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Welcome back to Curious By Nature.
I'm Nicole and I'll be your host.
Today, we're going to take another nature walk.
I love a nature walk because it helps us get to know
the nature that's all around us and the animals that might live nearby.
On our nature walk today, we'll be looking for animal evidence up high,
down low near the ground, and on or under the ground.
This will let us check out all the neat animals that live in those different locations.
Let's take a walk.
When I'm looking up high, there's a really easy place to start: trees.
Let's check out a few trees and see what we can notice when we look up high.
Here there's an interesting looking tree and up high I notice something cool.
Let's check it out!
I see a pretty big hole in the middle of the tree trunk, maybe where a branch fell,
and now it looks like an animal friend,
bird or maybe squirrel, might be using that big hole.
So neat!
That hole looks like it would be a great shelter for a young animal,
and we might see some grasses or some stick evidence at the edge
that maybe an animal is using this place for shelter, like a nest.
When we look up in trees, we can see all kinds of nests.
Most commonly we'll see nests from bird or from squirrel.
We call a squirrel nest a drey.
Let's take a look!
A big bunch of dry leaves and sticks high up in a tree could be a squirrel nest.
I see a lot of dry leaves there and some sticks.
A large nest like that might be from squirrel.
Up next, let's look for animal evidence that's a little lower to the ground.
When we're looking closer to the ground, there's a lot to notice,
since it's right close to our eye level.
Already, I see something kind of peculiar over here.
Looks a bit like a kind of web, maybe spider?
Oh interesting, I see a lot of web material in this pale white color.
I'm not sure if it's a spider web, after all.
It's pretty large.
Let's take a closer look to see.
When we take a closer look, I see caterpillars moving all around.
It must not be a spider web, this must be a web made by caterpillar!
Interesting.
One thing that we can find evidence of almost anywhere we look
is insects on the plants nearby.
Let's take a look at some plant leaves
and see if we can find any evidence that some bugs were munching.
Ooh look, there's a big piece missing from that leaf!
I wonder what happened?
Maybe an insect was taking a bite of that leaf.
Do you know anything about the insects that feed on milkweed?
Maybe it was a milkweed beetle or a caterpillar.
Do you know which caterpillar that is?
The monarch!
Lastly, let's look for evidence of animals
and insects on and under the ground.
Let's start by taking a look under this log.
Hmm,
interesting.
I see some dark looking holes
and maybe a space that looks like a path or a tunnel.
I wonder what that's evidence of?
Maybe those holes were made by ant or pill bug to get underground.
Really cool!
While we're looking for animal evidence on the ground,
let's stop under a tree to see if we can spot
one of my summertime favorites: cicada shell.
Can you see how this one really blends into the tree?
Its brown color is so similar to the bark.
It's common for us to find cicada shells at the base of trees
when we're looking at the ground.
This shell was probably left behind by a dog day cicada
which emerge every year in the summer.
Thanks for joining me for that nature walk.
I love looking for animal evidence up high,
low to the ground, and at or under ground,
and you can take this nature walk anywhere
to look for animal evidence near where you live.
If you like today's nature walk, be sure to give it a like
and subscribe so you never miss an episode.
See you next time on Curious By Nature!