tanglewoodnaturecenter

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Turkey Vultures!

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TIL that the Audubon Society has released official statements on the difference between a "bird", a "birb", and a "borb", featuring such gems as:

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summer camp discovery

what on earth is this funky thing?

The Wilderness Survival summer campers found it on a hike on the red trail. Counselors were puzzled. As it turns out, after some research... this is a firefly larva! 

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Meet the Board of Directors! Janet Chilson, Secretary of the Board

What we most appreciate about Janet: her unflagging support, her birds-eye-view and systems-level understanding of nonprofits in general and this place in particular, and her warm sense of humor. She devoted decades of her life to leadership roles with Girl Guides, supporting outdoor education for girls, and we’re so glad to have her here at Tanglewood for the decades to come!

When and how did you first hear about Tanglewood?

When I came to the States in 2000. Being from the UK – in the UK, we have what we call Public Footpaths. Everywhere. When I first came here, I was wondering, Where the heck can you hike around here? Everywhere has these yellow signs saying “POSTED. TRESPASSING. PRIVATE.” And honestly I drove round and round and round this local area looking for somewhere to walk. And then I discovered Tanglewood. I do remember it in that other place (on West Hill Rd.) and one of the first times I went there, I went into the visitor center and met this volunteer. And of course as soon as she detected my accent, she immediately wants to show me the hedgehog, because we have them in the UK. So I was like, Oh, sure! She was really friendly and great. The trails were small and mainly uphill, but it was open and available, for free, for people to hike. I was already coming up to Tanglewood before I joined the board.

I was asked to join the Board by Deb Lauper (a former Board member). We both share a love of birds and birdwatching. But the real reason I was recruited was to help with the HR committee.

In the UK, I used to be really heavily involved in the Girl Guides. I was single at the time, and I was running a Brownie unit, also the county commissioner by the time I left, so I was at meetings every night. It was my life! From the time I was a Brownie at 7 years old til I was 40, I spent so much time in Guiding. I had a lot of experience there in education, with girls, activities, organizing with other leaders, and running the county campsite, Pettypool. I thought I could bring some of that experience with me here.

What kinds of Board service do you find tough?

Not being from around here is a challenge for me; I don’t feel I have as many contacts. I used to work with people at Corning and they’d see someone in the street and go “Oh that’s so-and-so, they’re cousins with so-and-so.” That’s the part I struggle with because for fundraising, I don’t know as many people, personally - which is why I think I can contribute more to the organization with HR and marketing, to help reach out to the community in a different way. This place supports education of kids and adults, in the natural environment - what’s more important than that?

What kind of Board service do you find the most fun and rewarding?

Well at the moment I head the HR committee. It’s all the hiring, and the annual review with the staff, which is one of the meetings we enjoy the most.  I enjoy HR because you can’t, obviously, run this place without staff. It’s a very important aspect of this place. We have a great staff, and we’ve been very fortunate to have relatively little turnover.

I have to say – this is just me, I think it’s genetic with my family. My mother, my two sisters, my brother also. We don’t know what it is about us. We just step up. I like stepping up. I have a buzz when I get to thinking about organizing things. Re-organizing committees and such – I can really get into this! 

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Interested in learning more about Board service, what the different committees do, or if your skills and interests might be of benefit to the community? Contact us and we can put you in touch with Janet and other Tanglewood Nature Center board members! 

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The entire article is fascinating - and really drives home how biases in western cultures have impacted our science:

Bennett reexamined previous Golden-winged Warbler studies in which males had been detected at 10 times the rate of females. She concluded that researchers were finding vastly more male birds because males vocalize more, and respond more aggressively to audio playback of bird calls. She also determined that survey efforts were biased toward sites dominated by males.

Furthermore, Bennett found a discrepancy between where male and female Golden-winged Warblers occur and where conservation efforts were fo­cused. Bennett used statistical models of where male and female golden-wings oc­cur on their wintering grounds, coupled with assessments of loss of forest cover, and discovered that from Guatemala to Colombia, female Golden-winged Warblers are losing nonbreeding habitat at twice the rate of males. Yet current conservation planning efforts target male-dominated areas.

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Summer camp begins on Monday! The camp staff and our assorted critters are so excited! We’ve put together a quick welcome video to introduce ourselves and pass on a few reminders for camp families as they start packing up for Monday. 

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THROWBACK TO THE BEE SAGA OF 2015!

Off to the Museum Association of New York conference in Cooperstown this morning - excited to talk about blogging and what has worked (and what has eroded due to entropy) since this tumblr adventure began in October 2015. 

And lo these four years later, John has designed and built an entirely new beautiful observation hive, one that’s a frame taller, that sits lower so kids can see more easily, and it’s on wheels so it can be scooted out to the deck easy as can be. The old observation hive (as seen above) has been removed from the museum. Hive mortality over winter is pretty high - John estimated that the odds might be 3 or 4 to 1 against the bees making it - and this was the first winter in memory that our honeybees didn’t survive. While it’s a bit sad for some visitors, it is convenient for total hive replacement, and the new bees (when delivered from Draper’s Apiary later this month) will love their fancy new digs!

The care and keeping of our bees, with John! Part one: FREE RANGE BEES

I am transitioning Tanglewood’s blog over to tumblr and re-posting some of my favorite posts. This post was originally written on Nov. 13th 2014. 

John Slechta is a longtime volunteer at Tanglewood - so long that the first beehive he tended at Tanglewood was at the West Hill/Water Board property!

This week, he came in to make add a frame full of honey to our beehive, removed from his beehives at home. Bees aren’t picky about honey - they’ll eat honey that isn’t from their own hive - and the extra frame will help our bees stay fed through the long winter when there isn’t much to forage outside.

Outside, you ask? These bees can go outside? Yep! They have a secret tunnel (“secret” in that not many people actually look for it, but it’s right in plain sight) that connects the hive to the outside right through the wall. Can you see it? This is the view most of our visitors have, and they think the bees are entirely sealed off from the world:

So, of course, when John took off the hive, someone had to stuff the tunnel with paper towels so that any foraging bees didn’t try to return to the hive and end up exploring the museum. That someone would be me.

That would be the fastest I have ever deployed a paper towel in any context. 

While I made sure there would be no Steve McQueen bees* coming through the tunnel, John set up his smoker outside on the deck. The smoke can be anything (no gourmand bees demanding hickory smoke) and beekeepers prefer burlap because the loose weave of the fabric brings in lots of air. Once the smoker was going, he unlocked the hive and cracked the door open to get the smoke in where the bees were.

Want to see what happens after he releases the bees? Part two’s on the way! 

*they would more likely be Stephanie McQueen bees, since the workers are all female! The drones don’t get out much. 

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We were talking about this in the office before one of our educational programs began. This skit is impeccably done, so much so that it’s painful (and frustrating) to engage with the actual situation of the "not enough space suits for women.” Women belong in science. Women are critical to scientific inquiry, progress, research, interpretation, education. GET THE DARN SUITS IN ORDER! MAKE A COUPLE SIZE SMALLS!

"I'm not mad, you know. They can make a special spacesuit for a dog, or a special spacesuit for a monkey," Bryant, clad in a blue astronaut jumpsuit, says as McClain. "But a human girl, only one gets to be moon queen. And so, yeah. I'm actually happy...as...hell." 

There’s a little more info on the who/what/where/why/how here, and of course that article explains that McClain made the call (to swap out humans instead of wearing a different sized suit, to stay on schedule). But it is still hard to understand why NASA would only have men’s sized medium as the smallest size. And only one available at a time. 

Really didn’t think that having two suits that fit women would be the hardest part of their literal rocket science. 

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This is a lesson we try to impart to the children we teach in an empowering way, not a scary way: we have a lot of responsibility, and we are capable of respect, so let’s go be respectful, curious, enthusiastic scientists together!

This is also, on a much smaller and more practical scale, why the kids don’t pet the amphibian animal ambassadors. It’s really fun to teach about skin as a respiratory organ but that does mean we observe with our eyes more than our hands. (This can be disappointing to kids when they’ve pet an arthropod, reptile, and mammal already.) 

my comic for the next issue of @disquietcomics about frogs and empathy

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WORM MOON WORM MOON WORM MOON

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Happy world sparrow day! 

The Tongue-Cut Sparrow is a Japanese fable about the story between an old man and an injured sparrow.  This Japanese book dates from the early-mid 20th century and we found a handwritten translation inside the book.

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Peep me going full Galadriel over any insect-inspired jewelry in any museum/nature center/zoo gift shop

where are my museum gift shop memes

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A great reminder as spring begins! 

There are no wildlife rehabilitators at Tanglewood, either - please do not bring us any baby birds! If you need contact info for a Finger Lakes/Twin Tiers local rehabber, you can visit our website or call us at 607-732-6060. 

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I did not realize that our scorpion was, in fact, the demogorgon from Stranger Things, but I have seen the error of my ways in this photo of Sting eating a cricket. 

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This is the quintessential rookie mistake that every employee and volunteer has made. (We order hundreds of crickets and mealworms a month from Fluker’s.) 

Love you, delivery drivers who transport chirpers!!!!!!

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I ADORE their visible storage and can get sucked into playing on the tablets and scrolling around forever.

On the other hand, while I Get It, I don’t appreciate salon style display because it makes much of the art so distant from my weak eyes! 

They had a really lovely Vonnegut exhibit there a year or so ago - the Johnson brings in some fascinating pieces.

(Where are you going next? What’s your lineup for the new year???)

 A New Museum a Month - December Johnson Museum of Art, Cornell University, Ithaca, NY Thursday, December 20, 2018

I finished up my year of visiting a new museum each month in Ithaca at the Johnson Museum at Cornell. I have heard  good things about the museum and was glad to finally get the chance to visit. The building itself is a work of art fashioned of concrete. The museum website has wonderful info about the structure.

We entered through the lobby in the wing and proceeded downstairs to the temporary exhibition galleries. The exhibit entitled Moon had East Asian prints and a wonderful piece that included light and sound by artist Sarah Brayer. Pleasures of the Night, a student project, explored nighttime activities under electric lights and Object Lessons combined the art and history of photography.

My favorite temporary exhibit was Xu Bing: The Character of Characters, a five-channel animation. The panoramic video is 18 minutes long and I could probably have sat and watched it two or three times.

The Visible Storage Gallery was another highlight of the lower levels of the museum. The space contains hundreds of pieces arranged by geographic region and type of artifact. There are several tablets throughout the space where visitors can enter the accession number of an object and learn more about it. I have always loved open study storage!

Moving up to the first floor, we saw 19th century and modern American and European art and contemporary art. I liked seeing the 19th century art hung in salon style.

That was a really nice contrast to the display of the modern and contemporary works.

The second floor was filled with a little bit of a wide variety of works from medieval art to 17th century Dutch art. As a classicist, I was particularly interested in the ancient Greek and Roman pieces, though, I will admit that I was a little disappointed by how few were on display. But the museum obviously has a huge, diverse collection and I realize they did not create the exhibits expressly with my own preferences in mind.

The fifth floor was, in my opinion, the most impressive space in the museum. Not only does it showcase the museum’s broad collection of Asian art, it offers fantastic views out over the Cornell Campus and Ithaca.

The art was arranged by region and included a wide variety of materials from ceramics and wooden statuary to textiles and prints on paper. My favorite thing was that there was a mix of historic and modern pieces displayed side-by-side showing how the artistic traditions of a region continued into newer works. In the Chinese section, for example, a wood and gesso statue of Nanhai Guanyin made during the Yuan dynasty (1279-1368) was displayed near a ceramic piece entitled Fashion and Mao made by artist Suo Tan in 2007.

The Johnson Museum is a beautiful art museum and a wonderful place to wrap up my year of visiting new museums.

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We’re just a three hour drive south from Love Canal. 

This winter break, I’ll be re-reading A Civil Action (the book! not the Travolta movie!) and flipping through the books I kept from my environmental racism courses in college.