Animal Care, Native Plants & More at Hidden Oaks

Hidden Oaks Nature Center is a great place to volunteer!  It has welcoming staff, training and support, and flexible scheduling.  To top it off, there’s a warm feeling for friendship and belonging, often expressed at volunteer socials and get-togethers.  Come join us!

Visitor Information Desk – Volunteers needed Saturdays & Sundays, 12-5 pm.  Greet visitors and orient them to the exhibits, park and programs.

Native Plant Gardener – Through October, includes weeding and occasionally watering or mulching the space, weekly or every other week.  Fairfax Master Naturalists’ support is recognized with a permanent sign in the garden!

Animal care:  Dates & times flexible – feed and care for animals on exhibit.

Scout Merit Badge Programs:  Assist staff naturalists in leading scout merit badge programs, such as Environmental Science, Mammal Study, Reptile & Amphibian, Wonders of Water, Sustainability.

To volunteer, contact Suzanne Holland, or call 703-941-1065.

Hidden Oaks Nature Center  7701 Royce St., Annandale VA

Write articles for FCPA ResOURces newsletter (yes, for credit)

If you enjoy writing about the natural world, and want to educate and inspire visitors to Fairfax County parks, consider becoming a volunteer journalist. In this capacity, you’ll choose a recreation center or park site and learn as much as you can about it. When you’re ready and the deadlines are within reach, you will write articles for the ResOURces newsletter. (And earn service hours–good deal in the wintertime, especially). Code EO12

Interested? Contact Tammy Schwab

Potomac Conservancy Native Tree Planting, October 20th

Saturday, 20 October 18

10:00am-12:00pm

Stonegate Park, Frederick, MD

Volunteer opportunity! Do your part to stop pollution and restore our hometown river by spending a fall morning planting trees! Bring your friends and family and join Team Potomac and Stream-Link Education as they plant 200 trees at Stonegate Park in Frederick, MD on Saturday, October 20! You know that trees and fresh air go hand-in-hand, but trees are also a river’s best friend. Our healthy forested lands protect the water we drink and the river we love. Learn about the essential link between trees and healthy rivers while getting tips on how to plant your own trees at home and enjoying the great outdoors. Learn more details about the event and register.

Now accepting photo contest submissions!

The Northern Virginia Conservation Trust‘s fifth annual Nearby Nature photo contest is now live and it’s excited to announce this year’s photo categories! The three photo groups will allow both adult and youth submissions and the competition will be open from now until midnight on October 31, 2018. Full details including submission guidelines, prize donors, and guest judges can be found on the NVCT website by clicking here. Please find this year’s photo categories below.

NVCT’s 5th Annual Nearby Nature Photo Contest
Local Land and Water
Wildlife in Northern Virginia
People Recreating in Nature

Mt. Vernon District Environment Expo: 10 November

Saturday, 10 November 2018
8 a.m. – noon
Walt Whitman Middle School
2500 Parkers Ln, Alexandria, VA 22306

Mount Vernon District Supervisor Dan Storck will host his first Environment Expo where we will explore how everyone can help save our planet, with the theme “Saving the Earth One Person at a Time”. The morning will feature an Exhibit Hall with a variety of County agencies, service providers and educators, informational and hands-on workshops and screenings of the film “Hometown Habitat”.
Join us for the morning to LEARN, ENGAGE and ACT to save our environment!

Improve wildlife habitat with Northern Virginia Conservation Trust

The Northern Virginia Conservation Trust (NVCT) sponsors volunteer events that take place on properties that they own or on properties that have conservation easements on them throughout Northern VA. Volunteers help remove  invasive species, plant trees, and clean up trash.

The goal is to improve the wildlife habitat on these properties, and improve the water quality within the watersheds where many of these properties are located. Through these projects, NVCT hopes to educate and motivate Northern Virginians to plant native species, protect wildlife habitat, identify and remove invasive species, and simply enjoy nature.

Events are usually scheduled on the weekends. See calendar and Meet-up site, and FMN service project calendar. Most events last for two hours and take place between September and May.

No training or experience is required before participating in one of our events. The staff person on-hand will provide any training before the event starts. Volunteers should dress appropriately (long pants, long sleeves, hats, sturdy shoes), gloves/hand tools (if they have them), water, and snack. NVCT will bring any necessary equipment and supplies.

Edible Insects and Human Evolution, at Museum of Natural History

FREE ticketed event

Tuesday, October 30, 2018 
6:45 PM – 8:30 PM 
Ground Floor, National Museum of Natural History
10th St. and Constitution Ave., N.W.
Washington, DC 20013-7012

In her new book, Edible Insects and Human Evolution, author Julie Lesnik traces evidence that humans have been consuming insects throughout the course of human evolution, and provides a compelling case for why we should bring them back into our staple diets.

Lesnik points out that insects are highly nutritious and a very sustainable protein alternative. She believes that if we accept that edible insects are a part of the human legacy, we may have new conversations about what is good to eat—both in past diets and for the future of food.

Join the Museum of Natural History for a talk by Lesnik, and later, see edible insects from the entomology collection, and chat with scientists Briana Pobiner, a paleoanthropologist whose research centers on the evolution of human diet, and Seán Brady, an expert in bees and wasps and Chair of the Department of Entomology.

Edible Insects and Human Evolution will be available for purchase and signing at the program.

About the Author

Julie Lesnik is an assistant professor in the Department of Anthropology at Wayne State University in Detroit, Michigan. She studies the evolution of human diet with a specific interest in how humans have gathered, farmed, and cooked insects for food. She received a PhD in anthropology and a MS in kinesiology from the University of Michigan in 2011.

Hidden Oaks thanks Fairfax Master Naturalist chapter

On 29 September 2018, Visitor Services Manager Suzanne Holland thanked Fairfax Master Naturalists for their many contributions to the Park Authority and Hidden Oaks.  The 10th anniversary celebration of FMN stewardship highlighted the chapter’s work on behalf of the limited impact development parking lot, the native gardens, and Nature Playce, the children’s playground. More than 125 visitors attended the festivities.

Our stories matter, and so does the way we tell them

Photo: Barbara J. Saffir (c)

Marilyn Kupetz                                                                        

The most wonderful storytellers of the natural world mesmerize us with their skill and learning, their warmth, their ability to connect with us even as they are asking for our help and time. Alonso Abugattas is one of the masters in northern Virginia, as are Charles Smith, Tammy Schwab, and Doreen Peters.

For naturalists who teach, who speak publicly, who are required to show up with enduring material, charisma and tactile props may not suffice, alas. Yet the requirement to stand in front of a screen at the front of a room doesn’t mean that presentation-based storytelling has to be tedious. Effective storytelling and well-designed materials can easily complement one another.

Indeed, slides can be as beautiful as the world we want to preserve, and potent enough to stand a chance of depositing a message that actually takes root. Are you ready for some free, legal resources to confect those lovely materials?

Garr Reynolds, the generous presence behind Presentation Zen, seeds his online resources with almost every bit of counsel you’d ever need to speak at a VMN Conference or teach an FMN class. His ten tips could make the difference between having a room full of people on the fence or energized evangelists who pick up your cause and contribute to its success. 

Even when you know what you want to say, however, you have to decide what to show. The kind of photos that Reynolds uses for his own work are everywhere online, but usually they aren’t simply ours for the taking. Their photographers own the distribution rights. Copyright law does allow for limited classroom use, but what if your presentation is going to be videotaped and shared widely? You need to be careful about what you borrow and how you attribute credit. 

If you can’t take your own photos and get permission from the people in them, consider taking advantage of sites that supply free, legal photographs to the public. You should definitely build credit into your metadata and references, but otherwise you will break no laws, you will give aspiring photographers the street cred they need to keep working on our behalf, and your presentations will be the better for it. 

Here are a few places to start:

If there’s interest, we can talk more, online and off. In the interim, here are more imagery resources if you are ready to grow your skills as a storyteller in the service of the causes you care about. 

Thank you to Barbara J. Saffir and Ana Ka’ahanui for sharing their photos with Fairfax Master Naturalists.

Help plant natives this Sunday, October 7th

Mount Vernon Government Center

2511 Parkers Lane, Alexandria, VA

Sunday. 7 October 2018

4-6 pm

Join in a fall planting event in the newly established gardens at the Mount Vernon Government Center!  The group will be installing native plants in the front planting beds that were established this past spring.

They will also continue with some weeding of the planting beds as time allows.

Bring your favorite garden tool(s), gloves, snack and a bottle of water.
Since you will be working in the gardens please dress appropriately for this type of work including a hat, sunscreen, long sleeve shirt and long pants, and good shoes for working outdoors.

For questions and to register, contact Cathy Ledec.