NatureWILD 2012 Issue 4- Rats and Bats and Life under the snow!

NatureWILD Magazine for Young Naturalists in British Columbia

Rats -Be Gone!

Volume 13 Issue 4 2012

WHERE THERE IS SNOW, THERE IS LIFE

YNC

Nature Champions

Bats

Room for a Little One

www.ync.ca

“Young Naturalists Observe and Conserve”

Inside...

3 Brrr...it’s winter!

4 Bats 6 YNC

Nature Champions

8 10 Rats - Be Gone!

12 Room for a WHERE THERE IS

SNOW, THERE IS LIFE

First of all, congratulations to all of our Action Award Winners and to our Nature Diary Competition winner Ruby McCarthy! You’ve all done such great work in 2012 - I’m sure you learned a lot and had fun doing it.

If you haven’t flown south for the winter to stay warm, like some of the creatures in this issue of NatureWILD, then make sure you get out in the snow and look for the things that live in and on it! You can find out about them in this issue.

Also in this NatureWILD you can learn all about bats! In colder places like BC, they are hibernating right now, many of them in caves like the ones you read about in the last issue. Find out all you can about bats now, so that when they come out of hibernation in Spring, you’ll know where and when to find them! As always, thank you to all of our generous supporters!

Ian McKeachie, President

Young Naturalists’ Club of British Columbia info@ync.ca

Little One

YNC is an exciting nature discovery and environmental action program

Winter-Word-Search

Nature Clubs across BC

14 Ask Al 15 NatureWILD NEWS 16 Questions? Comments?

Ian McKeachie, President info@ync.ca Kristine Webber, Executive Director kristinewebber@ync.ca Tammy Keetch, Clubs Coordinator coordinator@ync.ca Tracy Green, Membership and Office Coordinator info@ync.ca NatureWILD Editorial Committee Content Editor: Daphne Solecki Production Editor: Monica Belko Editorial Assistant: Ruth Foster Contributor: Al Grass

1620 Mt. Seymour Rd. North Vancouver, BC V7G 2R9

www.ync.ca 2

Happy New Year YNC Members!

that invites young people ages 5-14 years to discover nearby nature on Explorer Days with local experts, learn about native wildlife and plants in NatureWILD Magazine and take part in environmental actions to protect their habitat with the Action Awards program.

For more information: www.ync.ca.

Check out the interactive map at www.ync.ca to find a club near you!

Lower Mainland - Vancouver, LM Home Learners, North Vancouver, Stanley Park, Burke Mountain, Eastern Fraser Valley, Nicomekl, University Hill Elementary, Lord Kitchener Elementary, Carnarvon Elementary, Anmore Elementary, James Kennedy Elementary, Tri-Cities, Grandview Elementary, Nightingale Elementary, Ecole Jules Quesnel Vancouver Island - Victoria,Victoria Home Learners, Cowichan Valley, Cowichan Valley Home Learners, Nanaimo, Nanaimo 10+, Oceanside (Parksville/Qualicum), Comox Valley, North Vancouver Island, Queen Margaret’s School, Port Alberni Gulf Islands - Denman Island, Quadra Island, Mayne Island Central Coast - Shearwater Elementary, Bella BellaCommunity School Thompson/Okanagan - Kamloops, Salmon Arm, Kelowna, North Okanagan, Lillooet Home Learners, North Shuswap Elementary ‘Bugs R Us’, Carlin Elementary Kootenays - Nelson, Rocky Mountain (Cranbrook)

Thank you to our sponsors

and supporters who share our vision that all children be connected with nature.

NATURE

VANCOUVER

RR Donnelley

We acknowledge the financial assistance of the Province of British Columbia

North - Williams Lake, Prince George, Fort St. John Home Learners, Denny Island

ISSN: 1492-7241 NatureWILD is printed on SFI certified paper by Benwell Atkins an RR Donnelley Company,Vancouver.

Brrrr...j l ...it’s winter! k

It’s cold out there and there’s not much food. How do animals survive?

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Many people know that bears hibernate in their dens all winter, but how do other wild creatures survive low temperatures and lack of food? All kinds of ways it seems.

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Hides deep under rocks with up to 100 of its friends.

Monarch Butterfly

Rainbow Trout

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Western Rattlesnake

See if you can draw a line from the animal (on the left) to the way it might survive cold weather (on the right). (Answers on page 15)

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n Little Brown Bat

Burrows deep down in the ground below the freezing level.

Finds an old abandoned mine to keep warm in.

5 Banana Slug

6 Ground Squirrel

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Steller’s Jay

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Hides at the end of its burrow.

Sinks deep into the water below the ice.

Finds a peanut feeder station.

Flies south to somewhere warmer.

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Bats

They hang upside down to rest, they’re awake when you’re asleep in bed, they see with sound that we can’t hear, and they fly with silky skin between their fingers. Bats really are the most incredible animals and BC is lucky enough to have 16 species.

Bats are the only true ‘flying mammals’. Scientists classify bats in the order Chiroptera, meaning ‘hand-wing”. Bats are found around the world, in every habitat type (including cities) except the Arctic and Antarctic.

Ace Fliers

Quick and agile, bats are better fliers than birds. Their bodies are small but their wings are large and very mobile. The wing is made of a skin called a membrane. It starts at the bat’s neck, links the tips of all the fingers (except the thumb), then goes down to the bat’s ankle, on to the tip of its tail then up the other side. The membrane is soft and warm, thin but very strong, and elastic so it can be tucked away when the bat isn’t flying.

A bat nursery colony.

Photo by Mnolf.

Echolocation

: Seeing without Eyes Bats have excellent eyesight, but mostly find their way around by ‘echolocation’. They send out ‘clicks’ which are actually ultrasonic sound waves (represented by the lines coming from the bat in the diagram). The sound waves bounce off objects in their path (such as the cube in the diagram) and come back as echoes to the bats’ ears, telling them how big the object is and how far away.

The faster the echo comes back, the closer the object is.

Humans can’t hear these clicks; however children can hear the high pitched squeaks bats make when calling to each other. So you might know there’s a bat around when your parent hasn’t got a clue!

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Bat

Echolocation. The lines radiating from the bat represent ultrasonic sound waves bouncing off the cube. Using these sound waves the bat can tell where the cube is without actually seeing it.

The Importance of Bats

All around the world these night time flyers are hugely important – they pollinate lots of plants that people use (like bananas, chocolate and medicines), spread seeds, provide rich fertilizer and keep insects under control by eating them. In fact, bats are BC’s most important predator of night-flying insects. They eat about half their weight in insects every night! Just one Little Brown Myotis, which weighs about 6 grams, can catch and eat 500 insects in an hour!

Most BC bats especially like insects that live in marshes and lakes, such as mayflies, midges, caddisflies and mosquitoes. However, the Pallid Bat which is adapted to desert living likes to eat crickets and scorpions.

Spring: Hangin’ Out

As breeding female bats come out of hibernation, they gather together in nursery colonies to have their babies. They choose sun-warmed cracks in rocks, standing dead trees or – attics! Most bats have only one ‘pup’ a year which is nursed until it can fly. Until then they stay at the roost while their mothers look for food. If the mother flies to another roost she’ll take the pup with her, clinging to her chest.

Winter: One Long Sleep A baby bat.

Photo by Mnolf.

Conservation

A Townsend’s Big-eared Bat.

Summer: Easy Livin’

During the summer, most bat species spend daylight hours hanging upside down in tree cavities, buildings, rock cracks, under the leaves at the tops of trees or inside peeling tree bark. At night, of course, they are out catching insects.

In BC, some bats migrate south, but most will hibernate throughout the cold season – damp caves or mines that stay at more or less the same temperature make the best places to hibernate. They go into a torpor (like a coma) and their heart rate drops to 5 beats per minute. (A human heart rate is 60-100 beats per minute. A bat’s normal heart beat is 300 a minutes, going up to 1,000 beats a minute when flying.)

Bats do not store food for the winter, so they have to fatten up during the summer to avoid starving through their long winter sleep. Bats should never be disturbed during hibernation because they may wake up and move – once they are awake and their heart beat goes back to normal, they burn off their winter fat very quickly and will probably starve to death. If you find a hibernating bat, leave at once, very quietly.

A bat box.

Like so many other species, loss of critical habitat such as wetlands (for food) and trees, snags and caves (for roosting) has been hard on bats in BC. One thing you can do to help bats is put up bat houses. This is an especially good idea if you live in an area with many mosquitoes – the bats will be your true helpers. The YNC has easy-to-assemble bat boxes you can buy – go to www.ync.ca and click on YNC Gifts and Products. Bat boxes are $20, plus $8 shipping in BC. Sources: Bird Life, May-June 2000, RSPB Wildlife Explorers, Bats in British Columbia, BC Ministry of the Environment, BC Nature magazine, Fall 2012

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YNC North Vancouver Island cleaned up on Robson’s Bight.

Photo by Jackie Hildering.

YNC North Vancouver Island cleaned up on

YNC Nature Champions During the 2012 Great Canadian Shoreline Clean-up and on BC Rivers Day members of YNCs across BC - including Cowichan Valley, Cowichan Home Learners,Victoria,Victoria Home Learners, Nelson, Kamloops, Eastern Fraser Valley, North Vancouver Island, Nicomekl, Vancouver Home Learners cleaned up an amazing 60,010 square metres of lake and ocean shore.

Robson’s Bight. Photos by Jackie Hildering.

Photos by Cynthia Berg..

YNC Nelson

Cleaned 500 metres along Kootenay Lake and collected 70 1bs of garbage with a record breaking 201 cigarette butts. Thank you to the City of Nelson for picking up and removing the garbage.

Photo by Linda Homeniuk.

YNC Eastern Fraser Valley

Report by YNC member Megan Hall “13 adults, 18 children, and two dogs met at Vedder River Trail which is a very pretty and busy spot where people walk, run, walk their dogs, cycle, fish and ride horses. We were given tongs, garbage bags, and gloves. We cleaned about 4 km of trail and covered a depth of 200 metres of shoreline. Bottles, cigarette butts, empty pop cans, rope, fishing line, napkins, plastic bags, rusted car parts, metal pipes, metal fence posts, soup cans, and paper were collected. We each put in two hours into collecting garbage; the total was about 62 hours of cleaning time.

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BC Rivers Day is helping our planet by picking up litter and helping the planet not to be polluted. It’s Eco-friendly! “

Victoria Home Learners

15 Young Naturalists and seven parents participated in the Great Canadian Shoreline Clean-up at Kinsmen EsquimaltGorge Park in Esquimalt (Victoria) on Monday, September 17. The group picked up garbage over 1,000 square metre area.

Each volunteer did approximately one hour of clean-up time.

Yasmin and her family collect cigarette filters and they send them away for recycling so that they do not end up in the landfill. Isaac Wilson said “I was there to clean up the garbage so the animals will not die and to have fun! I found about Photo by Lisa Wilson.

100 cigarette butts like everyone else. I found a huge plastic bag in the bush.”

A map of ocean currents.

TSUNAMI DEBRIS In the summer issue of NatureWILD Photo by (Volume 13, Issue 2, 2012) we wrote Kristine about debris that might be expected Webber. to arrive from the Tsunami that struck Japan the year before in March 2011. The debris is carried by ocean currents that may wash objects up onto the beaches of BC, especially Haida Gwaii, but also Washington and Oregon. If these objects do not end up beached on the West Coast, they will continue being carried along until in another year or two some of them will end up back in Japan. Here are some objects that have been found on Beach clean up.

Photo courtesy Parks Canada.

Haida Gwaii.

Photo by Kristine Webber.

Label from a child’s car seat.

Photo courtesy Parks Canada.

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WHERE THERE IS SNOW, THERE IS LIFE Yes – there really is life on and under the snow.

ON THE SNOW You need sharp eyes to spot some of these creatures and a hand lens to see them properly.You might see what look like bits of pepper on the snow, except they are hopping about. These are ‘snow fleas’ – not actually fleas but tiny little springtails. They may be feeding on ‘watermelon snow’ – snow that has turned pink from the algae that is growing on the snow.

A tiny snow flea.

Photo by David Gerard.

Snow scorpionflies (which look like tiny grasshoppers) and snow spiders (a species of crab spider) both go hunting on and under the snow for snow fleas to eat.

A snow scorpionfly.

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It’s fun to pretend snowmen are alive too!

UNDER THE SNOW Packed snow acts as a blanket, keeping little animals that live in the grassland below quite cosy and warm.

The warmth comes from deep within the earth and is trapped beneath the snow. This heat melts the lowest layer of snow and makes a space where mice, voles and shrews can move about. They make a network of tunnels so they can roam around, finding grass seeds and insect eggs to eat, hidden from predators such as Snowy Owls, hawks and coyotes.

Soaring raptors such as this Red-tailed Hawk can spot prey hiding in the snow.

Photo by Brocken Inaglory.

NEAR THE SNOW Snowbank mushrooms grow at the edge of snowfields; generally they appear as the snow starts to melt but some come up even before the snow has melted away! Some of these mushrooms grow nowhere else except beside melting snow.

Top Jelly (Heterotextus alpinus) – the most common mushroom growing against melting snow.

Photo by Rosemary Taylor.

A Snowy Owl. Photo courtesy pe_ha45.

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Rats -Be Gone!

SGin Xaana Sdiihltl’lxa: Night Birds Returning Project

By Daphne Solecki, based on information provided by Heather Ramsay, Parks Canada

From earliest times the remote islands off Haida Gwaii have been home to one and a half million nesting seabirds including half the world’s population of Ancient Murrelets.

Many of these islands are within the Gwaii Haanas National Marine Conservation Area Reserve. and Haida Heritage Site. On these small islands, Ancient Murrelets come and go by night during breeding season.

The tiny chicks hatch in burrows under the forest floor. When their parents call to them from the sea, the chicks scuttle through the nightshaded undergrowth to be fed.

Ancient Murrelets (photos above and below). Courtesy of Carey Bergman, Parks Canada.

In the late 1700s, when Europeans began the fur trade (which especially hunted for Sea Otters), their ships – like many ships carried rats on board.

The rats jumped off the ships, swam to these islands and settled in. They ate the baby murrelets, gull eggs, songbirds, small mammals and invertebrates. Seabirds stopped coming to many of the islands.

The fur trade ended when almost all the otters had been taken; the ships left but the rats remained on the islands.

A rat. Photo by Peter Pearson.

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An egg that has been eaten by a rat.

Courtesy of Parks Canada.

These seabird colonies were always important to the Haida, so the goal of their Night Birds Returning project is - get rid of the rats and make the islands safe for seabirds again.

To show what the project was up against, Gwaii Haanas ecologist Carey Bergman set up night-time monitoring cameras on Arichika Island (see map). The cameras revealed rats skittering in and out of view all night long.

British Columbia

“This is what a rat-infested island looks like,” Carey says. “Half of the world’s endangered species live on islands and most of these species are in danger of extinction because of introduced mammals like rats.”

Haida Gwaii

(the islands on the main map)

But the next series of pictures shows black and white chicks tottering on the moss near Ancient Murrelet nesting grounds on a rat free island. “Canada’s penguins,” Carey calls them. There are also pictures of Rhinocerus Auklet and Fork-tailed Storm Petrel.

“This is what we want to see,” she says.

Ancient Murrelet and Cassin’s Auklets at night.

Courtesy of Parks Canada.

A Fork-tailed Storm Petrel.

Faraday Island

A Rhinocerus Auklet. Photo by Dick Daniels.

Murchison Island Bischofs Islands Arichika Island **Note: the black arrows show the approximate location of the islands.

The only way to get rid of all the rats is with poison. In August and September 2011 crews stocked, maintained and monitored specialized bait stations on the Bischofs and Arichika Islands (see map). Since then, it seems that the rats are gone, but scientists will continue a careful watch until 2013 before they can be certain of success. Cameras and listening posts will help staff measure when and where the birds are returning.

In 2013, scientists hope to eradicate more rats on the larger nearby islands, Murchison and Faraday (see map).

Background information The project is a joint effort by the Haida Nation and Parks Canada with Island Conservation, Coastal Conservation (two organizations that specialize in invasive species removal from island ecosystems) and Laskeek Bay Conservation Society and funded by Parks Canada’s ‘Action on the Ground’ Program.

The Gwaii Haanas National Marine Conservation Area Reserve surrounds Gwaii Haanas National Park Reserve and Haida Heritage site, making the southern half of the Haida Gwaii archipelago the first area in the world to be protected from mountaintop to sea floor.

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A read-aloud story

Room for a Little One It was winter. It was cold.

The lake was covered with ice.

The trees were dusted with snow.

Everything was still and cold.

Except for Tiny Little Wren, and she only kept warm by flapping her wings. She didn’t have a thick fur coat to keep her snug. She didn’t have a deep den to keep her cosy.

All day long, she flew about looking for food to keep her strength up. She looked in the bushes.

She looked in the long grass. But the ground was hard. And the long grass was empty. Then, in a crack on a twig she found some insect eggs.

“It’s not much, but it will have to do,” she sighed as she nibbled at them.

Then the sun went down. It got even colder. Poor Tiny Little Wren. She spent the night shivering in a bush. She tried to keep herself warm, but it did not help much.

The next day was the same. Cold, cold, cold. Tiny little Wren shivered.

“Oh, dear,” she said. “I’m not going to be able to keep warm tonight.”

“Ooooh, it’s going to be freezing tonight,” said a voice. “Good job I’ve got somewhere warm to stay!”

Tiny Little Wren saw another wren. It flew towards a little square lump on a tree trunk. It had a little round hole in it. The other wren went inside.

“Well,” said Tiny Little Wren. “I would never have of thought of that!” And she flew over. “Hello?” she said.

“Hello,” said the other wren from inside the box. “Come in. It’s much warmer in here than out there!”

So Tiny Little Wren flew in. She slipped down the side and landed at the bottom of the deep box, next to the other wren.

“This good, isn’t it? A bit cold but at least it’s dry,” she said.

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“Oh, it’ll get warmer soon,” said the other wren.

A minute later, another wren arrived, tumbling down into the box. Then another.

And another.

“Excuse me!”

“Coming through!”

“Look out!”

“Move over!”

“Room for one more on top?”

In no time at all, there were lots of wrens huddled inside the box. With all their warm bodies tucked together, it soon became toasty warm.

“It’s like being snuggled up in a big feather blanket,” said Tiny Little Wren, sleepily.

“Night, Wren.”

“Nighty, night, Wren.”

“Good night, Wren.”

“Sleep tight, Wren.”

“Goodnight, all,” yawned Tiny Little Wren.

Next morning, the wrens all took off again, one by one. Tiny Little Wren was almost the last to go (well, she was at the bottom).

When she came out the sun was shining.

“It’s a bit warmer today,” she said as she started her hunt for food, “but even if it gets very cold again tonight, I know where to go to keep warm!”

Story adapted with permission from Wild Times, January-February 2010.

Drawings by Martin Ernst adapted from original drawings by Daniel Howarth (Advocate Art).

Note to Adults: The “Tiny Little Wren” in the story is the Winter Wren (Troglodytes troglodytes, now known as the Pacific Wren). In winter these wrens will roost communally in nest boxes or other cavities. One winter in western Washington State, USA, 31 wrens were found using a nest box. Other small birds such as chickadees also survive cold weather through communal roosting.

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Have a Nature Question?

ASK AL

How can you tell the difference between a raven and a crow?

In BC, we have two crow species: the coastal Northwestern Crow (length about 41 cm) and the interior American Crow (length about 43 cm). Some experts think they are one and the same species (the American Crow).

The Common Raven is a lot bigger at 61 cm long, and a wing span of 1.3 metres. It has a high forehead, large thick bill and ‘spikey’ feathers on the throat. In flight, the raven’s tail is wedge-shaped, instead of the square-like tail of a crow. Ravens love to play in the wind and can do beautiful barrel rolls and somersaults with ease. The raven’s calls consist of mellow croaks, unlike the ‘caws’ of crows.

Al Grass has worked as a career park naturalist and ranger throughout BC. Now he is a well-known nature tour leader and photographer. Al especially likes birds, insects and spiders.

What do Woodbugs eat?

First, it’s important to know that ‘Woodbugs’ are not bugs at all - they’re not even insects! Woodbugs are actually crustaceans (or relatives of crabs, shrimps and barnacles).

Most crustaceans live in watery habitats in the ocean, or in lakes and ponds. A few, like Woodbugs, are successful on land.

Woodbugs, also known as Pill Bugs, Sow Bugs or Woodlice feed on fungi and humus (Bugs of British Columbia by John Acorn). Humus consists of decaying organic matter such as plant leaves.

You can usually find Wood Bugs under rocks and rotting wood - be careful not to destroy their habitat.

send me more Al says “Please ur question is questions. If yo ILD you will win eW ur at N r fo n se cho ncil! otebook and pe a Rite-in-Rain n a s to info@ync.c n io st e u q r u yo Send r Road 1620 Mount Seymou V7G 2R9 North Vancouver, BC A Common Raven.

Photo

by Dick Daniels.

An American Crow.

Photo by Dick Daniels.

A Woodbug. Photo by Franco Folini.

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tureWI D a N NEWS

YNC WILLIAMS LAKE – October 2012

Scavenger hunt and games day sponsored by Williams Lake Young Naturalists’ Club and Healthy by Nature.

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Rachel and Melissa Elefjon look for items on their list while Melissa’s mum Karla and fellow explorer Andrew Haseldine look on. After comparing finds, they spent the rest of the afternoon playing hiding games. It was a great way to get outdoors and enjoy the last of the fall weather.

Photo by Julianne Trelenberg.

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Congratulations to the Action Award Winners!

W r e I D u t a N NEWS

Gold Level

• Adrian Walker-Burroughs (YNC North Vancouver Island) • Madelaine and Trysten Scheidl (YNC Vancouver)

YNC Leader Jackie Hildering and Adrian Walker-Burroughs.

Photo by Lynn Walker.

Silver Level

• Liam Aoki (YNC North Vancouver Island) Trysten and Madelaine Scheidl.

Photo by Daphne Solecki.

Bronze Level

• Malka Martz Oberlander (YNC Vancouver Home Learners) • Tobin Tregear (YNC Cowichan Valley) • Jessabelle Atkinson Trelenberg (YNC Williams Lake) Liam Aoki on his unicycle!

Photo by K. Aoki.

Malka Martz Oberlander.

Photo by Julie Martz.

Tobin presented with award by John Scull, YNC Cowichan Valley Leader.

Photo by Elaine Scott.

Jessabelle presented with award by Sue Hemphill, YNC Williams Lake Leader. Photo by Julianne Trelenberg.

Nature Diary Competition (summer 2012)

Winner: Ruby McCarthy, North Vancouver

Lucky members of YNC North Vancouver Island on their annual whale watching trip.

Photo by Roger McDonell.

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Monarch Butterfly - 7 Rainbow Trout -5 Western Rattlesnake - 1 Little Brown Bat - 4 Banana Slug - 3 Steller’s Jay - 6 Ground Squirrel - 3

Brrrr...it’s winter!

Winter-Word-Search BLIZZARD BREEZY CHILL CLOUDS DRIZZLE FLURRIES FOG FREEZING FROSTY ICICLES RAINY SHOWERS SLEET SNOWY SNOWFLAKE STORM WINDY WIND-CHILL

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Next issue...

“Why did the toad cross the road?”

The White Sturgeon

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