But now that things seem to have calmed down, we can start to focus on the outdoors again! (Not that we haven't been all summer though right?!?!?)
This is the time of year where we start scheduling schools to come to the river to do what's called a Rivers Are Alive program. This program is great for a number of reasons, but the one that I think is the coolest, is that we get people, young and old, into the water to explore what we may not see from the surface.
When you look at the surface and the banks of the river, it's pretty easy to see where things could live or just spend time. It's what's below the surface that always surprises people.
Now the way we do this is highly scientific. OK not really but it makes it really fun!
We have a number of aquarium nets and we take them into the water and start looking for bugs. Now if you decide to do this on your own, remember a couple things:
1) If we thrash around and run into the water, all of the critters are going to swim away. So if we walk slowly into the water, the bugs are more likely to stick around so we can find them.
2) If you decide to do this activity in a river, please remember that there is a current and if you only walk into the water up to your knees, you should be pretty safe.
3) Rocks that are in the water for a long period of time seem to accumulate algae and other slippery stuff, so when you're walking in the water, make sure of your footing before you put weight on it.
NOW, back to the cool stuff in the river!
The river provides everything critters need to survive. In other words, it's a habitat. Do we all know what everything needs to survive?
Food
Water
Shelter
Air
and the one most people forget: Space (If all of Minnesota tried to live in the metro dome then we couldn't all survive)
SO the critters that live under the water's surface find all of these things right in the river!
If we go into the water slowly and safely, we can start to look for the bugs!
If you take your net and gently tap it on the bottom of the river, lake, pond or stream that you're in, it will get things moving and hopefully right into your net! Once you pick up your net, you'll want to look in it for anything that looks like it's moving, if it looks like something is crawling around, you did it right!
The picture above is a good example of a bug you may be able to find in some kinds of waters. It's called a Giant Water Bug and is a really cool animal! These bugs are pretty big in size, some up to four inches in length. They are a predator and will use their siphoning mouth parts to suck the insides out of what ever animal it catches. They will prey on other water bugs, fish, and tadpoles. Once the Giant Water Bug has finished eating it will leave behind the shell of the animal and start the search for another animal. These guys are brown in color and can be found amongst the plants at the bottom of the pond. When you handle these guys be sure to hold them from the backside so they don't mistake you for dinner!
Another very common bug is a small little creature that you might not notice moving around your net right away.
If you look closely, he looks a lot like a little shrimp, in fact he's in the same family as shrimp are! He's called a Scud or a Sidesewimmer. I always tell kids that this is a good illustration of how scientists are sometimes not the most clever of people when it comes to naming things. They call these animals side swimmers, because they swim on their sides! They are pretty little, most under an inch in length, and are either a grey-ish or green in color. They eat decaying plants and animals and are most active at night.
We already talked about my favorite bug to find in the water, a dragonfly but he has some relatives that can look pretty similar to him. The damselfly and the mayfly both have similar features as the dragonfly but also have differences that we can see if we look closely.
Above is a mayfly. As you can see this is a stage of it's life in which they live in the water, much like the dragonfly. It has three tails which is one big difference between it and it's cousin, dragonflies will likely only have one. Mayflies like to eat mostly small plants and is sometimes called the "cow" of the stream because it grazes on the bottom. These guys are pretty neat too because they start out as eggs, hatch out into these little critters in the water and then when they emerge as adults they will only live for a couple days max. In fact, as adults, they don't even have mouth parts to eat with. They will simply emerge, fly away from the water source, mate, and then die. Crazy right?!?!?!?
Above is the damselfly. As an adult it is commonly mistaken for a dragonfly but we're going to focus on the "water bug form" today. As you can see, in this stage of it's life they look a lot like the mayflies in that they have three tails and similar body shapes. Can you spy any differences though? The biggest one is the size of the bug. Damselflies are much bigger than a mayfly. Also the shape of their tails are different. The mayfly tails are kind of like little threads that come out of the back of the animal where the Damselfly is like a ribbon.
They both breath through gills on their body and the mayflies are really good at pushing the water past their gills, kind of like a fish does, to help it breath. The damselflies ribbon-like tails are actually the gills that they breath through. In the larval form, damselflies will eat any prey that it can catch. They, much like the dragonflies, are very good hunters! As adults they also like to eat flying insects like mosquitoes! YAY!
We've covered some really cool bugs that we can find in the water today. Next time we'll continue talking about bugs and their roles in the water ecosystem.
It is finally cooling down! (I LOVE fall!) Take a hike, go for a bike ride, weed the garden but whatever you decide to do, TAKE IT OUTSIDE TODAY!!
Giant Water Bug, Scud, Damselfly, Mayfly Photo: University of Wisconsin-Extension and the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources. http://clean-water.uwex.edu/pubs/clipart/critters.giant.htm
Check out this You Tube Clip about NEATure!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hm3JodBR-vs
River Coloring Page:
http://www.4to40.com/images/coloring_book/dwarf_wedgemussel.gif
http://www.supercoloring.com/wp-content/thumbnail/2008_12/a-river-in-the-forest-coloring-page.jpg
Damselfly Coloring Page:
http://images.hellokids.com/_uploads/_tiny_galerie/20090313/dragonfly-coloring-page-source_0qw.jpg
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