Explore Outdoors ~ Contrasting colors

One of the things that attracts me to gardens is color. Bees are attracted by color, too! They appreciate yellow and orange and blue and purple flowers. So whenever I walk by a garden, I take a peek at who's visiting the blossoms. This time I was rewarded with a contrast in colors: the bright green of the bee against the brilliant purple of the coneflower.

 

 

This week as you walk by gardens, look for contrasting colors. It might be a brilliant pink flower against bright green leaves. It might be tiny black bees on white daisy blossoms. Or it might be colorful bees - or butterflies - and their blooms.

Explore Outdoors ~ Find another point of view

 

if I were an ant

beneath a blueberry bush

what would I see?

A True Blue Treasure Hunt!

Rare and Blue: Finding Nature's Treasures 
by Constance Van Hoven; illus. by Alan Marks
48 pages; ages 7-10
Charlesbridge, 2020


theme: nature, color, exploration

How do you find nature’s treasures, both rare and blue? Set off on a hunt!

This book takes readers on a nonfiction treasure hunt to discover eight species that are blue. Not only that, they are naturally rare, or threatened or endangered. And there’s a lot to discover: the Karner blue butterfly, a blue lobster, bluestem grass, and the Cerulean warbler.

What I like about this book: One spread introduces a habitat and presents a clue … leaving the answer to the mystery just beyond the page turn. For example, if you are hiking in a forest then listen carefully for the “zray, zray, zray, zreee…” It’s a cerulean warbler up in the tall trees.

There are so many other things to like in this book. The details about each plant or animal. The different ways of seeing blue: sapphire, cerulean, silvery, indigo. The illustrations that invite you to look and look again. The surprise ending that celebrates our “blue planet.” And, of course, Back Matter – where you can learn some cool words and discover more facts about the plants and animals featured in the book.

Beyond the Books:

Go on a Blue treasure hunt of your own. What blue animals and plants do you find in the nature around you? Maybe you will find Bachelor buttons in a garden, or an Indigo bunting perched on a branch. A zoo or arboretum might be good place to hunt for blue.

Look for little blue bugs. Scientists recently found a rare blue bee in Florida. Other people have found blue beetles and blue “roly-polies” or woodlice. So next time you’re in the garden or moving the compost or wood pile, pay attention to the little critters.

What’s your favorite color? Grab a thesaurus and find out how many different words there are for that color. Or visit the Color Thesaurus.

You can find a bunch of book-related educational activity pages here.

Today we're joining Perfect Picture Book Friday, an event where bloggers share great picture books at Susanna Leonard Hill's website. Review copy provided by the publisher.

Flower Talk

Do flowers talk? And if they do, can we hear them? Sara Levine addresses these - and more questions - in her new book.

Flower Talk: How plants use color to communicate
by Sara Levine; illus. by Masha D'yans
32 pages; ages 7-11
Millbrook, 2019

themes: plants, pollination

Hey, You! PSSST! Down here! That's right - I'm a plant, and I'm talking to you!

Plants don't make a habit of talking to humans, but they do in this book because the plants want to clear up some crazy human ideas about what their colors mean. Red roses do not - at least according to the plants - stand for love. That is, our plant-land guide says, "a load of fertilizer!"

Plants use their flowers to talk to animals. They need bees or birds or bats to carry their pollen from one plant to another so they can make seeds. In exchange, they offer sweet rewards - nectar.

What I like about this book: I love the conversational way it's written, with the plants speaking directly to the reader. Who knew plants could talk? I mean, with words, not color or scent.

I like that pages are color-coordinated: yellow pages for discussing yellow plants.

I like how the plant, at the end, tells the reader to go take a hike. "I'm pretty busy," says the plant. "I'm making a new flower."

And I like the back matter: more details about pollination, things kids can do to protect pollinators, and suggested reading.

Beyond the Book:

Go on a flower color safari. You can make up your own list of things to look for, or use this one. 

Plant a garden for pollinators. You can find out how, here. Want to know what to plant? Check here.

Today we're joining other book bloggers over at STEM Friday, where you can discover other cool STEM books. And we're joining Perfect Picture Book Friday, an event where bloggers share great picture books at SusannaLeonard Hill's website . Review copy provided by publisher.

Wednesday Explorers Club ~ Summer Colors

Grab some colored pencils (or crayons or watercolors or....) and paper and head outside to collect colors. What colors are the flowers that grow in your neighborhood? What colors are in the grass and trees?What about butterflies and birds? Try to capture as many as you can.

Call of the Osprey

The Call of the Osprey
by Dorothy Hinshaw Patent; photos by William Munoz
80 pages; ages 10 & up
Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2015

This is another in the brilliant "Scientist in the Field" series. Patent and Munoz focus their sights on University of Montana scientists studying a pair of Osprey they have named Iris and Stanley. The book opens with the team fixing a bird camera prior to breeding season.

Bird cams are wonderful inventions - you can check some out here. Every spring we watch a pair of red-tailed hawks that nest up at Cornell University. The cameras, located close to the nest, allow us to watch the eggs hatch, the parents feed nestlings, and first flights. But I never thought about the work that goes into placing and maintaining the cameras.

Like "our" red-tailed hawks, the U of M osprey nest high in the tops of dead trees. Or on light posts - wherever they can find a platform to build their nests.

Each fall, the osprey head south, and each spring they return from their winter home in Belize. The osprey nest along rivers, as they are fishing birds. They are well-adapted to that life, with rough spines on their feet that allow them to hold onto their slippery, flopping prey as they fly back to the nest. Osprey don't have many enemies - except for nest predators - and they're pretty tolerant of human activity. The biggest danger they face comes from loss of habitat and environmental contaminants.

Whatever chemicals - insecticides, herbicides, petroleum products - end up in the environment eventually get washed into the river. Whatever gets into the river gets into the fish. And whatever gets into the fish ends up in the osprey, whether it's DDT or heavy metals. So, as the scientists band the osprey, they collect samples of blood and feathers. They also spend a lot of time removing plastic baling twine from the nests. Unlike jute baling twine, the plastic doesn't degrade, and chicks can get tangled up in it, strangled, and die. There's a sobering photograph of twine they removed from a single osprey nest - stretched out it measures a quarter of a mile! 

Today's review is part of the STEM Friday roundup. Drop by STEM Friday blog for more science books and resources. Review copy from the publisher.

Science in the Fourth of July Sky

About a thousand years ago a Chinese monk stuffed gunpowder into a piece of bamboo and tossed it into the fire. He wanted to make a noise loud enough to scare away ghosts.

If you head out to a fireworks display tonight, you'll get more than a big bang. The designs and colors we see in the sky are a result of chemistry. Inside the fireworks are pellets of the sparkly stuff that burns in the sky. The pattern you see in the sky results from how those pellets are placed inside the firework. They may explode outward in shapes that look like fronds of a palm tree or a brittle star. Or they might snake across the sky. You can read more about patterns here.

The colors come from burning different metal salts: barium chloride for green, lithium carbonate for red, copper compounds for blue, and sodium - like the salt you shake onto your potatoes - for yellow. Here's a handy color chart.

Have fun on the fourth, and remember: it may look like a fireworks show but it's Science in the Sky!

Drop by STEM Friday to see what other science books and resources bloggers are sharing.

Looking for Orange Things

It's almost Halloween - an evening celebrated by ghosts and goblins and things orange: candy corn, pumpkin cookies and jelly beans.

So in keeping with the season I encourage you to head outside with your nature journal and look for Orange Things.

A couple weeks ago I noticed this bright orange fungus. With all our fall rain there was a lush growth of grass and clover beneath it, contrasting green with the bright mushroom cap.



 
If you're looking for orange leaves, you can't go wrong with Sugar Maples.

photo by Marvin Smith

Marvin Smith, a photographer and blogger in the Ozarks has graciously shared two of his orange critters. The moth on the flower to the right is called a "lichen moth" because the caterpillars munch on crunchy lichens.

photo by Marvin Smith

 The spider is a   marbled orb weaver -
 perfect for Halloween!

Do Dark Colors Make Snow Melt Faster?

When snow and ice combine to make my steep driveway impossible to drive up, I wait for a sunny day and sprinkle ashes on top of the snow. I’m convinced the dark color of the ashes helps make the snow melt faster (not to mention, give me traction when I try to drive up).

Does color influence the rate of snow melting? You can test this by cutting squares of different colors of felt or construction paper and spreading them over the top of the snow on the next sunny day. After a couple hours compare how deep each color has sunk below the surface.

Do light colors melt the snow as fast as dark colors?

How fast do leaves and twigs and clusters of pine needles melt into the snow?