A Hawk Sighting

Today I was at camp and me and my friends were playing soccer. We looked up at the sky and saw a hawk flying towards us. It was soaring over us and we saw its red tail. That's how we knew it was a red tailed hawk. It swooped down and landed on the goal. It was about 2 feet in length, and its wing span was about 3 feet. It had really big talons to grab onto its prey.

Baby deer born in our back yard

In June I was looking at some tadpoles in my backyard that hatched out of some eggs, and I put them in a bucket. Next to the bucket, I found a newborn baby deer and I was about 2 feet away from it. I fed it some blueberries. I also saw it eat them. I saw it stand up for its first time. It was wobbly. Then we went to my uncle Kevin's soccer game, and when we came back it was gone. Since then we have seen it around the neighborhood with its mom. Its getting bigger and bigger. Its losing its spots, and its fur is thicker. I was in my friend's yard when it came out of the bushes with its mom, about 10 feet away from me. I saw it eating plants and berries. It looked right at me.

A Day at the Pond

Today I went to Sugar Pond with my friend Cecilia. We brought some pretty long nets to catch frogs and tadpoles. I caught three bullfrogs and one painted turtle. The painted turtle was very heavy and I couldn't pick it up so I dropped it back in the water. I also saw a giant snapping turtle which had a very sharp beak and a worm-like tongue. I caught some tadpoles and one of them was injured because a frog had been biting on it's tail for food.

Through the binoculars, we saw a very big blue heron in the tree. We saw a Kingfisher dive down and catch a fish and fly up into a tree. It had black and blue wings and a white body and a long grey beak.

I fell in and got soaked in pond scum. I walked around the pond into some large reeds where I couldn't see over them and I got stuck in the middle. Finally I found my way out and caught a frog.

When I was there I saw my other friends Layla and Jordan.

Making an eagle's nest

Yesterday we were planning on making an eagle's nest out of large sticks. When we picked up a large stick, we found a few hornets burrowing in the ground. My friend got stung by a hornet. We had to make our eagle's nest some place else because there were hornets in that area. The next day we built a very large eagle's nest and the whole camp could fit into it.

We also found the old cub scout fort with dream catchers inside of it.

A Day at Nature Camp

Today I went to camp at Lenoir Nature Preserve and we brought out the hose but we had to open a well to get inside. We found a snake, a large Spotted Salamander and a lot of slugs. Some of the slugs were Tiger Slugs and some looked like small banana slugs. The snake was a baby Common Garter Snake. It was very small. The salamander had yellow spots and it was black and was about four inches long.

When we took out the hose, we played a game called Animal Tag. The game is played with one person in the middle holding the hose on shower. Each kid has an animal in mind. Let's say you have a bird as your animal and the person with the hose calls "does your animal have wings?" you try to run to the other side without getting sprayed. My animal was a tick. I got sprayed twice.

Neighborhood praying mantises

Last summer me and my friend found a praying mantis. We saw it eat giant bees and butterflies. The last time that we saw it was in the late fall. A few days later we found an egg casing in a bush. We waited all winter for the egg casing to hatch. I checked on the praying mantis egg casing in the early summer and I found that it hatched. I saw lots of little praying mantises coming out of the egg case. They were very aggressive to one another. They had their tails up and their front claws were striking.

We kept two in a butterfly container and watched them grow. I made a bug sucker out of a straw, a plastic bottle and gauze. I caught flies and other insects, and fed them to the praying mantis. When they came out of their shedding skin they were brown, and then they turned light green, then darker green.

Hike to Lost Lake

Today I went to Lost Lake with my friends. On the way, we crossed a stream and found two frogs. We think they were Green Frogs. When we came to Lost Lake, I found two snakes sunning themselves on a rock. I picked one up with my bare hands for the fist time. It was about two feet long, black with dull red stripes. I looked in my encyclopedia and found that it was a Northern Water Snake. I put it in my net and showed it to my friends. I let the snake go. Me and my friends watched it slither across the water to the other side.

While we were at the Lake, we also caught five frogs, ten salamanders (Sawyer caught 2, Max caught 1, Oliver caught 2 and I caught 5) and four tadpoles. We heard many frogs croaking. They sounded like bullfrogs. We also found a few dead salamanders and water bugs. When I caught a frog, one of them jumped out of my net and I had to catch it with my bare hands. When I put it in the net, it got its head stuck in a piece of netting. We had to use my mom's keys to break the netting to save the frog.

When we came back down to the parking lot, we drove to an ice cream store. I got a chocolate ice cream, Sawyer got a vanilla and chocolate ice cream, Oliver got a milkshake, Max got an orange soda, Sam got a vanilla cone, and Mom got a chocolate ice cream and shared it with Owen.