Two of three (maybe four?)

On Saturday 29th there was a nature festival in Tofield (45 mins SE of Edmonton). Part of the festival was the Snow Goose Chase, and I was a volunteer for that. The Edmonton Nature Club loads up 3 school buses with kids and 4 with the paying public. My friend and I were tour guides (5 of us in total) on the bus that had the inner city kids on it (about 30 8 - 14 years old). We left Edmonton at 9 am, headed out to Tofield, and didn't get back until 5 pm that evening.

Our first stop was at a farm where the kids got to pet and feed a horse, a donkey, and some sheep. Our second stop was at Francis Viewpoint, where we watched hawks, learned about owls, and looked at owls pellets. Our third stop was a wetland that had about 3000 Snow Geese and Greater White-fronted Geese on it, among other waterfowl. Our fourth stop was the Tofield Nature Center where other volunteers had a nature game, a live Barn Owl, Great Horned Owl, and Burrowing Owl. The kids got to hold the Burrowing Owl. He was so cute. We also caught pond insects there and sorted them and identified some of them. Our last stop before heading back to the city was the Ministik Bird Sanctuary where we tried to spot song birds in the trees and caught frogs.

Sorting through stinky pond water at the Tofield Nature Center with a volunteer.

Not quite sure...

A little scared...

Success!

The kids that were on my bus are all under-priviledged and many come from broken homes and have a very tough life. You should have seen the looks on their faces when they were holding the owl, sifting through stinky pond water, holding a frog, learning how to use binoculars, and looking at thousands of geese, all for the first time. I love nature, bugs, birds, grass, and all that fun stuff that gets you dirty, and to teach kids about it is very rewarding. They drew pictures for us at the end of the day, and wrote us notes thanking us for taking them on the bus.

I've already decided that I'm going to do this again next year, and I want to be on the same bus. It means so much to these kids to get out of the city (some for the first time ever) and see new things. One boy discovered that he loves birding, and wants to go out more often with the club to learn more. It was a day of organized chaos always on the edge of becoming out of control, but it was a blast.