Look Mom! A Downy Woodpecker!

A friend of ours organized a group outing to the Environmental Center in Bristol, RI, which is managed by the RI Audubon Society. What a fabulous place! There's an inside display area showing animals native to Rhode Island - many that we've already seen as we've walked on our beach! Just about every bird they had has been in our back yard at one point or another. (OK, not the Ring-Tailed Pheasant, but all the others!)

To make it fun for kids, they have scavenger hunt papers that the kids can use to find the different animals. Ryan was ALL over that! Megan ran all over looking at everything and yelling "Hey Ryan, come see this!" every few minutes.

It's much easier to show pictures of what we did than explain, so I'll just add captions where I see fit. (Ric was able to come with us - his comment was... "I like homeschool fieldtrips!" Good - He's in charge of them then!)

 

Looking out the hole at the pheasants.

 

Horseshoe crabs

 

Striped Bass, Flounders, Dogfish (mini sharks), to name a few. (I can't remember them all!)

 

The Blue Lobster

 

Some of the sea stars that have survived the wrath of the blue lobster! 

(There was an awful lot of "carnage"- or 3- and 4-legged sea stars in that pool!)

 

Ryan taking inventory

 

Inside of the whale - see Nemo and Dory? (just kidding...)

 

Story time with our group

 

Nature walk through the reserve

 

While we were on the walk, Ryan said, "Look Mom! A downy woodpecker!" It took a minute, but we found it at the top of a tree! It wasn't pecking, so it didn't give itself away. I have no idea HOW he spotted it, but I was pretty impressed that he knew what kind it was! (I didn't teach him that...must have been dad!)

We had fun and will definitely go again! Maybe when the seasons change...