I Herald & lantern 22 August '84 Stone Harbor Sidewalk Sale SH-15

/-Jersey Cape NATURALLY t * Exploring With Children * j Part I— The Salt Marsh at

* . Field work in the summer can be draining and discouraging, even to the most experienced field ecologist. Here at the Wetlands, however, we have groups of kids every week romping about outdoors — in all sorts of conditions — doing field collections. Even on the muggiest, buggiest, mid-summer day the enchantment of touching live (wild) animals is enough to keep children happily motivated. The kids have been real troopers — not allowing greenheads, deer-flies or mud to daunt them. The following is a scenerio of some of our "critter encounters". Our first <najor geld day involves collecting animals from the salt marsh. While the majority of the kids are pulling ribbed mussels and mud snails from the banks of Scotch Bonnet Creek, a couple are inevitably poking away at the burrows under our feet. "Got 'em!" or "A crab!" usually announces the capture of one of the hundreds of fiddler crabs in our small collection area. It is all my assistant and I can do to keep the kids' attention once they've found fiddlers and discovered that the one huge claw on the male "doesn't hurt". This is about the time that we rush them off to the creek where we seine (a method of netting fish) . The murky tidal creeks in this area tend to make the inexperienced onlooker believe that we won't catch much. That attitude changes rapidly as the net is dragged up, wriggling with the motion of hundreds of baby fish. The kids' eyes widen with the opening of the net. Our jumping and wiggling catch usually includes: the very common Mummichug (Killifish); Silversides (Shiners/Spearing) ; small Mullet; and speckly little sheepshead minnows. Crawling or hopping around among the fish are tiny long-clawed hermit crabs; clear, little grass shrimp; and young blue-claw crabs. The following scene usually involves kids with hands full of baby fish trying to get them into the bucket or creek as quickly as possible so they don't "suffer-cate"!

1 (ifl (rtL/t Part II: The Beach

Our other major field day is a trip to the beach (at Stone Harbor Point) . If we have a good low tide the range of critters that we find is phenomental. Half the group starts off at the jetty looking at the bands of blue mussels and rock barnacles in the intertidal zone. Usually about the time that someone finds a periwinkle (the tiny snail that lives on the jetty) a call goes 'tp, "Crab, crab!" Nine times out of ten it is a rock crab, crawling past our feet tc a safe place among the rocks. If not a rock crab, then it's either a blue-claw or (speckled) lady crab heading for the jetty or trying to dig into the sand. The crab hunt has begun and continues until the kids are pried away to join their classmates. The other group has been sifting through the sand for the animals that live dug in right where the waves are breaking. Our seive — a 2 foot square piece of wood with screening on the bottom — allows sand to flow through but retains small pebbles, shells, and critters! Sometimes we dig up little lady crabs or sand (mole) crabs, both of which crawl frantically about the seive. We almost always catch tiny Spionid worms (segmented worms with long, curly antennae) and digger amphipods. These little, white, shrimplike animals are a delight to the children because they'll dig quickly into handfuls of wet sand. Upon investigation of the gully, we can often find other animals, all of which have been trapped there as the tide receded. Long-clawed hermit crabs and small green crabs are quite common. With a little luck we're able to catch the stripped killifish and large silversides that frequent the surf line. Sea stars that are tumbled off the jetty also make their way to the gully during high tide. Sometimes we even find a live horseshoe crab and the kids take turns putting their fingers in its mouth and claws to see how harmless it really is. The only beach critter wcf find that the children don't like is the Lion s mane jellyfish because (as one little girl put it), "It stinged me even though it was dead! "

Text: Jane Boraczek Illustration: Marion Glaspey

The kids get to test all they've learned on the last day of Miniecology. This involves a Salt Marsh Scavenger Hunt during which they must look for salt marsh swelling creatures. * My best memory of this event y thus far this season is of a \ brother/sister team during the J 3-4 grade session The little girl f (who was in the 1-2 grade session) stood over a bucket peering in, with mud streaked ail over her face, arms, and legs. To her brother (who is two years her senior) she said, "Those are Mud snails! Marsh snails are litt-i-lier and live under dry seaweed!" A true mini -ecologist is born!

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