A good time was had by all on Randall's Island today, where four students from the Urban Nature Club planted blueberry bushes in the island's freshwater wetlands. Students were chosen by lottery and I'm so sorry that I couldn't take the whole club. I wish I had a bus rather than a car that seats five. (We do have a trip coming up to a farm at the Brooklyn Navy Yard and I hope everyone will come....details to follow.)
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| Digging in the deep! |
One hundred blueberry plants, the "Elizabeth" variety, were planted by various groups, including ours, which planted six blueberry plants in all.
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| Kaseng and Julian with one of their plants |
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| Maddy and Sarah with their first planting |
Randall's Island is in the East River, between Manhattan and Queens. Together with Ward's Island, to which it is attached, it encompasses about 500 acres. During the nineteenth century, the island was an institutional island, with an insane asylum, infectious disease hospitals, and a potter's field (or cemetery for the poor or unclaimed bodies. Today, it is a hodgepodge with a fire training academy, sports fields and facilities, nature, parkland, a homeless shelter and water treatment plant.
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| We found lots of worms, pill bugs and snails |
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Julian and Kaseng watch the snail crawl
on some invasive phragmites |
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| Sarah holds the fattest worm found |
Click here to see the book on Amazon
If you want to learn more about Randall's Island, or any of the other islands in New York City, check out the aptly named "The Other Islands of New York City," by Ms. Seitz and her husband, Stuart Miller.
4 comments:
Hope you guys had fun, Ms. Seitz. :) I can't wait for the Brooklyn Grange trip. Anyways, about the house sparrows mating, I was right. They chose a tree in my yard to build the nest. The couple work together, and yesterday, the two came back to the tree together with some nesting materials. I'm still thinking of names for them. Also, yesterday I heard a hooo hoooo when I was playing outside in my backyard. My brother heard it too, and I'm certain it was an owl! It wasn't in my yard or anything, but I just heard it. Could it be a Great Horned Owl? Or even a Snowy Owl?? Are there still snowy owls in Brooklyn? I'm working on a drawing I started yesterday. It's called a Gelly Roll, I think. That's what a YouTube video said it was. It takes a LONG time to draw, and I hope it looks good when I'm finished. Oh yeah, and I can't print the Daily Tweeter, because our printer is out of ink, so I might email it to you, and put it on a USB drive for Ms. Friedman to see. It has a little 'comedy skit' in it. Well, see you on Friday! Bye! :)
P.S. What sort of parrots did you see at the bird sanctuary you went to in Florida?
Tasfiya: I think what you heard is a mourning dove. There really aren't owls flying around Brooklyn. Sometimes a few are sited in Prospect Park. But the mourning dove call is a Whoo-whoo. Go to the Cornell sight to hear it.
Ohhhh, I think you're right. It does sound like a mourning dove now that I think about it. Today, after telling us how to read food labels, Sanjida and I started reading the ones on the bag of chips she brought. It had saturated fat, and 0% vitamins. No vitamins at all! There was more of the bad stuff than good stuff in the chips bag. :( Oh yeah, by the way, the time is coming closer for the red tailed hawk eggs to hatch! Can't wait to see the nestlings hatch! Well, see you on Wednesday!:)
UPDATE: Red Tailed Hawk Egg number one hatched this morning!!!!
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