This year at Scary Oozy Slimy Day, EcoReach brought the fascinating, and often overlooked, world of decomposition to life with our hands-on “Decomposition Station.” Designed to show how nature recycles itself, the booth highlighted the many organisms that quietly clean up the world around us.

Those feeling brave could either put their hands into a mystery box and guess the skeletons and skulls lying therein, or confront their fear of creepy crawlies like flesh-eating beetles called dermestids. These tiny but powerful scavengers are essential the natural world for breaking down carrion and in museum work for preparing skeleton specimen. Guests got to watch these beetles in action, cleaning Elk and raccoon bones!

Visitors also explored a bin filled with natural detritus: rotting logs, fallen leaves, and rich soil. Alongside them were the fungi, including puffball mushrooms and colorful false turkey tail. Families learned how these fungi act as nature’s recyclers, feeding on dead material and returning nutrients to the ecosystem.

Thank you, Sandy Creek Nature Center for hosting us!

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This project helped cover 16 windows on the outside of the Odum School of Ecology building. This dot pattern helps birds perceive windows as a barrier to flight, preventing mid-flight and territorial bird strikes. For birds, glass windows are worse than invisible. By reflecting foliage or sky, they look like inviting places to fly into. And because the sheer number of windows is so great, their toll on birds is huge. Up to about 1 billion birds die from window strikes in the U.S. each year, according to a 2014 study. Read more about this issue here.

By developing a procedure for retrofitting existing buildings with bird-friendly films, their project has established a way to implement bird-friendly sustainable design on campus.

EcoReach also discussed our Binoculars for Black Birders Project – an initiative that EcoReach spearheaded with the help of the Lilly Branch Audubon Society at UGA to fundraise money to buy binoculars, guides on how to use binoculars, activity booklets to record observations about birds, and guides to common Georgia birds. These materials were put together to create binocular bags that were then distributed to Black students in the Athens K-12 community that teachers were asked to nominate based on interest in ecology and/or birding. This project distributed over 100 binoculars to Black K-12 students, working to reduce the racial gaps that exist in the birding community and encourage interest in birding among Black students in Athens.

EcoReach has also involved the Athens/UGA community in birding through Birding classroom events where we take binoculars to middle schools to show students how to use them, as well as explaining what to look and listen for when trying to spot birds by taking students on short walks in wooded areas behind their schools. Outside of middle school students, EcoReach has organized more general community bird walks to promote an interest in birding among the larger Athens area.

Thank you to those who visited our table during this event!

Interested to find out about upcoming programs and opportunities with EcoReach? Email us at ecoreachuga@gmail.com for more information!

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Next, students were divided into two groups to play Ecosystem Jenga! This game consisted of a regular stack of Jenga blocks which were color coordinated according to different plant and animal trophic levels. Detritivores were colored brown and placed at the bottom of the tower, examples being “worms” and “fungi.” Next, primary producers were colored green and placed on top of the decomposers, with examples being “shrub” and “grass.” Blocks colored yellow were the herbivores, placed on top of the primary producers, with examples like “grasshopper” and .” Lastly, carnivores were colored red and placed on top of the herbivores. The pdf copy of instructions for this game are linked here.

Lastly, students were shown a presentation all about wetland ecosystems. Students learned about specific types of wetlands and how they differentiated, as well as plants and animals they might find within each one.

Thank you to the fourth grade teachers at Oglethorpe Elementary School who had us out and to all of our volunteers! Be on the lookout for some of our upcoming volunteer events!

Interested to find out about upcoming programs and opportunities with EcoReach? Email us at ecoreachuga@gmail.com for more information!

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EcoReach’s booth included a “Wheel of Ecology” where participants could spin a wheel of ecological species and whichever category they landed on (bugs, scaly scamps, etc), they would have the chance to learn more about those animals.

Thank you to everyone who joined us whether through volunteering or in passing on your way to the game! And be on the lookout for some of our upcoming volunteer opportunities!

Interested to find out about upcoming programs and opportunities with EcoReach? Email us at ecoreachuga@gmail.com for more information!

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This booth was set up by displaying three beakers filled with water, each colored differently to help distinguish between the different species. Labels can be placed in front accordingly. Three alka-seltzer tablets were added to the vulture beaker, two were added to the cat beaker, and half of a tablet was added to the echidna beaker. The bubbly reaction to occurred as a result of this stimulated the organisms’ “stomach” and the digestive process taking place inside.

Kids were also encouraged to take “vulture pee” (hand sanitizer colored yellow) to learn about the sanitizing quality of a vulture’s urination.

The festival, which is hosted annually at the ACC landfill outdoor classroom, also had bird showings, facility tours and nature walks. Kids were able to learn about the important roles that vultures play in keeping our ecosystems clean by visiting booths like ours and others.

Thank you to everyone who came out and volunteered with us!

Interested to find out about upcoming programs and opportunities with EcoReach? Email us at ecoreachuga@gmail.com for more information!

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EcoReach’s booth was all about caddisflies and their lifecycle. Kids had the opportunity to start by drawing their own caddisfly and then build their own caddisfly casing out of a toilet paper roll and decorating it with construction paper, markers and pipe cleaners to represent the pebbles that caddisfly larvae use to build their own underwater pebble casings.

Kids were able to leave the EcoReach booth with their own caddisfly larvae and a home for them to live in, having learned more about a new insect and their unique way of going through metamorphosis.

Thank you to everyone who came out and volunteered with us!

Interested to find out about upcoming programs and opportunities with EcoReach? Email us at ecoreachuga@gmail.com for more information!

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This year’s water festival, which was hosted by the Athens-Clarke County Water Conservation Office, was themed after the Pixar movie “Elemental.” With around 1,000 event attendees and 125 presenters/volunteers at Sandy Creek Park, kids were able to learn about the science of water and how to conserve it, all while participating in memorable water games and activities.

The activity involved a visual print-out of a marsh ecosystem, animal cut-outs, and fun facts about the variety of species. Kids were encouraged match each animal to their fact and then place in either the ocean, beach, river or salt marsh habitats of the ecosystem. The goal of the activity is to show kids the variety of ways that marine animals (and humans) depend on water and water habitats, connecting the importance of keeping water systems clean.

Interested to find out about upcoming programs and opportunities with EcoReach? Email us at ecoreachuga@gmail.com for more information!

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To learn more about firefly flashes, click on the image to download the post or go to Atlanta Firefly Project

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EcoReach ran a table at the Vulture Festival that discussed some important characteristics of vultures. This activity included learning about adaptations and the types of adaptations that vulture have. The booth also included a lesson about stomach acid and how a vulture can break down the food it consumes!

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Students learned about phytoplankton (microscopic plants) and zooplankton (microscopic animals) and check out life under a microscope. They also built a food web diagram around Daphnia, one of our favorite freshwater friends!

We also brought with us some of the field equipment used to sample plankton for a behind the scenes look at ecological research. Students learned about plankton nets, sediment grab samplers, and a dissolved oxygen meter.

Check out other programs the Athens Clarke County Library is offering here:

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