St. Paul Island students looking for sea ducks.

As part of the Refuge’s response to the Director’s “Children in Nature” initiative, Education Specialist, Lisa Matlock made a rare winter visit to St. Paul Island and St. George Island to help local students and teachers celebrate birds in their communities.  Both schools are using the Refuge’s classroom programs and field trips to help students enter the 2009 Alaska Migratory Bird Calendar contest.  Interdisciplinary art, science, and writing subjects were woven into the activities, and all students went outside in the middle of January to investigate birds surviving harsh Pribilof Islands winter conditions.  The sun made a rare appearance in St. Paul and the gale force winds quit long enough in St. George for both field trips to be a great success, hopefully leading to more teacher use of outdoor resources in student learning.

St. Paul ‘s special Saturday school “Bird Day” included four groups of students participating in classroom science activities followed by field trips to “East Landing”.  The youngest students learned about how feathers protect birds and how they function.  During their field trip they were lucky enough to run into hunters who had just taken harlequin ducks for an up-close experience with the waterfowl.  Upper elementary students investigated bird adaptations to winter and practiced the art of tracking snow buntings.  Middle school students detailed many examples of bird behavior among the numerous waterfowl spotted, and high school students identified every species and their numbers for a school-wide bird list and bird count that may lead to further educational monitoring of winter waterfowl on the island.  Many long-tailed ducks, harlequin ducks, scoters, cormorants, king eiders, and common eiders were viewed on the water by the excited students while snow buntings and gray-crowned rosy finches dominated the land birds.

St. George students spent three days learning about birds, the Refuge, feathers, and winter bird adaptations followed by a wonderful field trip to the “dock” where baidarkas once brought northern fur seals ashore for pelt collection.  Along with the same ducks seen in St. Paul, St. George students also noted a scaup, two feeding emperor geese, and a Steller’s eider pair.  Both tribal ECO office staff and the Island Sentinel had no recollection of ever seeing the greatly endangered Steller’s eider near the island.