Scientific Illustration

Belle Sherman 3rd grades enjoyed their second visit from visiting artist Camille Doucet. This time children worked on illustrating the life cycle of the brown trout.

Next week, Camille will join us at our Trout Release Party at Six Mile Creek where she will lead us in a "drawing from nature" activity.

A big thank you to the Fine Arts Booster Group for funding Camille's visits to Belle Sherman and South Hill!

Belle Sherman Mini Fishing Day

Belle Sherman's Star Room 3rd grade had a "mini" fishing day in the classroom last Friday.
Matt Herman, co-teacher and TIC mentor brought in a collection of stream critters and fly-tying supplies. Children worked through 3 activity stations:

Stream critters: We got to try out our new stereo-microscopes (THANK YOU, IPEI!) to observe caddisfly larvae and stoneflies. The microscopes magnify 200x... I can't tell you how many kids shrieked when they saw a stonefly through the lenses. It looked big enough to be a SERIOUS predator instead of prey!

Trout observation: careful observation of a fingerling.















Fly-tying: Children looked at pictures of stream critters and chose fur and feathers for Matt to use as he tied flies to match the pictures. We field tested the flies and found the trout were equally interested in Matt's flies as they were in the real thing!

Groton Release

We finally got some good weather and mud-free banks on the Owasco Inlet in Groton to let our Browns go.  We released them this morning in the midst of a midge hatch...nature's reassurance that our little guys will be properly fed!  We're all looking forward to the upcoming Floating Classroom trip!

Stream Insect Studies Underway!

Third graders at Belle Sherman Elementary have been studying macro-invertebrate populations (these are stream insects and crustaceans which are visible without magnification) in stream samples. They are getting help from our amazing Cornell Ed. 2400 interns Amanda and Yuhang.


The students have used their knowledge of insects, combined with dichotomous keys to identify a variety of insect larvae- stoneflies, mayflies, caddisflies and more. Using Isaac Walton League stream survey forms, they have also determined that samples from Enfield Creek and Lick Brook indicate very health streams. Either would be good habitat for trout!

At the end of the class, we feed insect larvae to the trout- and the trout go nuts! Insects are an incredibly important food- as fly-fishermen know- and our trout recognized them right away. There was one exception however... the trout fry were not in the least interested in HORSEFLY larvae, pictured to the right. Why might that be???

TROUT LILIES ARE BLOOMING!

These beautiful flowers are now in full (but brief) bloom throughout our woods and along many streams! We highly recommend are walk in the woods along your favorite stream. Check out the Cayuga Trails Club if you'd like to join a family-friendly hike, or scout the stream where your student will be releasing trout during the coming month!

ART & ILLUSTRATION!

Belle Sherman third grades (and South Hill fourth grades) have had their first session with visiting artist Camille Doucet, thanks to a Fine Arts Booster Group grant. Camille began teaching us the fundamentals of scientific illustration and the art of observing very carefully.
The most interesting thing that happened is that Camille noticed our fish at Belle Sherman were noticeably pinker than those at South Hill. Could it be our purple-red tank background? We'll observe our fish again after break with Yuhang and Amanda and officially compare the colors from "before" and "after."

Trout Coloration Experiment at Cayuga Heights

The second graders at Cayuga Heights want to give a big thank you to our friends at Belle Sherman and Caroline Elementary Schools for sharing some trout with us! They are doing well and seem to be enjoying their new home. All the fish are getting along right now, but we have noticed some of the bigger fish are starting to chase the smaller fish.

Because we were lucky enough to receive trout from different locations, we decided to conduct a coloration experiment. Our hypothesis is that the trout coloration will change to match the background of our tank. A few weeks ago, with the help of Bill and his trusty interns, we created a dark green background for our tank and made scientific drawings to document the trout coloration.

When the trout from Caroline arrived on Wednesday we noticed a clear difference in coloration compared to the trout that had been in our dark green tank. Our Cayuga Heights trout were darker than the trout that arrived from Caroline. We suspect that the tank in Caroline has a lighter background than ours. We will be observing and documenting the trout's coloration over the next few weeks to see if the Caroline trout start to blend in with our Cayuga Heights trout.

Caroline Trout

Here's a photo of us in front of our tank. Recently, we have been enjoyed observing a large trout, we named Jaws, terrorize the small fish in the tank. Jaws lurks behind the bubbler and has been seen with a tail coming out of his mouth. He is about 8cm long and looks much different from many other fish in the tank. His color is much lighter than the other fish and he has lighter, smaller spots. The dorsal fin closest to his tail is a bright, orange-red color. We are looking forward to seeing what other trouble Jaws gets into. Hopefully we can capture a picture of him in action. We will certainly post it if we do! Come check out some of our "Trout Tales", some involving Jaws, at the Ithaca Fishing Day on Saturday!

Lansing High Brook Trout

A few days ago we were cleaning out the tank with a tube. It took us a little while to figure out how to use it but in the end we did. We had one part of the tube in the water and the other in a bucket, one person sucked on the end out of the bucket and the water started to come out, then the other person vacuumed the bottom of the tank with the other end of the tube. This was a very effective way to clean. While the one person had their arm in the tank trying to vacuum all of the algae up. One of the fish continuously head-butted the persons arm, which was very interesting. This was interesting because a few weeks ago when we put the daphnia in with them they all tried to stay away from them but now that they have grown they have no problem with a whole human arm. As a quick side note, it is a few days after we cleaned the tank and it is already dirty, which is quite amazing.

Here is some nice video- check out the parr marks!
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-Zack Smith

Groton Voicethread