Science Education

Northern Pacific Rattlesnake

Vertebrate Biology Field Trip to Fairfield Osborn Preserve

For the first time since COVID, I’m able to take my students on field trips again, and we had a fantastic one yesterday. I took my upper division Vertebrate Biology class to one of our university’s preserves: the Fairfield Osborn Preserve on Sonoma Mountain. One of the preserve’s researchers and naturalists – Julie Wittmann – was our host for the day, and our primary target was herpetofauna (reptilian vertebrates and amphibians). We started out by surveying some of the coverboards that were established in 2015, and then we headed down to the creek to look for salamanders. All along the way, we saw AMAZING wildlife, with a couple of absolute highlights for the day.

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By Wendy, ago

Ecosystem Exploration

This week, I’m using some Virtual Field materials in one of my classes (Ecosystem Exploration: https://thevirtualfield.org/virtual…/ecosystem-exploration).

In addition to the questions provided with the videos, I’m going to ask them to do some additional field journaling, including sketches. Here are the two I drew as examples (based on the Mojave Desert video), to give them some inspiration. (They aren’t expected to render things as completely as the tortoise, but the level of detail in the plant illustration should be doable by everyone).

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By Wendy, ago

Roberts Family Development Center Outreach, 2018

Once again I helped introduce a bunch of local youths to the wonders of biology, by tabling during this year’s Roberts Family Development Center visit to the SSU campus. As always, it was loads of fun . . . you can read my blog post about last year’s event for more details in general. SSU published an article about this year’s event, and I thought I’d share that here (since I didn’t remember to take any photos of my own this time around).

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By Wendy, ago

Field Biology trip to Fairfield Osborn

March 15, 2018

The day of our Field Biology trip to the Osborn Preserve was rainy and a bit cold (but at least it didn’t snow on us, as it had when we were at Sonoma Mountain Ranch).

The day of our Field Biology trip to the Osborn Preserve was rainy and a bit cold (but at least it didn’t snow on us, as it had when we were at Sonoma Mountain Ranch). We were undaunted by the weather, though, as I had a cohort of extremely motivated (and knowledgeable) students, including some folks who had gone through the university’s Naturalist Training Program. We were ostensibly here to survey the coverboards on the property (which we did), but we spent a lot of time making more general observations. We were only there for a few hours, and it drizzled on us most of the time, but we saw loads of great stuff, across a wide variety of taxonomic groups.

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By Wendy, ago

Newt Research at Sonoma Mountain Ranch

For our first off-campus field trip of the semester, today I took my Field Biology class up Sonoma Mountain, to the Sonoma Mountain Ranch . . . a working cattle ranch about 30 minutes’ drive from campus. A wide variety of research is being conducted at the site, about the interaction between cattle and ecosystems, and also on the wildlife that uses the preserve. Today, our visit was hosted by Daniel Hudson, an SSU graduate student who is doing research on the various species of Pacific newts.

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By Wendy St. John, ago

Field Biology – Learning to Identify Birds

Took my Field Biology students out for the first time on Thursday, for a field experience on campus. I’m planning to spend the first part of the semester introducing them to different taxonomic groups, and helping them develop naturalist skills – especially observation, identification, and keeping details notes in the field – and this seemed like a good way to start.

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By Wendy, ago

Arrangement Games

Oh my . . . it’s been a while since I posted anything. I had such good intentions last semester, but never found the time to sit down and write. Over the next little while, I’m going to go back and post about cool things that happened last year, but for now, I thought I’d jump back in by moving forward with some content that is timely for the beginning of a new semester: arrangement games. This isn’t anything particularly new or groundbreaking – people have been doing these things for years – but I thought I’d do a quick round up of some of the ones that I find work particularly well.

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By Wendy, ago

The Wildlands Will Recover

Near the start of Winter Break, I was able to tag along on a walk-through of Crane Creek Regional Park, hosted by Hattie Brown of the Sonoma County Regional Parks, and John Parodi, with Point Blue Conservation Science. The primary reason for the trip was to discuss opportunities for students Read more

By Wendy, ago