What do you do when you know more than the naturalist giving the presentation, and you know that they are giving horrendously wrong and even inapporpriate information? I did and said nothing, and now I'm kicking myself. Our usual beloved naturlist was not with this morning and we were introduced to the person filling the summer internship position. She incorrectly named two species of bird, told the kids that owls couldn't turn their heads any more than a normal human, and encouraged the removal of eggs from nests belonging to invasive species (which actually she incorrectly identified as invasive when in reality they are native species that are just outcompeting some song birds fair and square, as far as nature goes). Even Calvin knew that she had been wrong when identifying the speckled robin as the female instead of the juvenile, but we both kept quiet during the program and talked about it together later. We decided that it had been polite not to interrupt, but that we probably should have at least questioned the suggestion to remove eggs from nests, because it's unfortunate that some parents and children went home with dangerous misconceptions about some species that live in our area. I will do the next best thing, though, and talk to the head naturalist about it.
We spent the rest of the day at the lake, eating a picnic lunch, swimming in the lake, reading in the shade, and going crazy in the splash zone. Summer is good stuff.
