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July/August 2016 newsletter:
new Discovery Field Packs + more!
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Calvin College Ecosystem Preserve
"Amazing way to spend the morning!"
- Anne Marie F. (MI)

 

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In this issue:

COMMUNITY SUPPORT

Over the years, many community members have supported the preserve in a variety of ways, including gifts in kind. We would like to acknowledge a few donations of this sort that we have received recently.
  • After reading why the preserve is ideal for birding in a recent MLive interview, Jack Shackelford decided to bring us his Kiowa spotting telescope. As educating for creation care is one of our primary missions, Jack's birding scope will support the Preserve Stewards and Calvin biology students who are studying, researching, and monitoring the bird life here.
  • For the past year, Marc Hoeksema has been cultivating horse chestnut seedlings he obtained as seeds from the American Chestnut Foundation. He is a Calvin graduate, so he offered the seedlings to us. We are grateful to have the trees for planting this season.
  • Bob Mohn is a Physical Plant Carpenter here at Calvin, and in his spare time enjoys carving and painting life-like Michigan birds. When Bob arrived at the Bunker Interpretive Center this past spring to discuss building a new display, he realized his pileated woodpecker carving would be a natural fit for it. You can see Bob's woodpecker just inside the BIC entrance, on our new donation tree.
We appreciate these three men sharing the products of their interests, skills, and talents with us, and thank them for enhancing the preserve with their contributions.

NEW! DISCOVERY FIELD PACKS

Wildlife Detectives
Michigan Trees
Avian Adventures
Eco Explorers
Just in time for summer! Create your own adventure at the preserve with our self-guided, self-paced Discovery Field Packs. We provide themed backpacks containing easy-to-understand guides, tools, and more, which children of all ages will enjoy. Take a pack out on our beautiful trails, and use the activities provided to help you observe, explore, and appreciate our wildlife and natural areas.

Our new field packs are free to use, and great for scout groups, youth groups, homeschool groups, and families. You may drop-in to pick up a pack at the time of your visit, or if you prefer to review the pack contents in advance, you may reserve one online or by phone. Please note field packs must be picked up and returned during business hours, and a returnable deposit is required. Click here for more information.

Discovery Field Packs are made possible by a generous private donation.

FRIENDLY FACES

Introducing our summer staff (from top left):
Ben, Rachel, Jared, Josh, Chad, Joseph, Nate, Ryan
When you visit the Ecosystem Preserve this summer, you may cross paths with one of our Calvin student staff: Rachel, Jared and Annelise (not pictured) are Summer Camp Leaders; Ben, Josh, Chad and Ryan are Summer Preserve Stewards. Joseph and Nate are Summer Researchers at Flat Iron Lake Preserve.

Why are you excited to work at the preserve this summer?

Camp leaders:  We love working with kids and being outside; as camp leaders, we get to experience both of those in one setting. We're excited to teach kids about topics we find very interesting. We also love learning new things and will be exploring the preserve with the kids.

Stewards:  To get a better understanding of the preserve, and to get hands-on management and stewardship experience. 

Researchers:  We are thrilled to work under professors we admire, as well as spoiled to work in an area both gorgeous and fascinating. Our research on the preserve is a nice balance of field work, lab work, and literature studying.

During your first couple weeks of work, has anything in particular made an impression upon you or surprised you?

Camp leaders:  Even though our job is to teach the campers, we have learned more than we expected about all the life at the preserve - that has been a surprise. Working with young campers has also helped us overcome fears; creepy crawlies are creatures we don't normally handle, but when you spend a good chunk of the morning searching for them with 4-6 year olds, you end up holding a lot of them!

Stewards:  The vast expanse of the preserve, its high species diversity, and its complex inner workings.

Researchers:  The wildlife here is stunning: turtles walking around, swans enjoying the water, and deer doing their best to stay hidden. Seeing this life increases our desire to care for the spectacular nature surrounding us.

TALES FROM THE TRAILS

Reflections of Justin Heslinga,
former Summer Preserve Steward
in 2005.

Justin currently serves on the Ecosystem Preserve Governing Board as a member at large.
What is your favorite story, memory, or experience from the preserve?
One of my favorite experiences was doing breeding bird surveys during the months of May and June.  I remember standing in the early morning solitude, listening to birds singing, thinking I’m getting paid to do this?  And I can still remember the exact place on the preserve where I first learned many now-familiar bird calls ... field sparrow, red-eyed vireo, wood thrush.

What did you learn from your job at the preserve?
In addition to learning bird calls, I learned how to mix peanut butter and oatmeal together to bait a small mammal trap.  I learned how to identify and treat purple loosestrife and garlic mustard.  I learned how to sample macroinvertebrates from ponds and spread woodchips on trails.  I learned the importance of collecting good data, and how to view that data in the context of longer-term trends.

What do you do now?
As the nature preserve manager with the Land Conservancy of West Michigan, I haven’t strayed too far from what I did on the Ecosystem Preserve 11 summers ago.  The Land Conservancy has 16 nature preserves scattered across West Michigan, and many of those preserves house extraordinary natural features.  While there are many significant challenges to protecting and restoring our local biodiversity, every once in awhile I still get the feeling that I’ve somehow tricked people into paying me to walk around in the woods.

How did your job experience at the preserve influence your current career, family life, faith, or lifestyle in general?
Being a Summer Preserve Steward really helped solidify my career direction.  At the time, I don’t think I anticipated that I’d end up in a situation quite so similar.  But being a steward at the Ecosystem Preserve certainly put me on that path.

NATURE NEIGHBORS

You might find this neighbor
at the preserve and
near your neighborhood!

Meet Your Neighbor:
Little Brown Bat (Myotis lucifugus)
Description:  Little brown bats have glossy, brown fur ranging in color from pale tan to reddish or dark brown. They are smaller bats, as their name suggests, with a wingspan of 9-10 inches, a body length of 3-4 inches from head to toe, and a body weight of only 1/4-1/3 of an ounce. They also have large hairy feet and medium-sized ears (though they are proportionally bigger than human ears – when they are laid forward, they reach all the way to the bat’s nostrils!).
Voice:  They communicate by various means, including vocalization, but we humans aren't able to hear their call frequency.
Habitat:  Colonies of little brown bats rest during the day in dark places like caves, mine tunnels, hollow trees, or sometimes even buildings, often selecting homes near lakes, streams, or other bodies of water.
Diet:  As insectivores, little brown bats eat a wide variety of insects including gnats, midges, beetles, moths, mayflies, wasps, and even pesky mosquitoes!
Interesting Facts:
Female bats, like other mammals, produce milk for their babies. This makes bats the only flying mammal. 
Bats use a system of echolocation to hunt for tiny insects at night. By emitting calls and listening to the echoes that bounce off objects back to them, they are able to locate and identify their prey.
Although bats need echolocation, they are not blind. Like us, bats just can’t see in complete darkness.
Contrary to popular belief, bats are not rodents. They are part of an order called “Chiroptera,” which means “hand-wing,” because bat wings are surprisingly similar to human hands.
One little brown bat can eat 2,000-6,000 insects every night.

Be A Good Neighbor
Without species of bats like the little brown bat, a lot of human activities would be impossible. Bats eat wide-spread pests (like mosquitoes) and agricultural pests, naturally keeping down the financial costs for farmers as well as the environmental costs of pesticides. Bats like the little brown bat, however, are being steadily wiped out due to wind turbines, pesticides, climate change, habitat destruction, and the deadly white-nose syndrome, a fungal disease that is quickly killing millions of bats per year.

You can do your part by making sure you keep any trees with loose or scrappy bark (dead or alive) in your yard, since bats like to roost underneath sheets of bark. The little brown bat especially prefers the bark of shagbark hickory trees. Eliminate pesticide use in your yard, as that will not only limit the food available to little brown bats by killing off their prey, but also increase the risk of accidentally poisoning bats that eat the poisoned insects. To learn more about how to plant bat-friendly gardens or how to construct a bat house for your yard, go to the Organization for Bat Conservation. Additionally, you can learn more about white-nose syndrome and how fight it.

UNPLUGGED: CONNECTING WITH NATURE

Try something new this summer and go bat watching! After reading the Nature Neighbors article (above), you know how important bats are. But bats are not only crucial to native ecosystems, they are also fun to watch.

Bat Watching Basics
1.   Since bats are mostly nocturnal, the best time to look for bats is in the evening around dusk. Remember to use a bug repellent while you're outside.
2.   The best spot to watch bats is over a body of water, since that’s where mosquitoes and other insects live.
3.   Another good place to watch bats is underneath bright lights (like streetlights), as bats will go after the bugs attracted to the light.
4.   Species like the big brown bat also hunt along the margins of wooded areas, so the edge of a woods is another promising place to look.

Bat Identification
Do you know there are nine different species of bats in Michigan? The little brown bat is the most common one. To learn how to identify each of the species, check out the Michigan DNR's bat guide or Michigan Bats.

Playing Catch with a Bat*
Echolocation is a method of finding objects with your ears by using the echoes of sounds on those objects. Since bats need to hunt their prey in the dark, they use echolocation - they emit high-pitched noises and then listen for the echoes. In order to detect these sounds, some professional bat-watchers use special (and often pricey) devices. But you can also watch bats' echolocation skills at work by “playing catch” with them!

All you need for this game is an open area, some pebbles, and a few bats flying at dusk. 
1.   Make sure that people aren’t close so that anything you throw in the air won’t fall on their heads.
2.   When a bat is close overhead, toss a pebble up into the air near the bat (but don’t hit it – that’s rude).
3.   Watch as the bat detects the pebble with sound waves and then instantly dives towards it. When the echoes of the sound waves tell the bat that the pebble is a pebble and not a bug, the bat will fly away.
4.   Try throwing pebbles at different distances from the bat to see how far they can use their echolocation skills.

Batty Adventure
If you find yourself traveling through eastern Michigan, make time for a stop at the Organization for Bat Conservation in Bloomfield Hills. This nationally acclaimed organization offers year-round guided tours of their special Bat Zone which is filled with a variety of bat species. They also offer summer bat walks on Friday and Saturday evenings, during which you can watch bats in their natural habitat. Check out their Annual Great Lakes Bat Festival celebrating bats and their important role in native ecosystems on September 17th! Not traveling in the area? Their website is an excellent resource for learning more about bats. You can even see bats in action from your home on their 24 hour bat cams.
*From the book Night Science for Kids by Terry Krautwurst
Walking trails are open to the public every day from dawn to dusk.
Admission to the trails and Bunker Interpretive Center (BIC) is free.
BIC hours:
Academic year: M-F 9 a.m.-5 p.m.
Summer: M-F 8:30 a.m. - 4:30 p.m.
Closed weekends and holidays.

Contributing writers:
Julie Wilbourn, Department Assistant
Chloe Selles, Program Assistant
Jeanette Henderson, Program Manager
Copyright © 2016  Calvin College Ecosystem Preserve, All rights reserved.