Before I even got in my car this morning to head to school, I received a phone call from my husband, who had left about five minutes earlier. He called to alert me to excitement on our driveway…bear poop! We live in the mountains of Carpinteria and know that there are bears around the property. I have only seen one on the driveway once, several years ago, so this was  proof that the bears are still around. The excitement also came from the fact that I was bringing my class to the ranch later in the morning for a field trip as part of our owl and bat unit, and they would be able to see the bear scat first hand!

So, after Tecolote Tuesday, we loaded up the small bus, and began the 20-minute trip out to the ranch, with a caravan of almost a dozen parents-in-cars following closely behind. I started talking to the students about what we would see at the ranch and shared with them all the different types of wildlife that inhabit the area, from bobcats and deer, to ground squirrels, to owls and hawks, to BEARS! Oh, were the students excited!  Bears!

As the bus neared the evidence of the bear on the driveway, we looked out the window to get a birds eye view. You should have heard the squeals of excitement, awe, and amazement. And things only got better from there! As we disembarked the bus and began the walk on the ranch road to the owl box, my husband spotted bear tracks! Fresh bear tracks! What are the odds that the bear would visit last night and leave paw prints down the same exact road we would be walking on?!  The prints were gigantic!

It was incredible to watch the students follow the path that the bear had taken!

As we continued down the dirt road, the students could see an owl box in the distance. Our focus then shifted from bears to owls. We had an owl box on a table for the students to explore.

They enjoyed opening the trap door that my husband uses to clean out the boxes annually. I demonstrated how the boxes are positioned away from the morning sun, since owls are nocturnal. Then it was time to see if the owl box that was “in the field” had anything in it.  My husband climbed up to the top of the backhoe bucket and opened the trap door.

Inside were dozens of owl pellets! He put those in a bucket and saved them off to the side. He had also found a pile of remains from last year that we put on a large table.

Students were given rubber gloves and tweezers and were invited to pick apart the pile to see what they could find.

Ms. Svedlund, our science instructor, had brought printouts of possible bones we could find. The students tried matching the bones they unearthed to those on her papers. We found skulls, leg bones, tail bones, hip bones, pelvis bones, foot bones, and MORE!

Next, we laid the owl pellets on the table for the students to see. The students did such a great job of using just their sense of sight!

So what exactly is an owl pellet? Well, owls swallow their prey whole. The parts of the animals that they can’t digest, like bones, fur, and tails, are squished together to form a pellet. The pellet is then regurgitated.

Believe it or not, the students were quite hungry following our adventure. We headed to our house, did some hand washing, and then had a snack. After the snack, students had a chance to visit our chickens and Peaches, the turkey, who was hatched several years ago at Lower School.

They fed them scratch grains and table scraps. The students also checked the egg boxes, but came up empty handed. We made our way down to the horse corral, where the students had a chance to pet Sunny, our horse.

A great day was had by all!