How to Cook up a Bonza Eco-Mystery.

Photo from the WK Clifford – Australian Museum

So you take a feathery local species, like a Tawny Frogmouth, you mix in a crime scene, some suspects, plenty of hands on investigating and SHAZAM, you have yourselves an outdoor, eco-mystery challenge that never fails to grip primary age students.

Our Eco Mystery day – ‘The Tawny Tragedy‘ is one of our most engaging programs. Students eyes widen when they arrive at Brewongle to discover a crime scene complete with police tape and the chalk outline of the victim.

After reading the police report and discovering the food, water and shelter needs of the Tawny Frogmouth, the investigations begin.

Our ponds will be scoured for water bugs and tadpoles – are there are any water quality issues that may have killed Tawny? The forest and house areas are tested for health and possible food contaminents.

Weeds, feral animal prints and a habitat assessment will round out the day of mystery solving. Students are left to ruminate on their evidence and decide on a cause of death. A forensic police report arrives hot off the fax. Recommendations are sought by Brewongle staff to prevent this occurring in the future.

Could you replicate something like this in your school if you can’t visit us or your nearest Environmental Education Centre? This program is a fantastic example of engaging students in the outdoors. Students are required to use higher order thinking, problem solving and creativity skills. Literacy and numeracy are embedded and students emerge with knowledge and understanding of how an ecosystem works. Of course it also has all the syllabus links needed to fit in to the Australian Curriculum. Thanks to Barnier Public School for solving the crime!

Why does a blue tongue lizard have a blue tongue?

The lovely year 1 students of Shelley Public School in Blacktown answered this question and many others when we visited their school earlier this week. Our resident blotched blue tongue lizard called Nessy mysteriously escaped into the grounds at Shelley Public School (twice!) and the students had quite a job to track her down.

Using their enthusiasm and skills the students identified the best habitat for blue tongues around their school to help us find Nessy. They also discovered worms, ants, small spiders, centipedes, snails and other bugs as we searched for food sources for Nessy. Luckily we found the cheeky adventurous lizard and all was well. To celebrate we made clay lizards in her likeness!

So, why is their tongue blue? To scare away nasty predators of course! Nessy will hiss and stick out her vivid blue tongue to scare aware birds like kookaburras. They also have the ability to drop their tail if attacked – this may save their life! Clever lizard.

If you would like to have us visit your school with this program called ‘Where is Nessy’ please call us on 4579 1136 to make a booking. You can find more information in the flyer below.

Flyer – Where is Nessy

Habitat assessment

Bug search

What did you catch?

We found Nessy!

Earth and Environmental Science with Stella Maris College

Geology has never held that much interest for me in the past, but my nerdy brain fires up with interest when geology can be related to the living things on our planet. The year 12 students of Stella Maris College Manly who visited us for a two day camp program discovered some interesting relationships between our local soils, geology, vegetation and wildlife.

Being boffin earth and environmental scientists we conducted a soil profile using augers, identified local plant species, did a habitat assessment and tested soil parameters like pH, salinity, temperature, texture and type. Students discovered a highly altered riverbank setting with mostly introduced European trees, mown grass and deep alluvial topsoils. As we sampled further up the ridge we discovered shallower soils, a forest dominated by grey myrtle trees and much better habitat parameters. At the ridge top, soils were deeper and had some clay content with a new mix of grey gums, she oaks and stringybarks.

We were keen to monitor wikdlife too  – so what is a good way to check up on local wildlife? Using our pool pole nest box cameras of course! Extend a pole up a tree with a Go Pro camera on the end – have an iPad at the bottom and voila! contents of box or nest can be viewed from the ground. A photobombing wonga pidgeon and a curious wallaby were the hightlights of our remoted cameras set up overnight. Check out the footage below.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sbrNVvShqa0

Day two was spent in our fabulous outdoor classroom on the Hawkesbury River. UWS Hawkesbury Campus has had a partnership with Brewongle for many years to engage students in the ecology of the Hawkesbury River. With the use of speed boats from UWS and some pretty fancy testing equipment students put the river through its paces. They found a large diversity of algal species after some sweep netting in our fashionable waders as well as some reasonable healthy physical and chemical parameters. View the slide show below online.

This slideshow requires JavaScript.

Castlereagh Public School gets wet

Not to be deterred by the weather, Castlereagh PS smiled all the way through our modified program. The rain came down all day, but students still discovered the many waterbugs, friendly lizards, worms and bush bugs around Brewongle. The ‘Story of a River’ was a hit as students discovered how a river can become a mess due to human interference.

Thanks to Mrs McFadden and Mrs Lennon for bringing such a lovely bunch of k-2 students to our centre. Here are some resources for you:

Story of a river:

catchment story (original)

How the Kookaburra got its laugh story as told by Uncle Wes Marne (Darug Elder):

Why does the kookaburra laugh 4

A previous blog has good bird resources you can find them here and here

Bugs and Birds with Hobartville PS

After our run of hot bushfire conditions, it was a gorgeous spring day that greeted Years 1-2 from Hobartville as they descended on Brewongle for two days of bugs and birds. The students tried to be quiet as we searched for the ever elusive birds (they usually appear as soon as the schools leave!). Once they mastered the use of binoculars, we spotted a kookaburra, king parrot, rainbow lorikeets and plenty of small birds. Teachers, you may want to view a previous post of some baby birds that hatched at Brewongle here . Show these to your classes! There is also some links to other good bird resources on this post.

Our resident blotched blue tongue lizard ‘Nessie’ was also a hit and she wins the award for the most patient and placid lizard after being handled and cuddled by most students. Students discovered that Nessie is the largest variety of skink and she loves to eat snails and banana’s. In the wild, eastern blue tongue lizards are omnivorous and will eat a variety of insects and plants. Eastern blue tongues are usually found in the Sydney region and are lighter in colour than Nessie who is from further south and alpine regions.

Here is a cute little video on insects suitable for stage 1 and 2.