• Field Trip Guide
• Student Field Sheets

Taking into consideration the difference in project sites along the flyway, their proximity and distance to the brant sites, two field trip options have been offered in this section so that teachers can plan for their specific site conditions. Ideally, if teachers can do both of the field-trip options, more information can be gathered and the project sites would be able to contribute more data to the central data base to share with all of the project sites.

Field Trip Plan A:

Objectives:

1. Students will have an opportunity to observe the Black Brant, their behavior, and the surrounding area that may affect the Black Brant.

2. Students will observe and count the population of Black Brant using sampling techniques.

3. Students will learn how to map the area.

4. Students will learn about plants and other animals that share the Black Brant habitat.

Method:

This field trip is designed to give students an experience that will not only allow them to observe the Black Brant, but also to study the surrounding area and habitat of the Brant. There are four "stations" involved in the field trip. Students will rotate to each of the stations. Each station has a corresponding Field Sheet. These sheets contain self-guided field activities for the students on which to work. The following is a brief description of the four stations.

1. The Wildlife Biologists: This station will involve the actual monitoring of the Brant, including collecting data on the weather conditions.

2. The Behavioral Ecologists: This station will make careful observations about the area surrounding the Brant and the relationships of that environment to the Brant.

3. The Geographic Interpretation Specialists: This station will create a map with representations of objects and landforms that are in the vicinity of the Brant.

4. The Marine Plant Ecologists: This station will conduct a basic survey of the major plant life in the area near the brant, including their favored foods: eelgrass and sea lettuce.

Field Trip Plan B:

This option would be useful for teachers and classes whose schools are close enough to the brant to do several monitoring field trips (in addition to field trip plan A) throughout the time the brant are in their area. This option might include after school field trips, or shortened field trips during school, whereas the field trip plan A requires more planning and actual time in the field. You may choose to use only the 'wildlife biologist' field sheets for data collecting instead of all four of the station field sheets. The 'wildlife biologist' sheets will be enough to provide useful information to share over the internet.

Field Trip Checklist:

1. Make sure that you have extra copies of the field sheets for your students to use on the field trip.

2. Contact a local resource person in your area. Check with your State Fish and Game, or Federal Fish and Wildlife agency for a wildlife biologist that is knowledgeable of the area and of the Black Brant. Check early enough to give them time to schedule in your class field trip.

3. Arrange transportation.

4. Review the activities provided for your class for the field trip.

5. Recruit teacher aides and parents who can assist with your field trip. It would be ideal to have at least one adult for each of the four groups.

6. Be sure that the adult leaders understand their duties. Distribute copies of the schedule, trip rules, and the field sheets before the trip to the adult leaders emphasizing that their preparation and commitment will create a fun-filled learning experience. Let the adult leaders know your expectations of the students on the field trip.

7. Let the class know where they are going and the behavior that is expected of them (see field trip etiquette). Discuss safety with the students. See “Field Trip Safety” section.

8. Give the students a list of what they need to bring along, including proper dress for the location and conditions. Remember that you will be near the water's edge...dress with appropriate foot wear!

9. Send home permission slips. Be sure to get emergency medical information from each student.

10. Ensure that students can properly use equipment prior to the field trip and have all completed the “Can You See the Real Brant” activity. Encourage students to bring their own binoculars and bird field guides from home.

11. Pre-assign the four rotating-station groups. Group sizes are variable depending on the number of students in your class. You may want to give each group a name (i.e. names of birds, colors...) to ease the confusion in rotating. Simply divide your class into four separate groups. Having partners within those groups is also a good idea for the field trip. You may want to do a quick mock rotation of each of the four groups (in the school yard ) to make the actual rotations go more smoothly. Explain to the students that they will be rotating every 25 minutes to the sound of a whistle or whatever type of noise maker is available.

12. Clipboards are handy for students to hold field sheets. Mount a pencil to each board. Enclose the entire clipboard in a large ziplock bag to protect from rain. Let students practice writing in the bag prior to the field trip.

13. Give extra copies of the field sheets, field trip etiquette, and the helpful hints to your adult leaders ahead of time.

14. Be sure to bring along some empty plastic shopping bags (the kind with handles) for a clean-up of the area that you plan to visit.

15. Make sure you bring the sample plant pressings of the eelgrass and sea lettuce from the Brant Care Package for the plant group leader to use for that station.

Procedure At Site:

1. Before letting the students off the bus, remind them of their pre-arranged groups, and the rotating system. Introduce them to their first adult group leader. Explain to the students that they will be rotating every 25 minutes to the sound of a whistle or whatever type of noise maker is available.

2. Next, remind students of the trip rules and proper outdoor etiquette. While you are doing this, have the adults take their respective field sheets, the clipboards, and any other materials related to their station to the site. Make sure they are far enough from each other so as to not disturb other groups. Encourage them to find suitable areas that will match the needs of the activity if the adult leaders have not previously visited the site:

1. The Wildlife Biologists (observation group): in a good spot for viewing the Black Brant

2. The Behavioral Ecologists: in a good spot for viewing and for walking around to check out the area

3. The Geographic Interpretation Specialists: in a location suitable for mapping the area

4. The Marine Plant Ecologists: in an area near the edge of water where there is good plant coverage of eelgrass and/or sea lettuce

3. Once the students are off the bus, take them to the site where the adults leaders are set-up with the field sheets and any special equipment for their station.

4. If it appears that the Black Brant are disturbed by your presence, then it may be a good idea to do the Wildlife Biologist section as a group, to insure proper data and note taking while the geese are present. Then, follow through with the rotations.

5. A strong closing is just as important as the activities themselves. Have students finish the sentence "the most interesting thing I learned about the Black Brant was....", and/or "the most interesting thing I learned about the habitat of the Black Brant was....", or they could share something specific that their group found interesting.

6. A must before you and your class leave: A Beach or Wetland Clean-Up. Have students participate in cleaning up any litter and encourage them to leave the area cleaner than they found it when you arrived. This might be a good activity to do in their groups as well.

Some helpful hints for the teacher and the adult group leaders:

• Remember to always be versatile. Recognize the magic of the moment. Use unexpected experiences to illustrate ecological concepts, or just enjoy it.
• Enthusiasm is the main attention-getter. Whatever is being done, do it with gusto! If you are not getting excited about it, will your students? Get down on your hands and knees to look at plants and tiny creatures. Point silently at a feature to which you want to draw attention. Enthusiasm is a greater catalyst than knowing all the names. Create an appealing atmosphere.
• If the students ask "What is this?", wait before you answer. Don't give them the name if possible. Give them the opportunity to discover what it does, and what its role is. “Oooh and aaah” a bit first, and remain silent, keeping a curious disposition. Then maybe have the student guess what it does. Suggest to the student to look at it differently.
• Make sure the activity does the teaching and not you.
• Model good conservation and environmental behaviors.
• What to do if students need a task (discipline problem) Ask questions that do not require a response but that ask students to perform a small task: "See if you can find a smooth object", "Find an example of .....".

Field Trip Etiquette:

It is important to not only have an enjoyable time on your field trip and learn about the Black Brant, but to also promote conservation. By first telling your students these basic conservation rules, and then as a teacher being the model, you will be contributing to the protection and wise use of our precious and limited natural resources. Explain to your students that you are entering fragile wildlife habitat, and that to misuse or be a careless visitor, is to destroy the homes of valuable plants and animals. Here is a list of some things you and your class can do to have a more stimulating and low-impact experience on your field trip:

• Step softly and quietly while observing animals.
• Replace rocks and logs after looking underneath (to keep roofs on animals' homes).
• Handle all animals gently.
• Fill in holes after looking at worms or clams (to prevent suffocation of the animals next door).
• Do not take live animals away from their homes.
• Do not litter.
• Pick up any litter that you find.
• Minimize trampling of plants. If trails are designated, stay on them as much as possible.
• Stay quiet. Yelling, shouting, and "roughhousing" will scare the geese away, and may cause some to abandon the area, and even avoid the area in the future.

Field Trip Safety:

• Students and their adult leaders should know and understand the following safety rules before going out into the field:
• Stay together.
• Have a partner.
• If you become lost, stay where you are and call out periodically.
• Dress warmly and keep dry.
• Know the dangers of, and treatment for, hypothermia. Take extra clothes, rubber boots and rain gear (plastic bags will do in a pinch).
• Step carefully around the water in the area. Because the ground may be mushy, you could get stuck.
• Observe animals from a safe distance. Use binoculars and spotting scopes to get a closer look. If an animal shows signs of being crowded or disturbed, sit quietly or move away.
• Do not taste any wild plants. Some plants are poisonous and some people are allergic to plants that are normally harmless.
• Carry a first aid care package (teachers).
• Carry emergency medical information for each student. Be aware of special allergies or medical problems.
• Always know what students you have in your group. Carry a list of students and take frequent head counts. To prevent stragglers and explorers from getting lost, assign a leader and follow-up person when traveling from one point to another.

Equipment Checklist

• Spotting Scopes
• Binoculars
• Field Guides
• Clip Boards
• Pencils
• Large Ziplock Bags for Clipboards
• Data Sheets (extras)
• First Aid Kit
• Garbage Bags

Much of this field-trip chapter was adapted from Shorebirds of the Pacific Flyway, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, Alaska Maritime National Wildlife Refuge, Homer, Alaska.

As a wildlife biologist, you are concerned with monitoring wildlife and waterfowl population numbers, specifically the Pacific Black Brant. You are also interested in determining the causes of fluctuations (up and down changes in numbers) of populations. You will want to determine the best way to sample populations of Brant so that you can conclude whether or not you have a healthy local population. It is important to be accurate with this data if you can. This data will be used along with other data from wildlife biologists like yourselves along the Pacific Flyway to monitor the overall status of the Black Brant populations. The Basic Information Fieldsheet, the Brant Population Sampling Data Sheet, the wind charts, and the following questions are all you need to get started.

Questions:

1. How long do the Brant spend in a given area? (during the time that you observe them)

2. What types of things around here may disturb a Brant population?

3. What types of things around here may help the Brant have a steady, healthy population?

4. How might the weather (i.e. wind, rain or sun) affect the population you are seeing right now?

5. How might the tide affect this population of Brant?

6. What might the time of day have to do with this population of Brant?

7. How might your location affect this population of Brant?

8. Do you see any Brant with leg bands? If so, can you read it? What does it say?

9. Do you see adult and juvenile brant? If so, how many of each?

Basic Information:

Name:___________________________

Date: ____/____/____

Begin time: ____:____ End time: ____:____

Students in group:

Weather Information:

Check one:

___Sunny

___Rainy: circle one sprinkles/shower/lengthy shower/heavy downpour

___Cloudy: Cover (percent (%) of sky covered_____

Air Temperature: ______

Water Temperature: _____

Wind Speed: Beaufort_____________ Knots_____________

National Weather Service Terminology_______________

Wind Direction:______

Beaufort Force Description:

From: At The Sea's Edge, William T. Fox, 1983, Simon & Schuster.

You will be investigating how animals interact with their living and non-living environments or how they behaves under certain conditions. Specifically, you are interested in what the Black Brant are interacting with and how they act because of those certain conditions. It is very important that you learn as much as you can about the behavior of the Black Brant so that you have information that can support the Black Brant population in this area if ever there were ever any threats to its population. Join with your partner for this activity.

1. What kinds of sounds do hear in this area? Where are the sounds coming from? How do think they affect the Black Brant?

2. Look around you....List EVERYTHING that you see. Now, put a check mark by the things that might affect the Black Brant in a negative way. Put a dot by the things that you believe Black Brant need to survive.

3. What types of human activity (buildings, boats, roads, trails, bridges, etc.) do you see around you? Do these things help or hurt the survival of birds, such as the Black Brant?

4. Find a piece of litter...take it to the litter bag. How might this piece of litter affect the animals and the plants in the area? Where do you think it came from? Do you think that the person who threw it away really cared?

5. Find a piece of living material. How is this connected or related to a Black Brant?

6. Find a piece of non-living material. How is this connected or related to a Black Brant?

7. If you were a Brant, where would you go to escape from a predator? Why? Take your partner there.

8. Explain how you might behave if a fox or a threatening person approached you and your nest.

9. If you were a Brant, where would you go to find food? Why? Take your partner there.

10. Explain how you would go about finding food in the area, and some of the challenges you might face while doing so, if you were a brant.

11. Do you see any boats, people fishing, or other human activity?

Describe:

12. If you were a young brant just after leaving the nest, would you feel safe on your own, or would you feel threatened by the local disturbances around you?

13. Take turns watching the brant with binoculars. Record your observations. Be specific about what you are seeing. Describe their behavior and what might be causing that certain behavior.

14. Make note of any air, water or noise pollution.

15. How do the actions and behavior of the brant relate to their surroundings, the disturbances, and your class being there?

You are a one of a kind specialist in your field. You have training in mapping very remote areas, following certain species of animals, and mapping their location. You have recently joined a team of biologists to determine the whereabouts of the Black Brant Goose during its migration up and down the Pacific Coast Flyway. It is up to you to investigate the area, learn what is there, why the Black Brant Geese are there, and to map this information. This information may be compiled into a report for a management team for use in decision making on the future uses of this estuary or bay.

1. Use the back of your paper to draw your map.

2. Decide what kind of map key you are going to use, what types of symbols will represent water, land, eelgrass, human development etc...

3. Where does the water in this wetland or estuary come from? (called an outlet) Mark that on your map. Where does the water go to? (called an inlet) Mark that on your map.

4. Find and name the different bodies of water around you and the Black Brant.

5. What types of landscape features and objects can you identify (hills, forests, rivers, sand spits, beaches). Put them on the map.

6. Are the brant in the water? on the sand? Locate where they are on the map.

7. Most importantly, we want to know how close the Black Brant are to human disturbance. Map any type of human built structures or things (buildings, parking lots, parks, roads, airports, boats, docks and anything else.

8. Compare where you are to an aerial map (if you have one). Can you find where you are?

You are a biologist that works with marine plants. You have heard about the Black Brant Project through some of your other biologist friends and have decided to contribute some of your findings to their work. The Black Brant get most of their food from two marine plants: eelgrass, and sea lettuce. You are interested in learning more about these particular plants and their relationship to the Black Brant geese. You are going to sample the area at which you are near today for evidence of these two plants, and decide if it is suitable habitat for the Black Brant.

1. Begin your survey by describing the general plant coverage around the Black Brant:

2. Go over to the water's edge. What do you see? Is there evidence of plants living in the water? Describe what you see:

3. Are these plants affected by the tide?_____ How so?

How might the tide affect the Black Brant?

4. How are these plants adapted to live in the changing tidal waters?

5. What might live on these plants?

6. Notice the landscape around you......notice all of the plants in the vicinity. How might the Black Brant use these plants?

7. How many different types of plants are rooted in the sand?

8. How many different types of plants are attached to rocks?

9. What do these plants need to survive?

10. Using the samples of eelgrass, find an area where it lives. Describe the color, texture, size, number of blades and its general location.

11. Using the samples of sea lettuce, find an area where it lives. Describe the color, texture, size, number of blades and its general location.

12. Eelgrass is classified as a plant and sea lettuce is classified as an algae. Describe the physical differences between the two.

13. What gives plants their green color?

Smear some on your paper next to this question.

14. How would the plant life in this area change if a resort hotel were built here? or if there were an oil spill? or if there were dredging in the estuary?

15. Because Black Brant primarily eat sea lettuce and eelgrass, how might the above actions affect the Black Brant?

16. Count how many individual eelgrass plants are in an arm's length distance. (For example, in a straight line, count the number of rooted plants in approximately the length of your arm.)

Subjects: Science, language arts
Duration: at least one class period
Group Size: entire class, small groups, or individuals
Setting: at home and at school
Topics: researching special topics, writing, local brant status and natural history

Objectives:

Students will be able to research and report on their findings of the brant in their local area and share the information on the brant homepage.

Method:

Students compile group field data into a class report that can be communicated to the other project sites over the internet.

Background:

Students should now have a good understanding of what problems the brant in their area are facing. The field trip has provided them with first hand experience allowing them to actually see where the brant are, and some of the challenges that they are facing.

Procedure:

1. Using the field sheets from the field trip, divide students into 4 teams, one team for each of the field stations: wildlife biologists, marine plant ecologists, geographic interpretation specialists, and the behavioral ecologists. They could be the same groups of students, or a mix of students to bring in new ideas. Maybe find students that took particular interest in that area to establish the groups.

2. Once these have been established, explain to them that they need to compile a short report on the status of their group's particular topic. Specifically, some things to include would be: population surveys, abundance of the eelgrass and sea lettuce, the mapping of the area, the behavior of the brant geese and their relationships to their surroundings, averages for your area on any of the statistics that the sheets asked for, the weather data, a general overview of the disturbances of the area and how they affect the brant, landscape features that affect the brant (shoreline, vegetation, open water channel etc...).

3. Have students include reasons why they think things are the way they are in their area..... over hunting, disturbance in eelgrass beds, human impact, other reasons, and include that in their segment of the report. This information can then be transmitted on the internet to the other sites and onto the homepage.