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Last weekend I took a group of Ukrainian scouts out for three hikes at Ashland, and it was a terrific weekend all around.The kids were interested and knowledgeable, and the hikes complemented the programs (about nocturnal animals and birds) quite well. I had been nervous when I found out I would have to lead one group on a bird walk by myself Sunday morning - there’s no doubt I’m still building my birding skills - but even that ended up being an enjoyable and valuable walk.

First, though, was a Saturday night hike following the nocturnal animals presentation. The scout group was big, with a couple dozen kids and at least half that many parents, so we split into three groups since we had three teacher naturalists. Jessica and Rob took their groups through the marsh, though in different directions, and to make sure we didn’t have too much of a traffic jam, I set out the other direction to take my group up the hill and through the woods before we all met at the campfire site.

Shortly into our walk we heard some Canada geese flying nearby, as well as the ubiquitous crickets. The kids thought they heard katydids too, which would certainly be possible, but I wasn’t sure I had. We had talked about katydids in our program, so they were expecting them. But we tried cupping our hands around our ears to hear better like a fox, and we hiked on up the hill, skirting the lodge and pausing in the field along the treeline to let our eyes adjust.

As we neared the top of the hill, we heard something take off through the grasses, which is fun but also always a little disappointing, since there’s no way of knowing what it was. But just knowing there are animals living out their lives just feet away from you off the trail is still a good reminder that we share these hillsides with others. We hiked along the top of the hill above the meadow, headed for the trail through the woods that goes back down to Wildflower Creek. We stopped just before entering the woods because I had to remind the kids not to pick things when one of them tickled me with a meadow grass, which is always a tough line to walk. It’s important to emphasize for the kids that we want to leave all the plant and animal life to live out and interact as they will without our interference. But I also worry about what might come across as reprimanding kids for playing. Hopefully I strike a tone that works.

The worst part about this, though, was that as I was talking, we heard a couple distant hoots from a great horned owl, which was the highlight of the night hike, regrettably just as I was finishing reminding the kids to leave the plants in the ground. Still, I’ve done a number of night hikes at Ashland, and you can’t count on hearing the owls, so it was an exciting moment.

We entered the woods and dealt with a truly dark night hike, hidden from the starlight (and possibly the suburban light pollution) that helped us see our way across the meadow. The path through those woods is narrow and has to be walked single-file. The hillside is steep and the trail often crossed by roots and rocks. I have to admit that as we started down the path, I did wonder if bringing the group this direction was a good idea. But we took it slowly, and in the end, it was an opportunity to talk about how our sense of touch was also important at night - a few times I started to walk off the trail but could feel the quality of the ground was different beneath my feet, soft leaf litter as opposed to packed earth, and quickly corrected. At the bottom of the hill when I mentioned it, it sounded like a few people in the group had the same experience.

We were nearly to the campfire site, with just two bridges to cross and a walk down a wide and relatively flat trail. I tried to point out to the kids that if they listened on that trail things sounded different - because we were next to the pine woods rather than deciduous trees - but just as I asked them to be quiet to listen, the wind died down. It was probably still a bit different in terms of the mix of insects singing out, but not nearly so obvious as the sound of wind through pine needles.

We got to the campfire, which Jessica lit while the scouts sang a Ukrainian song for lighting fires, and then we were treated to a typical scout campfire, in Ukrainian. There were skits, with the occasional English word for animals they had just learned about, and lots of songs, some of which seemed to have familiar melodies and others were completely new to me, including one that was moving even though I had no idea what they were saying. Marshmallows were cooked and passed around and eventually one of the adults told us they were ready to head back to the lodge.

The next morning we all set out in the same groups on the same paths to let the kids see how different the experience was in the daylight. They recognized the meadow paths, but it’s always fun to see how much more and how much further you can see. We stopped along the top of the hill and saw Canada geese fly overhead - even the animals cooperating to help the kids have a similar experience at night and in the morning, one focused on sound, the other on sight. And we heard something making its way through the thicket at the top of the hill. One of the kids said something about the animal being stuck - they were probably first or second graders - which gave me a nice chance to explain that they were very happy deep in that thicket where we could hear but neither see nor get to them.

We entered the woods at a much faster clip, the trail so much easier to follow when we could see it. And with the daylight, we were able to talk about more of what was around us. When we paused halfway down the hill so I could point out a game trail, one of the kids asked about what kind of tree we had stopped alongside. This boy started his weekend with a bit of a reputation as one who would run off or otherwise make trouble, and he did in fact run ahead and hide in the bushes at one point. But I think it was an abundance of energy, not a lack of interest, and his question about the tree changed our morning hike for the better.

Once they knew the tree was a red maple, the kids immediately asked if we made syrup, and it was fun to say, actually, we do and invite them to come back in February. But then as we continued on the trail, we ended up talking about many of the plants we passed. We talked about tulip trees and how they do well in secondary forests, poison ivy and its ability to cause a rash even just from the vine (which a dad told us he had learned the hard way), and a spicebush with the berries good for migrating birds.

Along the other side of the creek, the kids found a bunch of walnut husks, and after I told them the nuts were inside, they spent most of the rest of the hike looking for walnut shells that had lost their husks. It was funny how effortless the hike felt, in some ways, now that I have some familiarity with the land and its plants. I told them the walnut fruits were not edible for people and in fact had been cooked down once to stun fish, which is no longer allowed. And I could share that the husks had also been used to make dye at one point.

That easy confidence and knowledge was not limitless, though, and when the children found a dead rodent nearby I realized a bit of a lack in my experience. I told them it was probably a vole, given its size and the fact that I know Ashland is home to the animals, but since I haven’t seen one before, I couldn’t be sure. But we could still talk about how they tunnel under the grasses and snow and provide important sustenance to foxes and other predators.

The final challenge on the morning hike was a tree leaf, huge tree leaves, in fact, that I thought were probably sycamore. Looking around, I couldn’t find a sycamore tree, however, and when the kids asked about the leaves and we found the tree they were coming from, the bark looked like a river birch. (I have since looked it up, and the leaf had to have been sycamore, so maybe it was a young sycamore so the trunk didn’t look familiar yet.) In the end, this was a fine moment with the kids, despite my confusion, because we talked about how you can, and should, use multiple facts to identify species, like leaves and bark. And I’ve learned that not having every answer is not a big problem so long as you approach the question as a chance to try to figure it out or discover something with the kids.

We returned the groups to the lodge for breakfast and set up for the Birds of a Feather program, which Rob and I observed Jessica teach. After a great lesson ranging from what makes a bird a bird to different species and calls, we split up again to set out on bird walks.

This time I took my group to the marsh first, since we hadn’t had the opportunity yet, and it is typically a good place to spot some birds. Saturday night, I had told Amy Jo that if the right birds showed up, the kids would have a good hike with me, and if not, it could be a dull affair, so I was pleased and grateful when a cardinal flew by as we looked out over the marsh, making the chipping call Jessica had just finished describing in the program. A sharp-eyed mom spotted a vulture far in the distance, but we didn’t emphasize it with the kids since most couldn’t or hadn’t seen it. There was also a songbird of some sort staying just out of clear sight in the trees to the right of the marsh, frustrating me, but with young kids, anyway, it wasn’t horrible for me to just give up and move on, as I did after a bit of fruitless peering through my binoculars.

Along the trail the kids continued to be wonderfully curious about the plants they were passing and the surroundings overall. One of them recognized some kind of wild carrot growing by the trail, and when someone asked if it could be eaten I took the opportunity to share that most plants in the carrot family are actually poisonous. Another kid knew and offered that Queen Anne’s Lace is a part of the group, further proof of how knowledgeable and engaged they were.

As we crossed the small tributary to the Red Clay Creek, a chickadee flew overhead and even perched on a branch very nearby and waited for us to have a good look. It flew off but continued to play along for us by making its distinctive call, another Jessica had mentioned in the program. Like the cardinal, this meant the kids were getting a nice real-world reinforcement of what they had learned, but the chickadee brought extra excitement. Jessica had mentioned that the number of “dees” at the end of the chickadee’s call varies depending on the individual’s bird’s region, but she wasn’t sure how many dees were sung by birds in our area. Several of the kids counted as soon as we heard the call and were very insistent I be sure to tell the other teacher-naturalists that it’s four dees in our area (which I did). Their excitement to not only experience the birds in the wild but to add to our knowledge about them was eye-opening for me, the first time on one of these hikes I had seen another vital aspect of getting kids engaged with the natural world - their ability to contribute.

As we were enjoying the chickadee there were plenty more indistinctive birds flying about in the trees beside the marsh, but again, since I didn’t know what they were we kept moving and it worked out fine. Once on the boardwalk we heard the cardinal again and I tried to get the kids to look for it while I scanned the trees for other birds. A large woodpecker landed on a tree a fair distance away but in clear sight and after talking myself through the identification of the red-bellied (probably to the amusement of the dad next to me), I shifted to helping the group find the bird, which probably half of them did. The others were further along the boardwalk enjoying the setting.

A few of the kids were excited about finding birds now, and one of the girls said she thought she had seen a blue jay. I had also seen a flash of blue flying away but didn’t mention it since I couldn’t be sure what it was, so it was nice to share with her that I thought she was probably right. As we left the marsh, a peck’s skipper posed for everyone on the boardwalk, and the kids had fun seeing the butterfly - butterfly watching seems to go with bird watching, although there aren’t many butterflies left this time of year.

We made our way along the floodplain trail and stopped at a patch of stinging nettle so I could point it out. One of the dads told the kids the word for it in Ukrainian, saying they had it in Europe, and I shared it had actually been brought from Europe purposefully because it was can be eaten (after thorough boiling) and it is a good source of vitamin C. It was a neat view of a naturalized plant, the connection between two continents and groups of people, rather than the historical view we tend to take that forgets about the reality of the places we, plants and people, came from.

While we were discussing the stinging nettle, a blue jay called overhead, and I asked the kids if they knew what it was. Again, our “troublemaker” showed his engagement, immediately coming up with the answer, and the girl who had seen a jay earlier was able to confirm it.

From the floodplain we hiked up the hill, headed for the hawk watch before we were out of time, and I was struck by the fact that we didn’t see any birds in the meadow. The swallows, ubiquitous in the spring and summer, were nowhere to be seen, and we couldn’t see or hear anything else in the grasses or scattered trees.

I stopped the group by the burrow nearly at the top of the hill, which I had always assumed was a groundhog’s home but which had what looked more like fox scat by its entrance this morning. I mentioned that the people at the hawk watch were counting migrating raptors and then we joined them. It was cold on top of the hill - the wind was blowing strongly and consistently - so it turned out fine that I had only left about 10 minutes for us to watch the skies. Several of the boys spotted a few vultures in the distance, and we were just about to head down when one of the birdwatchers called out something was passing overhead. We all looked up to see it, and one of the men using a scope caught my eye and let us know it was a cooper’s hawk, for which I was very grateful. I could have told you it was fast and probably small, but I was straining to come up with anything more. It was the perfect hawk for us to see and close with, because Jessica had seen two first thing that morning and made sure to have a taxidermied cooper’s in her presentation, so with one final connection back to the lesson, our bird walk was complete.