In Which a Gopher Tortiose Comes to Stay

It was an ordinary evening. I was fixing dinner, and ds said he'd be out front riding his scooter. Seconds later he came running inside shouting something that included the words "turtle" and "driveway". Dh and I went out to see what he was talking about. The neighbors were already there.

Sure enough, there was a Gopher Tortoise in our driveway. We watched it walk across our front yard and stop at our elderly neighbor's gate. The neighbor opened his gate to allow it into his yard. Excitement over. Back to dinner. Well, no. Later that evening, it dug under the fence and came into our yard. Within a day, it had a burrow in our yard. Ds, the nature boy, was beside himself.

The Gopher Tortoise is listed as threatened in some states; endangered in others. In Florida it's a Species of Special Concern. Habitat loss due to development is the greatest threat to the future of this species. It's illegal to move one, other than to get it out of immediate danger (such as if one is in the middle of a road). So, we have a new back yard resident. Occasionally we see him in the yard eating weeds. As I prepare for our fall garden (the best time for gardening in Central Florida), I need to keep him in mind. As much as we love having him live here, I don't want him eating our vegetables.

I took some video and pictures when he first showed up in our front yard, and took pictures in the back yard a few days later. So here he is, Gopherus polyphemus, aka Tortera.

Outdoor Hour Challenges 1 & 2

As we already did the first two challenges earlier this month, I'm just going to combine them into one post. If I try to wait until I have time to post seperately about each one, I'll get hopelessly behind. Not behind on the challenges themselves, but on blogging about them.

Challenge #1
For the first challenge, we were simply to get outside for 10-15 minutes and spend time observing. Back inside, we talk about what we saw and decide on two things to investigate further. Our first day was a bit different. Observing nature isn't new to us. Formal nature study is. We went out, looked around, and commented on what we were seeing. I always find it interesting how ds and I notice different things. He keyed in on animal life, while I noticed plant life. We both however, noticed the Zebra Longwing butterfly, the dragonfly, and our resident Gopher Tortoise who he named Tortera (yes, he's a Pokemon fan).

We collected a few leaves for leaf rubbings -- from our Florida Red Maple, and one of our orange trees. We also picked a few Beach Sunflowers for pressing.

Challenge #2

We did the second challenge during Tropical Storm Fay. Though we're in an area where there was much flooding, we're thankful that all we got was a lot of wind and a decent amount of rain. There were questions to answer for Challenge 2, Using Your Words:

Use one word to describe something you heard -- toads
Use two words to describe something you saw -- toad eggs
Use three words to describe something you felt -- hot, strong wind

Not bad. I think we'll keep working on descriptions by returning to this challenge every now and then.

Formal Nature Study

We're going to try for formal nature study this school year. In addition to joining a nature study club in our local homeschool group, we plan to do Barb's Outdoor Challenges. We've done the first 2 challenges, and I will blog about them later this week. Also this week, we'll be doing the 3rd challenge.

We're armed with field guides, a camera, and our nature journals. My son (11 next week) has always been a nature lover, so he is looking forward to adding nature study to our school week.