Natural Lands Trust Preserve Blog

Summer Camp: Many thank you's

Summer camp has wrapped up and the barn looks bare as we clean it out. We have to thank the many people whose time and energy made camp possible:

Thanks to our staff and volunteers: Pete, Eloise, and Molly Smyrl; Patience Kaltenbach, and Sean Quinn. Thank you to the DeMarco Foundation for their financial support of camp. Thank you to Frank Hartung for letting us borrow his haywagon. Thanks to Kendra Luta for playing her cello on "sense of sound" day (and for helping with behind-the-scenes paperwork), to Denise Barringer for training Bailey, our Schipperke, to demonstrate on "sense of smell" day, and to Rachael Quinn for helping with the shuttling of cars on the Schuylkill kayak trip. Thank you to Natural Lands Trust's building stewardship staff: Bob Johnson, Steve Holmburg, and Scott and Luke DiBerardinis for their expertise in building the miniature golf course. Thank you to Tim Burris for setting us up with kayaks, and to Roger Nichols and David Casteneda for their tour of ChesLen Preserve. And to the rest of Natural Lands Trust's staff and board for their support of our program.

And especially thank you to the great kids who attend. Next: we're planning our fall nature club programs.

Mariton - Red Admirals

Last year, many people commented about an abundance of Red Admiral butterflies (Vanessa atalanta) at Mariton.  Not only did we count 12 on the Butterfly Census in 2007, but many people in the Northeast noted an "irruption" of the species.  Today, I saw my first Red Admiral of the season (none were counted during the Census in June).  I have not even seen one while working in the meadows this summer.  This photo is from Carole Mebus.

Crow's Nest: 7th and 8th Grade Camp

Hi! We're the 7th and 8th Grade Crow's Nest campers. We thought it would be nice to tell you about what we did at camp this week.

Our camp is different from the other weeks of Crow's Nest Camp because we spend a lot of the time away from Crow's Nest Preserve! We go to other Natural Lands Trust preserves and other places NLT has protected to learn more about what NLT does.

On Monday we went on a web quest on the Natural Lands Trust website (www.natlands.org.) We learned a lot about who runs NLT and about how many different preserves NLT owns. For example, when we learned that a few preserves, such as ChesLen and Mariton, have names that were made from the names of the people who donated them. We found out that Glades Wildlife Refuge is the biggest preserve: 7,500 acres!

We also found time to go to Hopewell Lake to practice kayaking (which we would need later in the week!) and, of course, we went in the creek!

On Tuesday we went to ChesLen Preserve, where we got a hayride tour of the preserve and kayaked 2.5 miles on the Brandywine Creek. We got to see some very big hay bales (most of ChesLen is farmed), and we saw some great wildlife: there was a fawn that let us get pretty close before it jumped into the bushes. Only one person flipped when we were kayaking, but we all managed to get wet! Thanks to Roger and David, the preserve managers at ChesLen, for hosting us!

On Wednesday we started by making ice cream! (Churning the ice cream was a great way to build kayaking muscles!) Then while the ice cream was freezing, we went down to St. Peter's Village. We jumped on the big rocks in the creek there, then hiked back to the preserve on the Horseshoe Trail. We learned about the history of St. Peter's (it was an iron and black granite mining town, as well as a tourist destination.) We learned that we have some local black granite in the preserve center at Crow's Nest: on the barnyard wall and on the counter tops. St. Peter's, the Horseshoe Trail, and Crow's Nest are all in the Hopewell Big Woods, which Natural Lands Trust is helping to protect. After we got back from our hike, we got to eat the ice cream! Yum! We also played NLT bingo to review what we had learned earlier in the week.

On Thursday, we spent all day kayaking on the Schuylkill River. We went over one set of rapids made from a broken dam. We tried to find Andruss Island, an NLT preserve, but accidentally missed it because we were going too fast. (Or maybe Sean didn't recognize it.) By the end of the trip, we were all paddling fast to get to our lunches on time. We had to pull the kayaks up a really muddy slope, making us even more ready for lunch. Finally, we were rewarded with food and swimming. The river was really deep; we weren't even a quarter of the way across and it was over our heads!

Overall, camp was a great learning experience plus a ton of laughs! We learned that there are a lot more preserves than just Crow's Nest, and that all of them are special in their own way. We can't wait to come back next year and visit other preserves!