EcoClub 3: Birds with a Side of Ham-and-Cheese Sandwiches

This Friday we took EcoClub on a special field trip to the Jocotoco Bird Reserve in Ayampe. It was a blast hiking through the dry tropical forest and playing in nature with fourteen elementary and middle school kids. 

We learned about the Esmeraldas Woodstar, the world’s second smallest hummingbird and the reserve’s most famous resident. We debated the colors and diets of numerous birds, pondered the absence of panda bears despite the plethora of bamboo, and consumed 40 ham-and-cheese sandwiches.

On the way back, we detoured through the nearly-dry Ayampe River where we chased fish and examine tadpoles in a plastic cup. It was a great day for environmental education and plain old fun in nature!

Setting off.

Trying out the equipment.

Our first spotting, a gallinazo negro, black vulture.

New birds and new friends.

The ever-present soaring frigatebird.

Many of the town's adults joined us and had a great time.

The volunteers got a little silly, too.

We watched wildflowers when we couldn't find birds.

A young EcoClubber models a painted Jocotoco bird sign.

This independent birder, Rene, showed off his book to a couple boys...

... and soon was entertaining a mob!

The one hummingbird we didn't frighten away with our noise.

A tadpole to bring home to Mom and Dad.

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EcoClub 2: Kids, Turtles and the Race to the Sea

Today we took the kids to Playita for a special Sunday EcoClub. We were planning to excavate three nests, and I thought it would be cool for the kids to see the dead fetuses and the bacteria and fungus inside the unhatched eggs. In fact, the kids got to see so much more!

All three nests erupted with healthy hatchlings as soon as we started digging with our hands.

Excavating the first hawksbill nest by hand.

We began handing the kids baby hawksbills by the handful.

The first baby hawksbill to emerge.

After measuring the first ten hatchlings from each nest, we asked the kids to line up the turtles high on the sandy beach. The kids were eager to plop the baby turtles straight into the water, but we explained how each baby turtle needs to make its own way to the ocean so that in fifty years, when it is ready to make its own nest, it will be able to find this exact beach.

On your mark, get set.... let those turtles GO!

The kids “raced” their turtles and picked favorites, though it was more of a slow-motion struggle than a race. Everyone cheered when a turtle was finally carried away by a high-reaching wave, and moaned when a wave pushed a turtle even farther from the ocean or flipped it onto its back.

It is a long journey for the little turtles. First, they must break out of their eggs and dig through a foot of sand. Normally the turtles hatch at the same time an escape through the collective digging effort, but late-bloomers are often left to die under the weight of the sand.

Once on the surface, the turtles can be dehydrated by the sun or burned to death by the sand. They can be picked off by birds or crabs. They can become disoriented and crawl away from the ocean by mistake. Even when they finally reach the ocean, they are at the mercy or predators and the cold water, and they must find their own food. It's no wonder fewer than 1% of hatchlings make it to sexual maturity.

I got down on my belly in the sand to photograph the journey from this baby turtle's perspective.

From down here, the crashing waves look like tsunamis.

I was a little fretful, trying to keep the kids from stepping on, dropping, or otherwise damaging the little turtles in their excitement. I let one precocious eight-yet-old boy use my camera to photograph the adventure, hoping he would not drop my $400 camera in the waves. Luckily he did not.

A photo taken by a talented (and persistent) EcoClubber.

I hope these kids will remember this afternoon with the baby turtles forever, because it is often a loving memory of nature from childhood that inspires the naturalists and conservationists of the world.

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EcoClub 1: Blue Paint Gets Everywhere

Every Saturday, Equilibrio Azul welcomes between five and thirty kids to the house for EcoClub. The kids show up in motorcycle taxis or walking, from next door or across town, holding a parent's hand or a little sibling's hand or all alone. One thing all the kids have in common is they just can't wait for Saturday mornings!

My first EcoClub focused on painting the house's newly-erected bamboo fence royal blue.

I was dubious at first. The fence was very dirty and we didn't wash it, so I though the paint might peel right off. I was also concerned when the kids started painting the poles of the street signs and making blue hand prints on the walls of the house.

I soon realized that, like many things in Ecuador, a successful outcome would emerge from the chaos. The kids worked hard and took their job seriously. Within an hour, the fence had been transformed into a vertical ocean.

In a few weeks, we'll get the kids back out here with paint to create a colorful underwater mural!

After the painting was all done, we still had an hour left, and the kids were certainly not going home early. We dragged out wooden stools and low tables onto our concrete front porch. Within minutes, the porch went from hammock napping territory to kindergarten craft center.

When the kids got tired of drawing sea creatures, we made puzzles by cutting up pages from teen fashion magazines and letting the kids piece them back together.

I thought the magazine-puzzle idea was ingenious, but I was also flabbergasted at the choice of magazine. The little girls would beg us to make puzzles from the prettiest models, and the boys wanted muscular, tattooed men.

In our modern world of photoshopped models and makeup and eating disorders, I believe we should set an example of healthy realistic bodies, especially to young children. Instead we were promoting the worst kind of unrealistic body image. I wish we could have promoted the ocean instead -- that is the goal of EcoClub, after all.

When I asked Caro (the head of EcoClub and our mentor as Equilibrio Azul) about the magazines, she told me the fashion magazines were the only ones available. I thought of the surplus of old National Geographics in the United States: dusty stacks in the basement, unwanted copies in the recycling bin, ten-cent issues for sale at yard sales.

I want to start a campaign to collect and mail those unwanted National Geographics to Puerto Lopez so the kids of EcoClub will fill their minds with inspiring photos of nature instead of unrealistic images of made-up supermodels. Who's in?

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