Islands are so cool!

A raven skull

We had class with Gene this week. We learned about island biogeography, which is fascinating and so relevant in our time, as well as biodiversity. To bring it all home and relate it back to the learning center we headed out to the islands to "discover" which species were out there and "count" them. There was no exact science behind any of it but it was so fun!
Aneka and I made up the "animal sign" team. We found a raven skull (above); a small bird skull and some bones; three geese nests with down, egg shells and goose poop; a full set of wings, which were still connected, that we thought were from a gull and a live alligator lizard!

This nest had the most feathers, although it was the smallest, perhaps 2'x2'.

On the island we also saw these beautiful douglas fir cones. Neither Aneka or I had ever seen fir cones like this. Now we are on the look out for pink cones on campus! We also found the first tway blade, a small orchid, of the season.