After Dark in the Park

Oh what fun we had last night! We went down to Arlington, our old stomping grounds, to visit River Legacy Park. It's a big, beautiful park with playgrounds, picnic tables and wonderful hiking trails. Last night they had a special program called After Dark in the Park. We love to explore outdoors and the fact that we were doing it in the dark made it even more exciting. They had several fun hayrides that picked up guests in the various parking lots and carried them to the main event.

The hayride took us to the main trail head. The trail through the woods had cool glow-in-the-dark footprints for us to follow to find all the events. There was a starlight stroll, storytelling under the stars, a bounce house, cool arts and crafts projects, science exhibits, and even a live raptor show.

We took a hike on a trail that was set up to demonstrate animal "eye shine" and how their eyes glow when a light is shined at them. Each child was given a flashlight before they got on the trail. Nicholas thanked the volunteer for his flashlight then he asked for two more flashlights so that his Mommy and Daddy could each have one too. Obviously we declined the flashlights because it was an activity for the kids but it always touches us greatly to see how thoughtful Nicholas is of other people. The activity was just great and Nicholas had a lot of fun shining his flashlight into the woods to look for the glowing eyes.

Here's what we learned about the different eyes you might see at night:
Moving tiny scintillating specks of white - Wolf Spider
Bright yellow eyes - Raccoon
Yellowish eyes - Bobcat
Opalescent green eyes - Bullfrog
Bright white eyes - Coyote/Dog/Fox
Amber eyes - Skunk
Dull orange eyes - Opossum
Red eyes - Owl

We listened to the storyteller. When he was finished Nicholas told him about a bug he had seen during the performance. The storyteller explained how there are a lot of bugs out in the woods.

We did a craft project where Nicholas made a bird feeder with Cheerios and a pipe cleaner.

We also watched a great educational presentation by Blackland Prairie Raptor Center on raptors. We learned that a raptor is a family of meat-eating birds that have sharp talons to help them grasp and carry their prey and a hooked beak to tear apart their food. The presenter pulled out some raptors for us to see up close. We saw an American Kestrel Falcon, a Screech Owl, and a Great Horned Owl. I would have loved to have gotten some pictures of the raptors we saw but we didn't want to startle them with the camera flash.

We learned lots of interesting facts such as:

~ A Barn Owl's hearing is so good that it can hear a person's heart beat from 20 feet away.

~ A Screech Owl doesn't actually make a screeching noise.

~ A Peregrine Falcon is the fastest animal in the world. It can dive for prey at over 200 miles per hour.

~ An owl's eyes are so big and take up such a large part of their skull that there isn't room in there for eye muscles. Therefore, they can not move their eyes from side to side like people do. Instead they have many more vertebrae in their necks to allow them to turn their whole head 270 degrees!

After the presentation, Nicholas wanted to go up and ask a question. He waited patiently for his turn and then asked the man, "What about the Bat Owl?" The presenter seemed a little surprised by the question but started telling Nicholas a little bit about Bat Owls. We figured out that Nicholas was probably just wanting to talk to the guy about the bats that he had learned about at school this past week and there just happens to actually be an owl called a Bat Owl. Nicholas enjoys telling people about bats and explaining how they use echo-location to find their food.