Kids’ corner

Children’s corner

FEED A HUMMINGBIRD; MAKE A NATURE MANDALA; LISTEN FOR TOMMYKNOCKERS.

By Mamie Rijks

Greta Starritt Rebecca Ofstedahl

SCIENCE AND NATURE

While you’re out and about in Crested Butte, chances are that you’ll come across a hummingbird. They enjoy eating nectar from the local flowers or getting a treat at the many hummingbird feeders people have in their gardens or attached to their houses. Did you know that a hummingbird weighs less than a nickel and its eggs are about the size of a jellybean? Hummingbirds are attracted to bright colors, especially red, so most feeders include that color.

Here’s a recipe that is safe for hummingbirds if you want to help fill the hummingbird feeder in your yard. Add one cup of plain white granulated table sugar (refined cane sugar) to four cups of water in a pot. With help from an adult, slowly warm the mixture to boiling. Stir it regularly as you heat it to prevent sugar from burning to the bottom of your pot. Once the sugar fully dissolves, remove the liquid from the stove and let it cool. When the mixture is completely cool, put it into your hummingbird feeder and enjoy watching the little birds stop by for a treat. Please do not use honey, molasses, maple syrup or powdered sugar when making hummingbird food. These can cause health issues for hummingbirds. Also, remember to empty and thoroughly wash the feeder each week.

ART AND NATURE

When we go out hiking, camping or picnicking in the mountains, it’s important to keep the nature around us safe and healthy. That means no picking flowers or pulling the branches and leaves off of the trees. However, you can still make beautiful nature art while you’re outside by using the items you find on the ground. If you gather up rocks, twigs and fallen leaves or flower petals, you can make a nature mandala for the next person who stays at your campsite or passes along the trail to find and enjoy.

Once you have gathered your items, choose one item to place in the center. Then make a ring around your center item, followed by a larger ring around that ring, and so on until you’re happy with the mandala you created. You can even gather all of the items you used for your mandala and make a new mandala with them, trying new patterns in your rings. For example, I decided to place a large rock at the center of my mandala. I surrounded my rock with a circle of leaves. Then I surrounded my leaves with a circle of small rocks and my circle of small rocks with a circle of twigs.

MYTHOLOGICAL CREATURES

Did you know that before Crested Butte was a ski town, it used to be a mining town? You can still find old mining equipment, coal and the closed entrances to some mines along some trails in this area. When you walk by an old mine and hear knocking, it might be a Tommyknocker at work. A long time ago, miners believed in a mythological creature called a Tommyknocker. In other languages, a Tommyknocker was sometimes called a mountain ghost or a little miner. Some people believed Tommyknockers looked like little green men.

Tommyknocker stories started in the mines of Pennsylvania in the 1800s, and, as the miners moved farther west to Colorado and California, the Tommyknocker stories moved with them.

If you worked in a mine and heard knocking, the stories said, it meant that a Tommyknocker was nearby tapping on the walls. If it was a good Tommyknocker, the knocking would lead you to treasure. If it was a bad Tommyknocker, there would be trouble. To keep the Tommyknockers happy, miners would leave them bits of food or other little gifts so the creatures would protect them in the mines. If a mine closed, sometimes miners left a small space for the Tommyknockers to enter and exit when the entrance was sealed, in the hopes that the Tommyknockers would follow the miners to the next mine and help them there. b