| Sunday, September 7, 2003 Volunteers fill tours with fun
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When waves of students visit the Scarborough Marsh over the next couple of months, the redwing black birds probably won't know the difference. They'll trill from their cattails as usual. They'll perch watchfully in their poplar trees as the salt hay below them shifts in the breeze. The kids, however, will undoubtedly notice the birds and will observe them with a newfound interest and wonder, thanks to the enthusiasm of some well-trained volunteers. Without them, the Maine Audubon Society would be hard pressed to find enough people to lead seasonal nature exploration walks for students at the Scarborough Marsh Audubon Center on Pine Point Road. The marsh is the host for the exploration program every spring, from April 28 until school lets out. The kids, who come from schools all over the region, are taken on a guided tour through the marsh, where they learn which creatures live there, what they eat and how the marsh's delicate ecosystem works. "Hopefully they go away with some key concept of why the marsh is important," said Linda Woodard, director of the center. "We want them to be excited about the marsh and go: `Wow, this is a really great place to be.' " They can't do that without the volunteers, though. It is up to them to spark that excitement. And during the last few weeks of April, a new group of volunteers learned how. This year's four-day marsh walk training began on April 24 with orientation, followed by a plant identification session, a sample walk and, finally, a bird identification session on April 29. Each day, as the volunteers gained their own knowledge about the marsh, they were also encouraged not to teach the kids by lecturing, but by asking them questions. "The program is all inquiry-based," Woodard said. "For some people, that's a new way of talking to kids. They have to learn that questioning technique." Woodard gives the volunteers examples of how to put it into action inside the center at the beginning of bird identification day. Children visiting the center will make their first stop in this room, where 20 mounted marshland animals sit on shelves. Here they will see all the animals that live in the marsh up close. It is also here that the volunteers will begin getting the kids intrigued. To demonstrate, Woodard pretends the volunteers are the kids. She picks up each animal and asks the "children" what they know about it. With the snowy egret, she asks them to pick out something that seems different. They answer: The bird has yellow feet. She asks if they know why the bird's feet are yellow, which she said is a tough question for the kids. Then she asks if they have ever gone fishing and put a shiny, brightly colored lure on the line to attract the fish better. And then, again, she asks the "kids" for their ideas about why the bird has shiny yellow feet. "And you'll see the light bulb go off right there," she told the volunteers. Of course, the children will ask their own questions, and Woodard prepares the volunteers for the inevitable. "One of the kids will always ask, when they see these first thing, `Oh! Did you kill them?' " Woodard explains to the volunteers. "And we tell them, no, they died naturally, and we had them stuffed so you can see them up close." At first, the information was overwhelming to Kelley Slavin from Scarborough, who volunteered out of curiosity about the marsh. Before the training session, she knew nothing about the birds or plants that live there. By the end, though, she was feeling more confident. "You're not going to know everything right away," she said. "It's just a matter of getting the high points and building on that." Spending the time to do that, said Slavin, is well worth it. She and her fellow volunteers know they won't be changing the world in an hour. The reward for them, though, comes from sparking a child's curiosity, giving the children new information to share, increasing their appreciation of nature and getting them to think about the importance of protecting places like the marsh. "It's about leading the kids so they can discover things," said Judy James, who lives an hour and a half away in Norway but is determined to volunteer. "It is magical for them. If the children are young and they become excited about nature, then they'll want to protect it. And appreciate things," she said. Woodard said she sees that appreciation blossom almost every time she leads a walk, lets the kids bounce on the spongy beds of salt hay, has them touch the juniper bush that snakes use to shed their skins, and lets them wipe from the poplars the white dust that American Indians once used for sun screen. When it comes to the animals, the great blue heron is sometimes a no-show. The snowy egrets sometimes stay too far away in the distance to show off their yellow feet. But one bird never fails to show itself off and thrill the kids. "The kids will get a real good look at the redwing black bird," said Woodard. Staff Writer Giselle Goodman can be contacted at 791-6330 or at: ggoodman@pressherald.com <
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