The AAS education committee met at the Cornerstone Learning Community on September 16^th to discuss goals for the year.  Attending were committee co-chairs Dawn Saucier and Elizabeth Platt, Matt Morris, Karen Wensing, Judy Goldman, and Gail Menk.  We decided on two main goals: to promote learning about birds and nature in the classroom through use of the Audubon Adventure kits and on-site visits by AAS members, and to support hands-on activities in the out-of-doors.   We also agreed to contribute information to the education page of the AAS website.  The following reports illustrate how the committee’s goals are being carried out at various area schools.

          Gail Menk, one of our areas most accomplished birding experts, has offered to accompany very small groups of teachers on local field trips to help them learn about our common birds. He can be reached at 850-575-9361.  Here is a picture of Gail birding in a meadow near Lake Jackson.

Cornerstone Learning Community and listed a Gray Catbird and a Red-eyed Vireo (likely migrants) prior to accompanying as invited guest a bus load of CLC 4th-graders to Birdsong Nature Center in Grady County, Georgia, where said students undertook field activities under the tutelage of naturalist Matt Morris. It was nice to touch shoulders once more with Birdsong's Kathleen Brady who informed me that, interestingly, the Gray Catbird had yet to be listed there as a nesting species despite its southward spread as year-round resident into North Florida as of 1978.

First student project was to help uproot invasive "rattlesnake roots" (Florida Botany, Stachys floridana) crowding out a certain bed of blue-flowering hummingbird-attracting plants which reminded me that I had the day before observed a hummer sipping from the blue flowers of the Pickerel weed. The tuber of the rattlesnake plant does suggest the segmented tail of a rattler and is reportedly edible as radish-tasting "without the hot taste" - good for salads, pickling, snacks, etc; hence one good way to eradicate the plants is to dig up their roots and eat them (according to Florida's Incredible Wild Edibles by R. Deuerling and P. Lantz, copy of which I recently purchased at Tallahassee's Native Nurseries).

Next Mr. Matt lead the students into the nearby forest where he lectured concerning the interesting ecology of the prized longleaf pine, including how the sap of the species serves as a conduit for lightning strikes which tend to ignite fires and burn off the forest understory which otherwise crowd out or eliminate the more valued pine saplings.

He next drew attention to a tent caterpillar-infested persimmon tree and explained the related whys and ways of photosynthesis-how it relates to natures food chain. This fall I have especially noticed that the caterpillars have been steadily denuding at least a dozen tree species in the Big Bend. The Yellow-billed cuckoo feeds on such worms and one wonders if it's pending southbound migration will be delayed well into November by such abundant food supply.

A third project seining and identification of vertebrates, invertebrates, whatever, taken from a brooklet along the way. No telling what resides in or near such ecological niches - cicadas, wolf spiders, other critters, many of which were collected for further study.

Again I noted well how plant life varies markedly with the various elevations of a given forest path (therein lies another field study), and on October 1 I was especially impressed by a spectacularly large growth of purplish colored American beauty berry, a valuable food source for certain of the larger song birds.

A morning well spent. And thank you Mr. Matt, chaperone Marie, bus driver, Keith, and you delightful CLC fourth-graders. I learned a lot.