Visiting Professional, Nigene from Trailside Museum

Post Contributed by Jocelyne Adkins, Program Director/Educator

Hummingbird Station

To conclude our week-long study about birds, we welcomed Naturalist Negin Almassi, from the Trailside Museum in River Forest, on October 5^th. Negin engaged the older students in an activity that encouraged them to consider how birds’ beaks and feet have adapted to their habitat and diet. She set up 7 different stations with common tools (pliers, tweezers, chopsticks, tongs, slotted spoons, pipettes, etc.) to mimic the shape and style of a variety of bird beaks. Then bird “food” items such as dried rice (to mimic insects under bark), water in a beaker (to mimic nectar) and flying marshmallows (to mimic flying insects) gave the children a bit of a workout as they tried to capture their “dinner”, learning which tool/beak functioned best with each food source. This was fun all around from start to finish! 

Warbler Station

Bird Beak Identification Sheet from Trailside Museum

Dexter working at the Song Sparrow Station

Song Sparrow Station

Leila at the Robin Station

Maurice working with Negin, Red-Winged Blackbird Station

Maurice working with Negin, detail of berries on branches

Patrick, recording his findings

Negin discussing owl beak and feet characteristics with Emory, Patrick and Daysha

owl specimen, Trailside Museum

duck specimen, Trailside Museum

Joseph, Laila, Anika and Emory with their "Frankenbird" Creations

For our younger students, Negin brought handouts with variety of bird legs, beaks, bodies, heads, and tail feather shapes to give students an opportunity to create a bird of their own design: Frankenbirds!

We were very appreciative to host Negin and learned so much from her workshop today ~ a big thank you to Negin and Trailside for their dedicated work to share their knowledge with us : )