Thanks, Julie Collier, for bringing in two raptors: a red tailed hawk and a screech owl!  What a treat for our class!  She gave us a copy of a drawing she had done of the screech owl to show its remarkable camouflage.  She’s a wonderful artist as well as a naturalist! Julie also brought in scores of Native American artifacts from across the United States as a way to help us launch our unit of study into the pre-colonial Americas.
This week we are dissecting barn owl pellets. Whoooo knows what we will discover within?!?

Mad science last week was to test the strength of egg shells.  Each group design held 8-10 textbooks of weight!  Even shells that have been cracked in half are more than strong enough to hold up the weight of a fully grown hen.  That’s useful adaptation!

We also tested the shells in a vinegar bath. Acid softened and weakened the shells. There is mounting evidence that rising acidity in the ocean may be having a similar effect on the shells of mollusks such as mussels.