Thursday, April 18, 2013

Life Lessons in Science

We have seen this little critter out here below our dining room window poking in & out of the grass & straw......where the rabbit hutch used to be......& I just assumed it was a little mouse. Clay said probably a field mouse. For whatever reason, this morning the boys started googling to see what it REALLY was. Michael thought maybe a shrew at first.....but he wasn't grey, he was brown. Didn't look quite like a mole....the paws were wrong. I'm not sure exactly HOW they happened upon it, but when I came back down from my shower, they were so excited to tell me that what we have out there is a vole!
 
You can read more about them HERE. They are actually sometimes referred to as field/meadow mice. So, I guess technically Clay was right. But hey.....the boys had fun with their research. From here we went on a search about owls......because Michael read that sometimes vole bones can be found in owl pellets. We googled to see what kinds of owls live in VA. And HERE is what we found.
 
A Screech Owl....this is what we had living in the big old tree in our front yard about a year ago. The kids named him Pigwidgeon......Ron's owl from Harry potter.



The Great Horned Owl
 Barred Owl
And a Barn Owl
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Day three of walking barefoot down our drive to the mail box & down the road a ways
Can you tell that it was muddy today? Anyone else out there enjoy going barefoot as much as I do?

1 comment:

Fatcat said...

I'd have to have my flip-flops on. :-)