Nikki and the kids attended a gathering at the Ohio State University about Stone Laboratory run by OSU and located on Lake Erie. They are the oldest freshwater biological field station established in 1895. At the conference, Stephanie won a scholarship for a summer class. Even with the scholarship the class is pretty expensive for a week long class, but she should be having fun if they have a lot of hands on time. Here is a link to their twitter feed, which has some pictures of the type of things they will do and research.
They are on Gibraltar Island located in the bay across from Put-in-Bay on South Bass Island about 3 miles offshore into Lake Erie.
Put-in-Bay on South Bass Island near Cedar Point
Gibralter Island located in the bay on South Bass Island
Even though the class is only a week long it is a real class that earns real credit at Ohio State University. They are in class all day for 7 days which includes a combination of classroom time and field work. We all know that she is not afraid of getting dirty if it involves nature. Yesterday she was able to release some birds after they caught and banded.
Stephanie helping to band a male Wood Thrush
Staphanie releasing a male Wood Thrush after banding at Stone Lab.
Today they are going to be heading out in boats near the Canadian border to do some more research on North Bass Island. They are heading to Green Island later.
On the boat near Green Island.
Here is what Stephanie told me as she sent the picture above and the one below:
“Just tried to look for more grassland birds, north bass island I think is a state park now, maybe 50 people live on, we just walked around birding, green island we cannot go onto because it is a reserve or something, but it is a main waterfowl nesting site so we are just going to drive the boat around the island to see the nesting birds.”
“I’m not sure what island that is in the background from the boat, maybe sugar island?”
“Because that island you can see a little house on it, green island has no human building or anything on it and it’s quite small, we haven’t gotten to it yet though.”
“There’s so many different islands it’s hard to keep track of the names unless we are going to it!”
On Lake Erie near Sugar Island