Sumner students track an education

Published 12:00 am Wednesday, February 14, 2001

It is February of a long winter.

Wednesday, February 14, 2001

It is February of a long winter. You need food. You strike out into the snow to track, sniffing the snow, moving, sniffing again. Finally, you and the others with you corner a deer in a tangle of brush and limbs near a quiet stream. Unable to speak, you communicate nonetheless, gesturing and moving in unison – a team, a pack. A wolf pack. And at your success you howl, trilling victory through the trees.

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Though it was played out with a few whispered utterances when there should have been silence, and though the pack was comprised of fifth-grade students from Sumner Elementary School, the above scenario matched the scene at the J.C. Hormel Nature Center in Austin on Tuesday to a T. T for timber wolf, that is.

Chris Gogolweski’s class expanded their understanding of the north woods predator by becoming one, if for only a few minutes. As part of a program directed by Larry Dolphin at the nature center, students were divided into two packs, each with alpha leaders, to track two students playing the part of deer.

Each of the "deer" students carried a squirt bottle filled with orange-colored, scented liquid and marked their trail every 12 steps. One pack followed a cherry scent, while the other tracked an orange scent. The trek to find the make-believe deer led students along a path thick with tracks and dotted by droppings, left by the real life deer that populate the woods near the nature center.

In the end, the students learned that tracking by your nose and maneuvering through the trees is harder than they could have imagined – only one "pack" found the deer. Like their timber wolf counterparts, the students playing the successful pack howled after finding the two hiding deer.

Prior to the tracking session, Dolphin explained to the students that Minnesota has a wolf population of 2,500. Northern Wisconsin has a population of about 200 wolves. Dolphin went on to say wolves eat deer, mice, voles and beaver.

In a demonstration, Dolphin dressed a student in a fur coat, flippers to represent webbed feet, swimmers’ goggles to represent transparent eyelids, exaggerated teeth and a belt that held a false beaver tail. This was Dolphin’s way of showing the students how adaptation to an environment plays a vital role in the survival of a species, such as in the life of a beaver. The scent-tracking and trail-marking exercises showed adaptation and, as Dolphin explained, "winter clothing is an adaptation, too."

After the bundled-up students had learned about adaptation in the deer and wolf worlds, they headed back inside the Ruby Rupner Auditorium to talk, wondering what would be next.

B was next, actually – B for bird banding. Though volunteer Dick Smaby only expected to show the students the how and why of banding birds, an unexpected visitor showed them much more. While Smaby was explaining the banding process, a sharp-shinned hawk landed on a cage and used its talons to grasp a bird caught in the trap.

"This is the first time a hawk has nailed a bird in a trap," Dolphin said. Smaby, Dolphin and the students exited the building and the hawk flew within sight. Dolphin checked the bird in the trap and released it.

Smaby, a retired biology teacher from Riverland Community College, is a "master bird bander," licensed by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service to band birds. He does so for classes like Gogolweski’s whenever the nature center asks him to visit. The students watched as Smaby lifted a dark-eyed junco from a trap and placed a small, numbered metal band around its leg.

The band, Dolphin informed the students earlier, is light and used to track birds over great distances or within the area. One bird, found in a trap while the students were watching the process, already had been banded Jan. 9, evident by a number on the band around the bird’s leg.

The concept of migration was presented to the students in conjunction with the banding, as another example of adaptation. After banding, each bird is weighed and its data is recorded on a computer disc and sent to a bird banding lab in Washington, D.C. If a bird with a band is found, the person who found it can call the lab and find out where the bird was originally banded.

Dolphin said students can come to the nature center in the spring to bird watch as another way of tracking the migration of birds through southeast Minnesota. This spring session, which also includes fire-building and a pond study, is another option open to fifth-grade teachers and their classes. Several groups of students come to the center each winter and spring for the programs.

"We’ve got a place like this," Gogolweski said of the nature center, "we’ve gotta use it."

"I have been out here four or five times," he added. "I do it so the kids will see what the nature center has to offer – not just walking, but cross-country skiing," wolf-tracking and bird-banding.

As the students got ready to start the cross-country skiing portion of their half-day at the nature center, Dolphin told them that as he came back into the building he saw the hawk chasing the newly banded junco. It was a reminder of the cycle of life and the need to adapt in nature. The students listened, accepted and moved on, ready to experience the next part of their day in a few acres of nature on the outskirts of Austin.