Out and about at Lord Hill Park today with my younger, nature explorers
class. A stellars Jay came up and introduced herself, all strut and perky
topknot. This bird either followed us, or we saw a few of them. On our
travels we found a moribound dragonfly who was alive but appeared unable to
fly. I picked him up and he perched on my finger and as we walked along
students took turns carefully carrying "Dave" along with us, our mascot of
the day. After about 30 minutes of riding on fingers Dave must have finally
warmed up enough and he took off. Immediately a stellars jay dropped out of
a nearby tree in pursuit. Although we could not see Dave, we watched the
erratic flight of the jay as it chased the dragonfly out of view. There was
a wonderful discussion about the good and bad about predation and I was
astonished by the wisdom of 8 year olds who, thanks to the Discovery
channel, clearly know a whole lot more about these things than I ever did at
that age.

Rob Sandelin
Naturalist, Writer
The Environmental Science School
http://www.nonprofitpages.com/nica/SVE.htm
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