This was my first year coming out to Coyote Creek Habitat Day at the Coyote Creek Visitor Center at Anderson Lake County Park, a Santa Clara County Park. Since I’ve been with KCCB a full year now, I was looking forward to seeing the excitement that I had missed last year just before I joined.
Stepping past the Visitor Center, I was greeted by young volunteers with birds perched on their arms, and a snake from the Wildlife Education & Rehabilitation Center. Owlivia the screech owl, Denim the scrub jay, Zorro the turkey vulture, and Noodle the gopher snake.
Lined up throughout the orchard, grass area, and covered picnic area were many activities that kept kids excited and engaged in learning about the environment.
At our very own table, KCCB Volunteer Coordinator Annette McMillan was quizzing kids and the high school volunteers, with Nature Jeopardy!
While I spent most of my time taking in the atmosphere of excited kids and their parents with my camera in hand and talking to the folks hosting activities at their tables, I also got swept away by some of the really intense activities.
One of those was the owl pellet dissection. As I walked around the setup and watched kids pick apart furry clumps, I was approached by a volunteer – and next thing I know I was oh-so carefully looking for a rodent scapula, and accidentally breaking it for something close to 30 minutes.
It was actually really educational to look through all the pieces of bone in that pellet and see how the body was broken down, and see the life cycle on display. The kids next to me were maybe just as much absorbed in investigating the rodents’ skeletons, with the diagrams there to help them see where each bone goes.
Another activity I spotted was an archaeological dig made out of boxes of sand with various objects. The task was to ask children to identify roughly how old it was. Kids got dirty, and inquisitive looking at the various pieces of modern trash and rusty horseshoes and obsidian arrowheads.
County Parks offered some hands-on activities for children to match like objects or build an environment with wildlife, people, and housing-related objects, such as fences and parking lots.
Our friends at Grassroots Ecology were hosting a table with all sorts of interesting activities, including an oak tree identification game our own Annette absolutely adored! One of their games was a diorama that helps demonstrate to kids the effects of human pollution.
Using stuff kids would absolutely love to get down and dirty with, such as sprinkles and paint, kids built a cityscape while learning about pollutants and how it can affect our waterways. Each material represents substances such as oil, and dog poop, which made the kids giggle every time without fail.
Coyote Creek Habitat Day brought together all the wonderful organizations we partner with, providing information to people about the resources they offer, such as our colleagues at BioBlitz Club and Santa Clara Valley Audubon Society, as well as education on environments in the Coyote Creek watershed people may not know about, such as the Máyyan 'Ooyákma Open Space Preserve. Also, Habitat Day got young kids excited to learn and understand the environment and hopefully inspire wonder about our natural surroundings, as well as hopefully the adults. It most certainly got me learning!
For more information about the event and participating organizations, see the County's website.
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