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Natural learning

By Mark Guydish mguydish@timesleader.com
Education Reporter
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Paula Longo told the first-graders they could run to the bird blind but had to be “super quiet.”

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First-grade students at the Bear Creek Community Charter School jump and giggle Thursday as they chase milkweed seeds tossed into the air by Environmental Education Coordinator Paula Longo. The National Wildlife Federation has certified the school grounds off Route 115 as a wildlife habitat.

S. JOHN WILKIN/THE TIMES LEADER

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Bear Creek Community Charter School students look through a new bird blind as Environmental Education Coordinator Paula Longo identifies the birds feeding on the other side. The blind helped the school property get certified as a wildlife habitat.

S. JOHN WILKIN/THE TIMES LEADER

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They got the running part down. But on the way a few belted out prolonged shouts of “AAAAAAAHHH!” as they raced to spy on chickadees, nuthatches and a hungry woodpecker.

“Well, the birds are pretty used to them by now,” Longo quipped Thursday.

The youngsters at Bear Creek Community Charter School were racing out of afternoon class to enjoy what this week became a certified “Wildlife Habitat” behind the school. Along with bird watching, they caught fluttering milkweed seeds and released a caterpillar Alexis Roman delicately toted around in a cup.

The students were reasonably calm once they got to the stockade fence with patches of lattice at child-eye level, allowing them to spy on birds visiting an array of feeders set up at a tree-line. “You are being much quieter than the kindergarteners,” Longo told them. “That’s why you’re seeing more birds.”

A woodpecker alighted next to a suet cake, prompting Longo, the school’s environmental education coordinator, to pass around a similar cake still in its wrapper. “That’s fat and seeds. It helps keep the birds’ insides warm.”

“Could I eat it?” Joey Malloy asked.

“No, that would give you a bellyache,” Longo advised.

Malloy contented himself by peaking around the fence. “That woodpecker is still eating!”

Jim Smith, the school’s chief executive officer, said the certification as a wildlife habitat came mostly because Longo was moved from part-time to full-time, giving her the chance to help complete projects like the bird blind, an outdoor classroom, stream water check points and a garden for students to tend.

Thursday’s outdoor session was cut short by a chilly sprinkle, but not before Longo took them to another corner of the field close to the school where a cluster of milkweeds had burst their pods and released feathery seeds.

She grabbed a cluster and let the breeze take them, urging the students to capture as many as they could. A surge of kids and giggles erupted.

Longo collected the seeds to freeze over winter, a requirement before they bloom in spring and eventually mature into food for Monarch butterflies that students will get to study.

One task left: releasing the butterfly Roman had cradled throughout the commotion.

“We’ll put it under the steps, that way no one will accidentally step on it,” Longo said. Then it was back into school, with Paige Irvin doing a little dance while singing. “We have milkweed seeds! We have milkweed seeds.”

Thus answering the obvious:

Got milk(weed)?

Mark Guydish, a Times Leader staff writer, can be reached at 829-7161