Goldstream Nature House

On Friday 16th February, 1st Cobble Hill cubs rolled into Goldstream Park for an evening of nocturnal study. They were enrolled in the BC Parks' "Night Eyes" program which aims to expose youth to nocturnal animals, their haits and habitat. To our great delight we were greeted by Ally who led us on our Survivor Challenge at Newcastle Island, and also by Pam who would guide us through our evening.
After introductions, nature house orientation and ground rules, we were launched into a crash course on Owls. Pam showed us really cool Owl stuff like real feaqthersand how different the were to regular bird feathers. She also demonstrated various Owl calls or voice patterns and in doing so coersed Bagheera into using a computer. The Sounds were accompanied by an exquisite slide show showing pictures of the various Owls and sillouettes depicting the relative sizes of the birds should we wish to identify them.

We were also treated to graphic demonstartions of some of the Owl's adaptations which make them such efficient night hunters. The first was stereoscopic vision tests to demonstrate visual depth perception. Owls have eyes in the from of their heads much like humans and unlike most other birds.
The second demonstration was audio tracking. While our cubs were able to track a sound very effectivly when it moved from side to side, we had much more difficulty tracking the sound when it moved up and down vertically. An owl can track vertically as well due to having its ears at different levels on either side of its skull .... pretty amazing stuff!

Dinner Time

Well after all that talk about how Owls catch their food, time for our cubs to go hunting ... and look what they found ... hot dogs and veggie dip complete with a fire and sticks to roast with. Perfect, and we soon had the whole pack nourished again and ready to face the amazing revelations of what Owls do with their food ..... luckily the cubs did not have to emulate this behaviour............ read on!!

Owls tend to swallow their food complete - no picking off the choicest morsels, just shove it down and digest it.

This leaves them with a bit of an issue ... what to do with all the bones and fur/feathers. The answer ........ make cute neat bundles called pellets with the bones on the inside and all the fur/feathers on the outside , then cough them up so they don't have to pass through your whole system. How do we know what these pellets are made of .. well .....

Dissection Section

The cubs were split into groups of two or three and each group given a real owl pellet to pull apart and try to figure out how many animals were encased in the pellet. Th eprocess involved softening the pellets, then pulling them apart and trying to extract as many bones as possible from the fur mass. These bones could be matched up with vole skeleton drawings to try and reconstruct the skeeton of the owl's food. One or two of the cubs were a bit squeemish about handling regurgitated owl food, but everyon did extract bones and on average we found that each pellet contained about two animals (voles).

It's enough to drive you batty!

Well that Owl stuff really was a hoot, but now we have to move on to those other denizens of the night sky ... BATS! Before telling us what they knew about bats, Ally and Pam wanted to know what we knew, so we had a great game of "Believe it or Not!" with bat facts. This highlighted the fact that we didn't all know everything!
We then settled down to watch a video of some bats in the attic of our sleeping quarters for the night ... a bunch of mummy bats waiting to give birth to baby bats. Pam explained about how they hang there and what cool creatures they are and we discussed what they might eat. Then it was outside to act like Bats and try to get an idea about how they catch their food. We played a few games in the dark that were really cool and gave usa feel for how hard it would be for us to be bats!.

Mug Up

Well that was a pretty full evening wasn't it! ..What? It's not over yet? Ahhh time for a nice warming mug of Hot Chocolate, oooh and Pam's "homemade" cookies? Hmmm I didn't know her Lastname was Thrifty! With warm, full bellies we were all ready for a nice sleep ....... But....... what's this?
We have to put on boots and coats? Ohh coooool!, we get to walk around the park in the dark!
"Feet in the forest that leave no mark,
Eyes that see in the dark."
And we were off - no flashlight for these young wolf cubs - we we out to hone their night senses and see what hey could make of the darkened forest. We didn't take any flash photos of this trip as it would spoil the effect of being out in the dark, but the cubs got to try using their senses of hearing, smell and test their night colour vision. All in all it was a great experience and to top it all, we actually found a nocturnal creature .. a red backed salamander, saved from the heel of a young cub by one of our sharp eyed rangers!
Before heading back to the house, Pam showed us the "Super secret, don't tell anyone about it Bat hang out" ... but we can't tell you about that!!
Back in tha nature Ally had prepared a super difficult, horribly hard TEST for us ........
.............. we had to make our beds and go to sleep. Evryone settled down quickly and had a great night's sleep.
The following morning, after cleaning up teh Nature House, we were treated to a sumption,breakfast buffet on the patio surrounded by the majesty of Goldstream Park.
A truly memorable end to a truly memorable event!