The Great Big Boreal Forest Resource List

by L. E. Carmichael

I hear it's a long weekend? I'm not sure how to tell, really, since we will all (hopefully) be doing exactly what we've been doing for the last couple of weeks: preventing the spread of potentially deadly viruses by eating too much while watching Netflix in our jammies.

Jammies are a long-standing Easter tradition in the Carmichael family, because the Grandparents Carmichael used to give my brother and me a new pair of PJs with our baskets of chocolate and kids' books every year. And it occurred to me that once you and your kids recover from your chocolate comas, and have finished reading your shiny new copies of The Boreal Forest, you might find yourselves in need of more fun and educational things you can do at home. And thus I present:

The Great Big Boreal Forest Resource List

First - it's a video of me reading from the book!

Thank you to my publisher, Kids Can Press, for permission to keep this video available online until the end of the school year. May it bring the outdoors inside to you.

The Official Boreal Forest Activity Guide

Click here to download a free activity guide for use with your copy of The Boreal Forest. It includes suggestions for science, social studies, and language arts, and will help support a variety of elementary school curriculum outcomes. Not to mention a little creativity and fun.

But why stop there?

General Information, Online Articles, and Websites

Borealforest.org – Canadian website produced by Lakehead University

Natural Resources Canada: Boreal Forest Pages

NASA Earth Observatory: The Carbon Cycle – A detailed overview of the global carbon cycle, in which the boreal forest plays a crucial role

NASA Precipitation Education: The Water Cycle – A kid-friendly resource that includes activities and lesson plans

IUCN Red List of Threatened Species – Find the conservation status of your favourite boreal plants and animals

The Cornell Lab of Ornithology: Birds of the World – This is a superb resource, but note that it does require a paid subscription

Keeping the Carbon in Alaska Forests

Coronavirus Toilet Paper Hoarding “Totally Unnecessary,” What You Need to Know

A photographer who discovered baby bears dancing in a forest thought he was imagining it

Bird that looks like it died yesterday turns out to be 46,000 years old

Time to vote for Canada’s national lichen – the “spectacular” organisms that carpet the country

How deforestation drives the emergence of novel coronaviruses

What do wild animals do in a wildfire?

Totally bizarre facts about the star-nosed mole

Lesson Plans, Activities, Projects

Borealforest.org – Educational Resources Section

Canadian Geographic: The Boreal Forest “In the News”

Canadian Wildlife Federation: Boost the Boreal Forest

Lesser Slave Lake Bird Observatory: Boreal Forest Lesson Plans for Elementary, Junior High, and Senior High

Boreal Songbird Initiative: Provincial and Territorial Forest Facts

Nature Canada: For Children Section – Articles and a Resource Section

Forests Ontario: Community Engagement Section

NASA Precipitation Education: The Water Cycle

Utah State University: Water Cycle Lesson Plans

Scholastic: The Water Cycle Teaching Guide

California Academy of Sciences: Carbon Cycle Role Play

University of Colorado Teach Engineering: Carbon Cycles

Indigenous Peoples of the Boreal Forest

Note:

Worldwide, hundreds of Indigenous peoples live in the boreal biome. I’ve included resources for those peoples featured in my book, but I encourage you to learn about the Nations nearest you!

Canada

Gwich’in Social & Cultural Institute – a repository of Traditional Knowledge, including audio recordings of Gwich’in words and information on Gwich’in medicine plants

The Whitefeather Forest Initiative of the Pikangikum First Nation – general info and links to research involving Traditional Knowledge

Europe/Asia

Reindeer Herding – information on reindeer (caribou) and the many Indigenous peoples of Europe and Asia who herd them

Association of Indigenous Peoples of the North, Siberia, and the Far East of the Russian Federation – This site is in Russian, but Google translate will give you a starting point for further research

Organizations

Tree Canada

Nature Canada

Forests Ontario

Ontario Nature – Boreal Forests Section

Boreal Songbird Initiative

The PEW Charitable Trusts: International Boreal Conservation Campaign

Science Books for Adults

For teenagers that want to learn more, or for adults who want more knowledge to help support their children's learning - here are some of the adult-level books I consulted while researching The Boreal Forest. Check your local library for ebook options, or see what you can find online!

Bannick, Paul (2008) The Owl and the Woodpecker: Encounters with North America’s Most Iconic Birds. Seattle, WA: The Mountaineers Books.

Bondrup-Nielsen, Soren (2009) A Sound Like Water Dripping: In Search of the Boreal Owl. Kentville, NS: Gaspereau Press.

Chang, Mingteh (2013) Forest Hydrology: An Introduction to Water and Forests. Boca Raton, FL: CRC Press.

Crawford, R.M.M. (2013) Tundra-Taiga Biology: Human, Plant, and Animal Survival in the Arctic. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Gawthrop, Daniel (1999) Vanishing Halo: Saving the Boreal Forest. Vancouver, BC: Greystone Books.

Lynch, Wayne. (2001) The Great Northern Kingdom: Life in the Boreal Forest. Markham, ON: Fitzhenry & Whiteside.

Do you know of additional boreal resources? Drop them in the comments for others to explore!

Canadian Biodiversity Facility

This week while volunteering as a naturalist in Elk/Beaver Lake Nature Centre, I met a family that is having a Puffin Summer. Every day they go to Puffin Cam and then look up a new fact about puffins on the internet.

It used to be that you had to go to the library and find a book in order to learn about nature. How else could you identify what kind of butterfly you saw or what plant is growing behind your grandparents' woodshed? Now there are terrific online resources for people who love learning about the biological sciences! Of particular interest to Canadians is the Canadian Biodiversity Information Facility. The CBIF operates in support of the Global Biodiversity Facility, which has information on over a million and a half species.

Are you trying to find information on sapsuckers or ladyslippers, or other animals and plants? The CBIF is working to improve access to data on living things of interest to Canadians. On their website there are three tools to help users find the information they need:

• Integrated Taxonomic Information System (ITIS) is a catalogue of common and scientific names and their synonyms that will eventually include all species found in Canada, the United States and Mexico. I clicked on Search ITIS, then entered the common name "oystercatcher" into their simple form, and it came up with links to pages on many kinds of oystercatcher birds, and the scientific names for each kind. Here's a photo of this striking bird, with its bright eyes and bill and pink feet.
  

"Black Oystercatcher HMB RWD4" by DickDaniels (http://carolinabirds.org/) - Own work. Licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0 via Wikimedia Commons - https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Black_Oystercatcher_HMB_RWD4.jpg#/media/File:Black_Oystercatcher_HMB_RWD4.jpg

For the other two tools, you'll need the species name for the living thing you want to find.

• Species Access Network is the Canadian component of a global project to provide Internet access to information associated with the billions of specimens housed in the world's natural history collections.Users can search these collections by species name, source collection, collector, or location.
• Species Bank includes a collection of electronic resources that provide detailed information to support the identification of Canadian species including descriptive information, photographs, distribution maps, and more.
  

Now that it's summer, I hope you'll enjoy being out in the wide world, finding plants and animals in towns and in wild places. When you come back indoors, the CBIF website is a good place to learn about what you've found -- but no computer can substitute for breathing the same air as our animal and plant neighbours.

The Facts About Cats

By Marie Powell

As the owner of two cats, I like to think I know a lot about them. I know what they like to eat, where they hide their toys, and how much trouble they can get into without really trying.

When I began writing "That Cat!" for my new "Word Families" series (Amicus Publishing, 2013), I found out how much I still had to learn about cats.

Writing a nonfiction book for children begins with research, so I pulled as many books as I could find from our library. I've included some of these books at the end of this post.

Here are just a few fascinating facts I discovered about cats:

• Cats have 244 bones; people only have 206 bones.
• Cats have 32 muscles in each ear; people have only six muscles in each ear.
• Cats can rotate each ears by itself, and can even turn their ears 180 degrees in opposite directions. Cat hearing is so sharp that they can tell the difference between one person's footsteps and another's, and even between the sounds of different cars. (So they really do know it's you when they come running to the door!)
• Cats walk on their toes: their heel bone is half-way up their leg.
• Cats have scent glands on their paws, their foreheads, under their chins, and where their tails meet their backs. That's why they like scratching and rubbing -- and being rubbed, so they can transfer some scent onto you!
• The sense of smell is very important to a cat. Cats even have an extra organ for smelling located inside their mouths, called the vomeronasal organ or Jacob's organ.
• Cat tongues are rough because they have tiny, backward-facing spines made of keratin, called papillae.

An average cat, like our friendly Sabriel pictured here, has 24 whiskers or vibrissae on each side of his nose, as well as whiskers on his chin, above his eyes, and on the back of each foreleg. 

Cats use their whiskers as part of their sense of touch. Their whiskers help them sense the direction of wind and air currents, measure distances, and navigate. 

As well, whiskers help show their mood. For example, the whiskers would move forward and down when relaxed, forward when aggressive, or flat when defensive.

Here are some of the books and resources on cats I used for these facts and more:

• The Complete Cat by Vicky Hall (2008, Bantam Press)
• The Secret Life of Your Cat by Vicky Hall (2010, Firefly Books)
• Why do Cats Have Whiskers? by Elizabeth McLeod (2008, Kids Can Press)
• Cat Care Essentials by Francesca Riccomini (2010, Hamlyn)
• The Cat Expert by Rebecca Watson (2010, Transworld Publishers)
• Pets 101: Cats, Animal Planet

Everyone loves watching cat videos, so just for fun, here are just a few of my favourites:

Henri 2: Paw de Deux and other Henri videos; Stalking Cat; Two Talking Cats; and so many more!

What habits and behaviours does your cat have that fascinate you? Please leave a comment -- or share a cat video!

Marie Powell is the author of seven books for children, including Dragonflies are Amazing (Scholastic) and a new six-book series of Word Families books published by Amicus Publishing. 

Where’d My Hummingbirds Go?

Jan Thornhill

I’ve spent a lot of time this summer sitting outside working on my laptop directly below our hummingbird feeder. At least two families have been regularly zipping in and out to supplement their usual diet of insects and nectar gleaned from flowers. Hummingbirds can get along just fine without sugar water, but it’s clear they like it: whenever the feeder runs dry, they let us know by buzzing so close to our faces we can feel the wind created by their ridiculously fast-beating wings.

This tiny spot on my laptop is a hummingbird dropping.

Several weeks ago, though, there were suddenly fewer feeder visits. It was obvious that some of our hummingbirds had disappeared. I might have thought something tragic had happened if I hadn’t just spent a year researching and writing a picture book about migration – Is This Panama? – so I knew that my “missing” hummingbirds were likely adult males who had simply flown the coop. In Ontario, these males normally begin their “fall” migration as early as the last week of July, which allows for a leisurely journey to Central America, where they spend the winter. Adult females wait a while longer before taking off, followed much later by the juveniles.   

Juvenile hummingbirds, like this male ruby-throated, migrate south later than adults.

Many of our other smaller summer birds, such as warblers, also travel south over an extended period of time, so their fall migration can seem much less dramatic, and less obvious, than the spring migration when everyone’s racing north to stake claim on the best breeding and feeding grounds.

Looking for Songbirds in the Fall

Where: 

Goldfinches love thistle seeds (Will Sweet)

In late summer and early fall, grasslands and wildflower meadows attract both seed- and insect-eaters. Though mature forests are a great place to look, heavy leaf cover can make autumn bird-spotting more difficult, so seek out clearings and forest edges where warm morning sun can activate insects. Waterside areas can be fruitful too. And don’t forget your neighbourhood park or your own backyard!

When: 

Though hummingbirds migrate during the day, many other species migrate at night. These nocturnal migrants have evolved to navigate using the stars during the hours when strong winds have died down and cooler temperatures reduce the risk of overheating. On a clear night, with a slight north wind, these birds might fly for ten hours straight, so there can be good viewing opportunities the following day as the birds stop to rest and feed. If you’re a night owl, aim binoculars or a viewing scope at a full moon and see if you can catch a group of migrants silhouetted as they fly past!

Warblers: 

More than 30 species of warbler nest in Canada and, though their colours are muted in the fall, these tiny birds are still incomparable in their beauty. The problem with fall warblers is that they don’t advertise their whereabouts with song the way they do in spring. They do, however, produce delicate chipping notes that help to pinpoint their location. Another way to find them is to listen for vocal chickadees, since chickadees regularly join up with migrating warblers into loose foraging flocks.

Black-and-white warblers creep up tree trunks like woodpeckers. (Mike & Chris)

Help Them Out!

• Put seed in your birdfeeders and replenish hummingbird feeders. Even after your local summer birds have left, migrants from further north may pass through and stop for a snack.  
• Grow native plants in your garden and don’t deadhead flowers. Sunflowers hanging with ripe seed are amazing natural birdfeeders.
• Ground foragers, such as sparrows and doves, are attracted to brush piles and leaf litter, so wait until late fall to clean up your garden.
• Pesticides, herbicides, and fungicides can be lethal for birds, so avoid their use.
• Keep your cats indoors or watch over them while outdoors. Though cats make wonderful pets, they kill more than a billion wild birds every year in North America.

Children’s Resources About Bird Migration:

• Is This Panama?: A Migration Story – Jan Thornhill (Author), Soyeon Kim (Illustrator)
• Moonbird: A Year on the Wind with the Great Survivor B95 – Phillip Hoose
• On the Wing: American Birds in Migration – Carol Lerner 
• The Long, Long Journey – Sandra Markle 
• How Do Birds Find Their Way? –  Roma Gans (Author), Paul Mirocha (Illustrator)
• The Peregrine's Journey: A Story of Migration – Madeleine Dunphy (Author), Kristin Kest (Illustrator)
• Winged Migration (Academy Award winning DVD)
• you can also follow the hummingbird migration south at:  http://www.learner.org/jnorth/humm/fall2013/update082313.html 

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