Webinar: Natural History at Home – Neighborhood Naturalists
Aired April 10, 2021
Katie Derloshon:
Welcome to today's Natural History at Home Family Program. My name is Katie.
Gale Robertson:
I'm Gale. We are educators from the Smithsonian's National Museum of Natural History. We are really excited that you're here to join us for today's program. I love hearing about all the nature walks. We're going to be talking a lot about how to explore nature in your neighborhood, so I'm glad to see people are already out there doing this. Before we begin, we'd like to give a special thanks to our generous donors, volunteers, and other important partners who enable us to discover, create, and share new knowledge with the world today and every day free of charge.
Like I said, we have a great program for you today that'll hopefully give you ideas of how to enjoy the outdoors wherever you are. Today's program is all about practicing two really important science skills that help you notice a little bit more about the wildlife that you may have in your neighborhood or your local park.
Katie Derloshon:
We're also going to show you how to create an important tool for you to use while you and your family are exploring outdoors, a field notebook. So for this activity, you'll need the following materials. You'll need some paper, so that could be blank lined paper or blank white paper or any color paper or an older notebook, a pencil, some crayons or coloring materials, and then something to bind your paper together if it's not already in a notebook. That could be a stapler or a string or even tape. Cool. Awesome. Thank you everyone for getting those materials ready.
Speaking of what our viewers create, before we jump into today's program, let's take a look at a few of our art submissions from March's program. So during March's program, we were joined by brain scientist Elaine Miller and artist Marli Richmond. Together, they shared their book, "Amazing Brains!," to us, and discussed how scientists and artists can work together to create books to share knowledge. They even walked us through how to draw two different animal brains. Thanks everyone for sending in your brain drawings. They were fantastic and so much fun to look at.
Gale Robertson:
Those were some really great drawings. For today's program, before we get started, I just wanted to go over a couple of logistical things to help you navigate the program. Today's program is going to be about 45 minutes long. There will be a recording that we will send a link to after the program. So if you want to watch it again, or if you need to leave early, no worries. We will have a recording of that program on our website. If you want to ask us any questions or answer any of the questions that we ask you, you do that through the Q&A function that a lot of you have already warmed up and used.
Those of you who haven't used it yet, you could either find that button on the top of your screen or the bottom. We also have closed captioning available. So if you want to turn that on or off, you could find the button that says CC, and it's next to that Q&A function. We also have an amazing team working behind the scenes. Some of you guys might have already had gotten responses from them. We have Juan Pablo, Christian, and Odalys in the backend answering any questions and just helping this machine run. So thank you, team.
Katie Derloshon:
Yes, thank you, team. While our museum is closed, we are broadcasting from our home. I'm joining you from my home in Alexandria, Virginia. Gale is joining us from her apartment in Washington, D.C. We'd love to hear where you, our viewers, are joining us from. You can use that Q&A feature to let us know where you're joining from. Also, if you haven't already told us, in the Q&A, you can tell us about the last time you and your family played in nature. Gale, we had some other ones coming in, lots of people seeing different types of birds right now, so that's really cool.
Gale Robertson:
I know. I saw one ... One of our friends saw a blue heron. That's amazing.
Katie Derloshon:
Nice. That is really cool. We've got robins and blue jays have been seen too. All right, so we've got friends from D.C. Hello, Mary and Frederick, Marilyn and Gretchen, and Greenville, Sophie, hello all the way in England. Robert in Woodbridge, and Rose in Baltimore too, so we've got some locals and some friends that are joining us from across the sea. Thank you so much everyone for joining us today. Hello again to any of you who have joined us since we've started. My name again is Katie.
Gale Robertson:
I'm Gale. I am also excited to have you guys join us today for our program, which is all about exploring the natural world in your neighborhood or your local parks.
Katie Derloshon:
Today, during our program, we're going to learn what a naturalist is and what they study, while also learning to practice naturalist skills too. We're also going to create and use a field tool or a science tool that naturalists use out in the field. So again, we're going to learn what a naturalist is. We're going to learn and practice naturalist skills, and create and use a tool to use while we're practicing our scientist skills. This is all part of becoming a neighborhood naturalist.
Gale Robertson:
Right. Let's start by talking about what it means to be a naturalist. Friends at home, have you heard that word before? Do you have any ideas about what it means to be a naturalist? If you do, share them in the Q&A. What is a naturalist?
Katie Derloshon:
All right. So Gale, there might be some clues in that word naturalist that you have bolded there. It makes me think about the name of our museum, the National Museum of Natural History.
Gale Robertson:
Yes. That's actually a really good observation of that word, Katie. I'm glad you mentioned it because we will be talking about how naturalists are connected to our Natural History museum. All right. We have some friends writing things in. Rose says that a naturalist studies nature. Excellent. Sophie says that being a naturalist is all about studying and being interested. Yes. Rebecca says it's someone who studies nature. Excellent.
Katie Derloshon:
Sounds great. All right, Gale, these are all fantastic definitions as to what a naturalist might be.
Gale Robertson:
You guys hit the nail on the head. Yes, a naturalist is someone who studies plants and animals in nature, and they look for patterns in nature. They might want to make observations one day, and then make them another day, and look at, like compare, but an important part of being a naturalist is also to share the knowledge that you collect so that we know more about the world around us so that we can protect it and preserve it.
Katie Derloshon:
So in order to protect and preserve those, we need to start by making some observations, and recording what we find. Thanks again for that introduction to what a naturalist is, Gale. I think it's also really important to point out that naturalists are curious about the world around them, and this curiosity can lead them to want to learn more. So in order to do this, naturalists must make observations and study animals and plants and nature. So when someone makes an observation, they use their senses to gather information.
We as humans can use our eyes to see, or our ears to hear, our hands to feel and touch, our nose to smell, and even our tongue to taste. These are all different senses that we have that we can collect information. We use observations to go ahead and collect that information about the world around us. Are you all ready to practice using your senses to make an observation? Let's try it out together. Go ahead and take a moment to look around or to listen or feel around in your room or wherever you are, and use senses to make an observation.
Then tell us in the Q&A, "What do you observe in your space?" Again, maybe you're just using your eyes, but maybe you want to close your eyes, and use your ears. Maybe you want to feel around or smell. I'm not sure if you have anything yummy around you to taste. Maybe you could do that too.
Gale Robertson:
Katie, I'm in my room, and I have these plants that I am propagating. I observe that they are actually growing some roots now. I'm really excited.
Katie Derloshon:
Wow.
Gale Robertson:
They have little knobs, and the roots are getting longer. That's my observation I will share with you.
Katie Derloshon:
I love it. Thanks for sharing that. Robert's also noticing that they're seeing purple flowers outside that were not there during the winter. Woo-hoo.
Gale Robertson:
Awesome.
Katie Derloshon:
Sophie can smell some soup that they ate for lunch, so I'm hoping that they also were able to taste that it was yummy, or made the observation in the past maybe when they were eating it. Rebecca notices a spider plant that's green and long and has thin striped leaves. Rose sees a computer and carpet, and then they can hear the keyboard, taste candy, smell candy, feel the keyboard. Oh, this is awesome. Then Brandon smells mints. That sounds yummy. Thank you everyone for sharing. All right. That was a great warmup to what an observation is and how we can make them, so a great job using the senses. I think, Gale, we were able to practice as a community all of the senses here.
Gale Robertson:
I love how there's a combination of people making observations of the things that are in front of them or the plants that they have, some of the smells. Maybe Brandon can find those mints wherever they are. Yes, that was a really great job, warming up, making observations. Let's narrow it down a little bit, and talk more specifically about how naturalists make observations. So for those of you who don't know this, this is a picture of the museum that Katie and I work in. This is the National Museum of Natural History in Washington, D.C. The mission of our museum is to understand the natural world and our place in it.
A lot of the scientists in our museum, they do the work of naturalists. Sometimes they do work in the lab, but they also do things out in the field, and make lots of observations and collecting out in the field. They don't call themselves naturalists anymore. Nowadays, a lot of the scientist's titles are just more specific to the thing that they study.
Katie Derloshon:
I think that's right. That's how someone that studies plants is a plant biologist or a botanist, and someone that studies fossils is called a paleontologist.
Gale Robertson:
They have these specific titles, but they still do the job of a naturalist. They study plants and animals. They find patterns, so yes. The scientists at the Smithsonian, they go out in the field, and they are driven by curiosity, just like you said before. They want to know what's out there. They want to understand the natural world, and figure out how it's interconnected, because these things can tell us about the past, but they can also help us plan for the future. So, our Natural History Museum, it's over 100 years old, and we have millions and millions of collections.
These collections are records of what has happened in the world millions of years ago to even more recently like 100 years ago or 50 years ago. That's why we're called the Natural History Museum, because we have a record of the past and what happened in nature and what things look like. In addition to collections objects, we also have field notebooks. You can see in some of these pictures, we have people taking notes out in the field, because an important part of a collection object is the story around what was happening when that thing was collected. That's what field notebooks allow us to do.
They allow us to make observations, and record them, and save them for future study. I have some really cool examples of field notebooks to show you, and this is to prepare us for that tool that Katie said that we're going to make together, and that we're going to practice using. We're going to get some ideas from these field notebooks for the notebooks that we're going to make ourselves. Now, these photos are from our Smithsonian Libraries and Archive. So, you're going to be seeing some old historic photos. This first one, this is a notebook from a scientist. His name is Edgar Mearns. He was a bird scientist or an ornithologist. That's the fancy word for what a bird scientist is.
He made a lot of collections of birds for the museum. He went on some expeditions. Here he is with his family in ... I don't know if you guys noticed what they're standing next to, but that is a gigantic forest of cactus. This notebook that I have here is showing a list of the birds that he observed out in nature, so it's just a list. In your field book, you could just list what you see. Some important details of this notebook, you'd see that there's a date. Also, I was reading really closely. This is definitely handwriting that we don't usually see nowadays with the fancy cursive.
But if you look really closely, you can see that he saw the same birds in different time or different days. So, this whole notebook is just lists of birds. That's one way that you can keep record in your field notebook. Another one that we have is this is a field notebook from a scientist. His name is Martin Moynihan. He was a scientist who studied seagulls. He really liked to do a lot of observing out in the field of how seagulls behaved, how they acted. So in his notebooks, he included a lot of different details. This is different from the one that we just saw, but some of the things were the same.
So he had the date, but he also included some drawings, some really amazing drawings. I think that's important when you're doing some behavioral observations to draw what the birds were doing. He drew this bird eating this fish, bending their necks in different ways, but this was really interesting. He also wrote a little bit of a story about ... or not a story, but he wrote his observations of what he saw. In this one that I've put a square box around, he's talking about how there's two birds fighting on the ground, one bird left. He observed this fight. Also interesting in this field notebook is that he would also write questions.
So a lot of times when you're out there in nature, and you're observing, you might not know something, but you want to use your notebook to keep track of those thoughts and things that you want to explore later on. This scientist is interesting too, because he was one of the founders of a research lab that we have in Panama, the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute. That's a cool tidbit about that scientist. This one is this scientist here, this is Cleo Calderón. She did a lot of work collecting ... She had a very, very vast collection of grasses and bamboos that she brought to the museum, to our museum.
You can see her field notebook was actually really simple. It's something that you could find at Target or at Walgreens or at Rite Aid, but she used her notebook to keep track of the collection items that she was bringing back to the museum. In your notebook, of course, there is a date. The numbers here, the 2466, that's a collection item, the collection number. Then she also included information about the location where she collected these objects, even the elevation of it. You can see the altitude was 75 meters. Then there was a description of the plant.
She also drew a little bit of a picture in there. This is, as you can see on the notebook, from a collecting trip in Brazil in 1978. The last one I'm going to show you is really special, because this person right here that I'm circling, his name is Alexander Wetmore. He was also another bird scientist, and he was the sixth Secretary of the Smithsonian. The Secretary of the Smithsonian is the head of all of our museums. However, this notebook that I have is from when he was eight years old, so he had his own field journal.
He was collecting observations out in the field when he was eight. It's really cool because you can see the love of birds already starting when he was young. Of course, there's a date in the field notebook, and then he has observations. In this, he's talking about how he heard a meadowlark singing, and it was the first one that he had heard since the 1st of August. He's just sitting on a box in his yard making observations of birds in his field notebook.
Katie Derloshon:
Wow. Those are fantastic stories in field notebooks that you just shared with us, Gale. Thank you so much. These field notebooks also can show us how people have made observations and recorded them, and then they shared them with the museum through their field notebook through us now having those field notebooks. We even saw how even though each scientist was using the same scientific skill of making and recording observations, they each had their own unique way of recording it, whether it was the type of notebook or whether or not they included pictures or made lists.
Scientists can use field notebooks as tools, again, to keep track of their observations, thoughts, and questions while they're conducting their research. Each scientist's field notebook can be different and unique, again, based on how the scientist chooses to make their field notebook. It can even be as simple as a pencil and a piece of paper. Today, we're going to create a very simple field notebook to help you and your family start to record some of your own observations together. We will then record an observation together here as a group so we can practice making sure we know, or we remember how to take down all of that information that we think is important to make our field notebook and our field notebook entries as detailed as possible.
So to start out, we want to make sure that we have the following supplies ready to go. So again, you'll need some blank paper. It can be plain paper. It can be lined paper, or it can even be an old notebook. You'll need a pencil, some crayons or color pencils if you have them available. You can always add color later on too, and then something to bind your paper together, like a stapler or tape or yarn. My little stapler there in the picture is actually out of staples, so I'm going to be using the string today to bind my notebook together. Gale, what are you using?
Gale Robertson:
I'm going to be using tape, so I have some tape.
Katie Derloshon:
All right.
Gale Robertson:
I have some old paper. I wanted to recycle the end of the notebook that my daughter was using for school, so I just cut some pieces, the blank pieces out. I'm going to use that.
Katie Derloshon:
Sounds good. Again, our field notebook today is going to be super simple, but afterwards, you and your family can decorate it, and then make it as unique and fancy, or keep it simple that you and your family would like to have. However you want to let your field notebook to look like, you and your family can decorate it later. All right. Gale, let's go ahead and make our field notebook. While we're making our field notebook, I'm going to swap my camera view so that you can see the steps that I'm doing. I'm going to do that now.
Gale Robertson:
Right. Families and friends at home can follow along also.
Katie Derloshon:
All right, cool. Gale, can you see my materials okay here?
Gale Robertson:
I can. It looks good.
Katie Derloshon:
All right. So first step, gather your papers into a pile. I have my papers here. I have them in a nice pile. Then step two, we're going to fold our papers in half. This is going to help us so that we can have that book feel, and it's going to give us more pages. I'm going to fold mine in half. You can think of it as hamburger style, because it's the landscape here. Then you fold it in half. I mean, I guess you could do it the other way, hot dog or long style if you want. But for me, I'm going to choose to do it this way, hamburger style. Awesome.
Gale Robertson:
I'm going to do my hamburger style too. Some people might want to do hot dog if it's better to hold in your hands. As you probably noticed with those other field notebooks, some of them were small. Some of them were big.
Katie Derloshon:
Exactly. Next, we're going to staple or bind our papers together. I'm going to do mine again with string. To do that, I'm just going to put my string through the middle, and then I'm going to tie it on the side. Gale's doing hers with tape, and maybe you at home are doing yours with a stapler. Maybe you're doing it also with a string or a yarn. Maybe you're lucky, and it's already in a notebook, and it's already bound together. I tied a little knot there. Then to be a little bit fancy, I'm going to tie a little bow. There is my little bound together field notebook.
Gale Robertson:
I did the ends of mine so that it won't get so floppy, but I think I might go all the way through to tape it all the way through so that it makes it a nice little ... What do you call it?
Katie Derloshon:
A crease or?
Gale Robertson:
No, what do you call the end of the book?
Katie Derloshon:
The bind?
Gale Robertson:
Yes, the bind.
Katie Derloshon:
Oh, the spine.
Gale Robertson:
Oh, the spine, the spine, that's what I ...
Katie Derloshon:
Cool.
Gale Robertson:
Yes. I think I'm going to make a spine. I'm going to make a stronger spine.
Katie Derloshon:
Now, once you've gotten your book bound together ... Again, since we folded it in half, that gives us lots of pages. We have double the pages now, and you can use front back. When you and your family are out making observations, maybe you want to have one observation takes two pages. Now, today, we're just going to try, or I'm going to try and just use one page, so I can fill up the rest with all different types of observations that I can make outside later on this afternoon. But I do want to make a cover for my book, so for my cover, I'm going to go ahead and bust out my crayons here.
My favorite color is purple, so I'm going to try and find my purple crayon. I'm going to write my name. I'm also, I think, Gale, going to put my son's name on here, because maybe he and I could go out together today, so Katie and Elias's field notebook.
Gale Robertson:
Those of you, if you guys followed me along with the tape, I know one thing I like to do because it's nice in the middle, but it might not be so nice when you open up that first page. I'd just like to crease the notebook. I like to open up that first page, and crease it, and then maybe loosen up the tape at the tip at the end so that it allows it to open up so it still stays together.
Katie Derloshon:
Excellent tip. One more thing I'm going to put on the cover of my field notebook, Gale, is today's date, because I know sometimes that scientists will write the date where they started their field notebook, and then you can also put the date when you end your notebook too, right?
Gale Robertson:
Yes.
Katie Derloshon:
Today is April the 10th.
Gale Robertson:
I'm going to do that too.
Katie Derloshon:
2021.
Gale Robertson:
I noticed that on the cover of Dr. Calderón's notebook is that she had the date on hers too on the very cover, but not on the inside.
Katie Derloshon:
Oh, maybe ... There you go. Well, we can get, I guess, an idea of when the observations would've taken place, right? We know it's after that. Awesome. Well, now, Gale, the last step for our field notebook is to fill it up, and make and record some observations. Now though, before we start making our first observations, maybe we should make a list of some information or things we want to try and include with each of our field notebook observation entries, because you shared lots of different types of examples, and you highlighted some of those key features.
So as a group here, we're going to launch a poll. You can ... I'll launch it, or you got it. Thank you, Gale.
Gale Robertson:
All right. Like Katie said, and she had ... It was a great idea. Let's brainstorm what type of information we'd want to include in our field notebook. We have time and date. We have the weather, pictures and or drawings, the name of what you're observing, just the questions that you may have, location, description, or if there's anything else that you think is missing that we haven't listed here, let us know in the Q&A. All right. We see some people voting. This is great.
Katie Derloshon:
Gale, it looks like every single option here is having some votes. It looks like all of our participants and all of our families are definitely thinking that this information is important. It looks like the top votes are for pictures and drawings, weather, location, and the name of what we're observing.
Gale Robertson:
Great.
Katie Derloshon:
As we make our field notebook observations together today, I think we can include as much of this as possible. What do you think, Gale?
Gale Robertson:
I think so. We're going to close the poll in five seconds, four, three, two, one. All right, that's it. It looks like location got the most votes, but we also have a lot that are close by. Like Katie said, we will utilize a lot of these in our notebooks when we do our observation later on.
Katie Derloshon:
We have a comment in the Q&A about maybe in the future needing to add in more information. That's right, so maybe once you've made your observation, you can do more research. You might find out more about this specimen or whatever you're looking at, this organism you're looking at. By maybe even leaving a little bit of space for future information, that's important too. Thank you for that idea, Christopher.
Gale Robertson:
I think we're going to do that later on too, right, Katie? I'm going to share a story of when my daughter and I went out, and we did a [inaudible 00:28:37]. Good job, Christopher.
Katie Derloshon:
I know. Now that we have our field notebook ready to go, it's time to practice being a neighborhood naturalist by making our first field notebook entry. Gale and her daughter Juniper are going to walk us through making observations in their neighborhood park to see what plants and animals we can find to study.
Gale Robertson:
Right. Yes, thank you, we are. So just to remind you of the naturalist skills that we've already practiced earlier, we're going to practice them with plants, animals, whatever in nature that you can find. We're going to practice gathering information about what we see, and remember to use as many senses as you can. I'm going to play a video. There's this park that Juniper, my five-year-old, and I go to quite often, but a lot of times, we're going there for the playground, or we're going there to run around, but we don't really have our naturalist eyes on.
This time earlier last week, or earlier this week, we went with our naturalist skills in mind. I'm going to show you the video and then some photos. Like I said, I want you guys to practice those naturalist skills. What do you notice? What plants and animals do you see? What else is there that you want to record about this place in the park? All right, so let me queue up the video. All right. Here we go.
Katie Derloshon:
Gale, are they sharing their observations in the Q&A, right?
Gale Robertson:
Yes, please do. All right, here we go. I got to rewind it. We will play this twice so you have time to make some observations. The video may be a little choppy, so just a warning.
Juniper:
That white butterfly.
Gale Robertson:
Is there a white butterfly?
Juniper:
It just stopped. That white butterfly just landed. It just landed.
Gale Robertson:
All right. That was play number one. I'm going to play it again. I see some people are making observations, excellent, in the Q&A, and please continue to do so.
Juniper:
That white butterfly.
Gale Robertson:
Is there a white butterfly?
Juniper:
It just stopped. That white butterfly just landed. It just landed.
Gale Robertson:
All right. Oh my gosh. I'm seeing a lot of really great observations. Christopher sees some trees. Oh, I love this. Some of them don't have leaves on the branches. Very good observation. Maybe that'll change. Brendan hears birds, bird songs. Gretchen also hears birds. Did you guys hear Juniper saw a butterfly? Did you guys see the butterfly that she was talking about? I see that Gretchen saw it. Robert sees purple flowers on the trees. Yes. Birds, green grass, brown dirt. One tree has cherry blossom leaves on it. I love it. People are using their other senses. They hear the wind. Lots of trees. Yes.
Dr. Adamski is saying that a cellphone camera was used to instantly document. Absolutely. It's probably spring, because the trees are blooming. Great connection. Then Robert saw the white butterfly. Yes. We were excited about the white butterfly. Excellent. Let me show you some photos since on the video, it's a little bit hard to see, but let me show you guys some photos of other observations that we made, Other things that we saw. Let's see. Actually, let me not optimize it. All right. Here are some other things.
I was bummed that during the video, we didn't have as much wildlife, but we saw a squirrel. We saw a lot of birds. We saw three or four different types of birds. Here's a close up of that purple tree. Then we saw a couple of really teeny tiny flowers that you have to-
Juniper:
Wow.
Gale Robertson:
It was really hard to see in the video, but if you got really close to the ground, you could see it.
Katie Derloshon:
Gale, and it's really interesting too, because in that left picture, is that a nest or is that a squirrel? It's a squirrel on the tree.
Gale Robertson:
It's a squirrel in the tree.
Katie Derloshon:
Oh, man. Oh, lovely. All right. Definitely different types of wildlife that we could see in there. We only saw, I think, that little butterfly in the video. There was probably other wildlife really small in there.
Gale Robertson:
Well, you can hear them, right?
Katie Derloshon:
We can hear them. That's right. We knew they were there. We still had those signs that ... We could make observations that they were there. We just couldn't find them. All right. Great job practicing those observation skills, everyone. Gale, thanks to you and Juniper for sharing your park exploration with us. Now, let's practice our next naturalist skill recording observations. We practiced making them, but now let's practice recording them. We're going to use our field notebook now to practice making our first field notebook entry.
Gale Robertson:
I am really excited about this, because just like Dr. Adamski noted, we were using our camera so that we can make observations and look at things later on. This was actually a good opportunity, because we did a combination of writing down notes and descriptions. Juniper would describe what she saw, and I would take notes of them. Juniper actually had the cellphone, and was taking pictures, but there was this one flower that we saw in the park, that we saw a lot of that we wanted to look at a little bit closer, and add to our field notebook. Let me show you this. You guys couldn't really see it, but it was up on that hill.
To the left is a picture of it far away. Then what we did was we just took pictures closer and then closer. That's something that you might want to do is have multiple angles of something so that you know where this little thing was in context to the park. There is a picture of the flower. Then I am going to show you, guys, the ... This is the picture that we were thinking that we could make observations on, and add to our field notebook. This is a yellow flower that we found in the park.
Katie Derloshon:
Wonderful. All right. I'm going to be making that field notebook entry alongside all of you at home. Gale's going to support us in creating our entry. We will try to include some of that information that we decided earlier was important like a picture, the date, the time, location, maybe some weather, and any questions we had, definitely what type of flower we're looking at. I'm going to go ahead and set up my notebook, so let's go ahead. I'm going to go ahead and also swap my camera. Cool.
I'm going to set up my notebook. I'm going to go ahead and open it up. I'm going to just go ahead and use this first page right here. Move the string over on the left now.
Gale Robertson:
I'm ready too.
Katie Derloshon:
Awesome. Now, I'm going to take notes. I'm going to use a pencil, but I'm going to actually use a black color pencil so that hopefully it will show up a little bit better for everyone. I'm going to use the top half up here to write down some notes and some of that information we think is important. Gale, I think that you might be able to help us with some of that, because since this was your observation, and then I'm going to use below for my picture and then maybe any questions that pop up or any of those extra notes or description, things I want to add on as I'm making my observation. That'll go underneath my picture.
The top is going to be the location information, middle for the picture, and then bottom for any questions or extra details I want to note. Gale, what was the time and date of this observation? When did you make this observation?
Gale Robertson:
I made this on Tuesday, April 6th.
Katie Derloshon:
I'm going to write April 6th. Do you remember what time you made your observation?
Gale Robertson:
Yes, I wrote this down. It was at 10:45 AM Eastern Time. We are in Washington, D.C.
Katie Derloshon:
I'm going to abbreviate that with ET. Cool. Thank you. We have the date and the time. Gale, where did you make this observation?
Gale Robertson:
The park, it's called Kalorama Park.
Katie Derloshon:
Can you help me spell that?
Gale Robertson:
K-A-L-O-R-A-M-A Park, and it's in Washington, D.C.
Katie Derloshon:
All right. I'm going to go ahead and put that down too, so I remember. This is Washington, D.C. Cool. Thank you so much. Now, we could see from the video that it was sunny out, but is there anything else that we could note for weather, or is sunny cool? Should we put sunny?
Gale Robertson:
It was definitely sunny. It was not cloudy. It was actually a warm day. It was about in the 70s.
Katie Derloshon:
All right. I'll put sunny weather.
Gale Robertson:
Yeah, because it is definitely a contrast to today where it's cloudy. It's a cloudy, chilly day today, just a couple days away from when we made this observation.
Katie Derloshon:
Totally. Then Gale, what about the type of flowers? One of our things that we decided was important was the name of what we're looking at, so what type of flower is this? I know I've seen this flower too recently outside, but I have no idea what it is. Do you know the name of the flower?
Gale Robertson:
I also did not know what it was, but I used an app. It was called the Seek app by iNaturalist, which I will show you how to use. It identified it as a lesser celandine. It was in the buttercup family. I see that Dr. Adamski has also given an identification too. It also said it was in the buttercup family, so it might be interesting. It's a little different from what we had identified. Maybe that's something that we can look into.
Katie Derloshon:
Would you mind spelling how you identified it, the celandine?
Gale Robertson:
Oh, the celandine, C-E-L-A-N-D-I-N-E.
Katie Derloshon:
All right. Now, Gale, do you think I should underline this, or how I should identify that this is the plant that we looked at?
Gale Robertson:
You know what, maybe next to it we can say-
Katie Derloshon:
Plant or something?
Gale Robertson:
Flowering plant.
Katie Derloshon:
All right. I'm going to write that smaller, flowering plant.
Gale Robertson:
I know that some of our friends had said they would include a description. So if I had time, maybe I'll do this later on, but you guys saw that I saw it on this slope right in the park. I would write on a small hill in the park, and also maybe talk about how there was a lot of it. It wasn't just one, but there was a whole section of yellow plants.
Katie Derloshon:
I went ahead and added on hill, like next to Kalorama Park. Then can we go ahead and see it again, so we can draw that picture?
Gale Robertson:
Let me share this screen again. Here it is.
Katie Derloshon:
All right. So families at home, this is your time now to take some close looks or some close observations of this flower. Draw what you see. If you want to add color, you can add color. I'm going to go ahead and start actually drawing the flower. To me, it looks like it has eight longer, I guess, maybe oval yellow petals. I'm going to start with those. To me, it's important to count them, because that helps me stay accurate with my drawing, seven, eight. To remember they're yellow, I'm going to find my yellow crayon maybe. Got it.
I'm going to go ahead and color them in yellow. It looks like there's some detail in the middle of the flower too that I can add maybe with my color pencil here. It looks like there's little longer rectangle parts that pop out a little bit.
Gale Robertson:
You know what is really cool about, I did not notice them until we started drawing it. It's one of those things, where you take a picture of it, but having a chance to sketch it out and to look even closer at it helps me notice things that I wouldn't have noticed before.
Katie Derloshon:
It looks like there's maybe some other clovery or other green little plants underneath it. I'm just making some little green circles, but also just some blades of grass all over. I'm going to just draw in some black lines, and then I'm going to grab my green crayon. It looks like below and down a little bit to the left of the flower, it was a little bit darker. I'm wondering if that's maybe the stem of the flower.
Gale Robertson:
I thought about ... I know that it's best practice to have a leaf that goes along with the flower. I figured next time I go out, I'll probably look and see if there's a leaf associated. Then Christopher makes a really good observation that there are a lot of other green plants around it, not necessarily part of it, like grass, and clover-like shapes. Excellent observation. Christopher, I did see that you wanted to see the video again so you could see the butterfly, so we will play that again.
Katie Derloshon:
And as your family's finishing your drawing, you can talk and think together about some other notes or observations or maybe some of those questions you have about this plant. One question I have is I definitely want ... You are sharing that we were hearing potentially another name of this for this flower, or it was identified. I'm going to put a note here at the bottom to research this flower for identification, because I want to check in with the names that we had to see what was different between the identification we got in the Q&A, as well as the identification that you were able to find too.
Gale Robertson:
Yes. Absolutely. Dr. Adamski followed up with a lot of ... That's why ... We use the common names, but scientists have scientific names. Sometimes those are a little bit more accurate, because common names could be different and used, you know, a lot of different common names. I love that. I'm actually going to make a note too to check another resource.
Katie Derloshon:
We have a question in the Q&A of wondering about the size of it. I wonder if this is maybe what might be helpful. We have a suggestion from one of our educators behind the scene that when we're taking pictures, or when we're out in the field, sometimes it's helpful to have a scale or something you're familiar with, like a penny or a quarter. You can take a picture next to it so you can remember for your field notebook that this was about the size of a quarter or a nickel or my hand. That's a great thing to think of. I think it was Juan Pablo behind the scenes was helping us figure that one out. That's great. Thank you so much.
Gale Robertson:
I know ... Thank you, Rebecca, for asking that question, because it was about the size of a dime, an American dime.
Katie Derloshon:
All right.
Gale Robertson:
Another thing that you can do since you have your pencil too, you could also put your pencil tip next to it in case you don't have any coins with you. That's another way to have something that's handy that you see often that you can relate the size to. But yes, great question about the size. I don't know if you guys noticed, but there's a picture of a teeny tiny white flower. I said, "Juniper, put your finger there so that people could see how small it is." Because if you take a picture of it, it might look really big, and it might look a lot bigger than it really is. Yes, great conversation.
Katie Derloshon:
Thank you, everyone, for those questions and other observations you're sharing in the Q&A about what your family is thinking for this plant. Gale, thank you for walking us through and helping us to make this observation of this little buttercup flower. Thank you so much. But Gale, I do remember a few minutes ago that I mentioned to you that I for sure did not know the name of this flower. Honestly, I don't really know the names of many plants that I see when I am outside. How did you learn or figure out the name of this flower?
Gale Robertson:
So when I was out in the field, I wrote down yellow flower, and I took a picture of it, but I was able to use this app that I have on my phone. I mentioned it earlier. It's called Seek by iNaturalist. It's an app that you can get off of the app store or off of the Android store. What they do, they use image recognition to identify plants. So what you do, you turn your camera on. You hover it over the plant, and you take it at different angles, and it tries to figure out what it is at the species level. So, you can see an image of the identification here of this plant. Then you can take a picture, and it records it as an observation that you made.
Then it's actually really fun to use, because that day that Juniper and I went out, we got a badge because we took pictures and made observations of five different plants. It keeps track of the things that you observed too, because one of the things that we had observed, we had already observed, and so they were just like, "Oh, good job seeing it again." It's just a fun way. If you have your camera out already, and you're taking pictures, you can go that extra step, and try to see if you can get it identified right away, because we always want to know what a thing is.
Katie Derloshon:
Do you have other examples of things you've identified with Seek?
Gale Robertson:
Let me show you. So out on that trip, oh, so here is, again, a picture of the flower, and then it tells you what it is. Then it allows you to take a picture so you could save it. Then here are some ... Someone in the Q&A actually said that was a redbud, and they were correct. I had identified that tree as an Eastern redbud. There was a little teeny blue flower that was identified as a Bird's-eye speedwell, and then I also had another ant. Here's another ... This is a picture of another view that you can get on the app that gives you a little bit more information about that animal or that plant.
It's a really cool app. It's fun to have for instant gratification out in the field.
Katie Derloshon:
Personally, I think the little badge aspect to it too sounds fun, to earn little badges and do little activities to encourage you to use it a little bit more maybe. Fun. Gale, thanks for sharing that app. It sounds like a fun tool that we could use in addition to our field notebooks to help us identify different animals and plants in our neighborhood.
Gale Robertson:
It is fun. You don't need to log, I know that there are some apps like the iNaturalist app where you have to log in, but this one, you don't necessarily need to.
Katie Derloshon:
Cool. Awesome. Well, thank you for sharing that, all about that app. The Seek app, it's called again, right?
Gale Robertson:
Yeah.
Katie Derloshon:
Wonderful. When I think next month, next month, we're going to do a continuation of our program today, right?
Gale Robertson:
Yes, absolutely. Today, you guys just got to learn two naturalist skills of observing and recording. Then next week, we're going to take those observations a little bit further. We're going to start thinking ... Oh, what happened?
Katie Derloshon:
Next month.
Gale Robertson:
Next month. Did I say next week?
Katie Derloshon:
Yep, next month.
Gale Robertson:
I wish that we could all be together again next week.
Katie Derloshon:
I know, right?
Gale Robertson:
But next month, yes, May 1st, we are going to be taking the things a little bit further, and looking for patterns in ... We're going to be talking about making patterns from the observations, and then talking more about how these observations are used to protect and preserve. Why do we make so many connections or collections? Why do we want to make so many observations? A lot of it has to do with understanding what is out there, understanding how biodiverse our world is, and what changes are happening in the world, and what do we need to change as humans possibly to protect our Earth.
We will be doing that next month. Then let me show ... Let me share my screen, because we have a couple of other events that are exciting to be a part of. Here's more information about the Seek app. You go to inaturalist.org. We have this ... It happens every year. It's a City Nature Challenge. It's where cities all over the world compete to find the most species. So if you're interested in participating with it, it is taking it to the next level of making observations and adding it to a pool of other observations. You could look for more information here.
Don't worry, we will send these links to the things that we're talking about in our post-program email to you, but we just want to inform you that there are lots of different ways to take your nature exploration to the next level. We also have some programming at the museum that is related to Earth Month and to City Nature Challenge. I already mentioned that Katie and I are going to come back on May 1st, and have the second part of this program about how to be a neighborhood naturalist, and ease your observations, but we have a lot of other programming happening virtually. So, please check that out.
Katie Derloshon:
All right. Well friends, thank you for joining us today. Our time is up for our program for now. You all did an excellent job making and practicing recording those observations. We hope you all enjoyed making your field notebook alongside us, and that you and your family are able to begin recording your own observations together as neighborhood naturalists.
Gale Robertson:
We're going to show that video one more time. Hopefully look for that little butterfly. It's so tiny, but not super tiny.
Katie Derloshon:
Maybe we could pause it when the butterfly comes, so we can help our friend be able to identify where that is.
Gale Robertson:
It's really chunky right now.
Juniper:
That white butterfly.
Gale Robertson:
Is there a white butterfly? It just stopped.
Katie Derloshon:
Juniper found it.
Gale Robertson:
Juniper found it, but it'll fly by.
Juniper:
That white butterfly just landed. It just landed.
Katie Derloshon:
I didn't see it that ... Oh, there it is.
Juniper:
It just landed.
Gale Robertson:
There it goes.
Katie Derloshon:
There it went.
Gale Robertson:
I know. It was very fleeting. Yes.
Katie Derloshon:
It was little, but it was lovely to see it again, so thank you so much.
Gale Robertson:
So before we end, thank you guys so much for being here with us today. Such great questions. Christopher, I love your question about maybe the flower could be related to dandelions. That's maybe something that we could look up later. Before we end, we have a short survey for you to fill out, caregivers and parents out there. Please let us know what you thought about the program. We're always looking to improve our online offering so that we can make these better for what you and your family need, so please take that survey when it pops up.
Also, we would love to see your observations. We'd love to see what you created for today, or maybe see what you've done, what observations you've made out in nature in your neighborhood. So, please send us your photos of your field notebook to nmnh-familyprograms@si.edu. This is actually one of our favorite parts of our programs is seeing what you guys create based on what we've talked about today. Oh no, Christopher didn't see the butterfly.
Katie Derloshon:
Oh no.
Gale Robertson:
I know. It was so tiny. It was so tiny, but hopefully you'll have to let us know if you see any of these white butterflies flying around the neighborhood, because we see them everywhere.
Katie Derloshon:
Gale and I hope to see you all again at future programs too. Again, for next month's program, it's going to be a part two to this program. It's also going to happen during this year's City Nature Challenge that Gale was talking about earlier. We hope that you're able to join us as we continue our exploration of nature as naturalists. We're going to discuss, again, the importance of sharing what we've observed, as well as how we can do that, sharing in a fun and competitive global event.
Gale Robertson:
Right.
Katie Derloshon:
All right. Thank you so much.
Gale Robertson:
We hope to see you guys at our next program, which is on May 1st, and have fun out in nature. Have fun using those naturalist skills that we just practiced today. We can't wait to see what you guys discover in your neighborhoods or local parks.
Katie Derloshon:
All right. Thank you so much. See you next month.
Gale Robertson:
Bye. See you next month.
