood-150 years ago, it was the only tree here

7.       Siberian Elm- serrated edges on leaves

8.        Wild Grape

9.       Largest green ash- it’s HUGE!!!

10.     Buckthorn- has huge thorns, has double saw tooth edge, doubly serrate

11.     Wild Plum- finely serrated, rose family

I got 2 core samples from a Box Elder: sick, broke up, Jerry counted, about 50 years old and an Oak: sick, I counted, about 27 years old. Another thing I learned was that if the sample breaks when you get it, it usually breaks on a growth ring. When we got back to the classroom, Jerry told us to count the growth rings on our samples. He also gave us magnifying lenses.

Lunch (again!!!!!) was sandwiches, chips and fruit (we ran out of fruit rollups).

Laura came back to help up check the traps. We headed out to the turtle trap first. When we got to the bridge and Nathan got in the water, we discovered that the trap door was open! Something had messed with the trap while we were gone. All the chicken liver was still there, though (yuck!) Nathan dumped it in the water. On the way back up the hill, I pick Laura a bouquet of wild bergamot, river milkweed, ironweed, goldenrod, and a white lily (I’m not sure what it was). Next, we went and checked our mammal traps. Here’s what we caught:

1.        Doug: a boy deer mouse

2.       Brendon: a girl 13-striped ground squirrel

3.       Madelynn: a dead 13-striped ground squirrel

4.       Bryant: a boy 13-striped ground squirrel

We had to go to the showers and wash out our traps, which was really gross, because we used peanut butter as bait (Brendon and Bryant used leftover breadsticks from pizza night). Back at the classroom, each of us were given 2 owl pellets to dissect. Meaning, pick out all of the tiny bones and throw away the leftover fur and dirt. This continued until free time, which, this time, was actually free time!

Dinner was spaghetti, garlic bread and brownies. (Delicous!!)

Then we came back to the field station to finish some last minute things on our web pages, plant collections, insect collection, and gluing our name on the banner. Mary said that she would do yoga with us again when we got back to the bunk house. Tomorrow, we set up all of our stuff to present and our parents come for a good-bye dinner (lunch). Then, we head home!

End of Day

Please continue into your vehicle and to your home. See you next year!