A cross-curricular field trip to a heron rookery brought together students of Introduction to Literature and Wildlife Science Monday afternoon. For Dave Pilla's science class, the task is to gather data to support the hypothesis that increased acidity in a nearby beaver pond prompted the heron to relocate here. When the low PH makes the environment hostile to invertibrate populations, the whole food chain suffers: vertibrates (including fish) starve, depriving heron of their food source.

The heron have definitely moved to this new pond, and are activitely building rooks, or nests in tree stumps that drowned when beaver dammed the egress stream. Six rooks were counted.

For the English class, the same excursion focused on symbolism in nature.... a stone wall built in the 1930s for sheep pastureage....now overgrown with hardwoods; new rooks abandoned for the winter as heron seek fish habitats on the eastern shores of New England; a perfectly preserved helgamite (the abandoned larval shell of a dragonfly)....

We continue to receive photographs from students in Costa Rica, Spain, France and--eventually--Ocean Classroom. They cause one to ponder the predisposition we enjoy for experiential modes of learning, whether on-campus, or off. For example, Saka and Nick are respirating a rubber dummy in a practical medicine course.

Below, biology students discuss the effect of osmosis on the cellular structure of a carrot piece soaked in water.