Mystery Migratory Birds of the White Mountains: Here in the Summer, Where in the Winter? This is the title of a new educational unit developed by Sara Joncas, a biology education major, and professor Mary Ann McGarry, with the Center For The Environment at Plymouth State University. McGarry also serves as Director of Education for the Hubbard Brook Research Foundation (HBRF), which has a mission to translate the science collected by the team of researchers working at the US Forest Service Hubbard Brook site, just up the road from Plymouth in Woodstock. The newly developed, hands-on, interdisciplinary lessons focus on four diverse migratory birds that spend part of the year in New Hampshire forests and part of the year south of the Tropic of Cancer.

The curricular activities are aligned with NH and national educational standards from a number of different disciplines, in addition to science. The activities will become part of the Smithsonian Institute’s, successful, multicultural, cross-disciplinary Bridging the Americas: Unidos por las Aves program. Elementary schools in New Hampshire will be partnered with schools at the other end of a bird’s migratory path in Central America. Just like the birds who migrate back and forth, the students at the different schools will send information and artwork north and south to one another. The New Hampshire students can talk about the birds nesting and raising young where there are plenty of plumb insects to fatten up on during our summers, while students from Nicaragua can talk about the birds’ unique habitat in their country. Together the students can share what they learn about the birds and their conservation issues. HBRF will help with translating the students’ letters into Spanish and with the costs of mailing packet of letters and artwork to partner schools. McGarry says she is excited “to offer K-12 schools both a way to educate kids about the woods out their back doors and integrate a meaningful globalization element to the curriculum while promoting environmental stewardship.”

Some of the learning objectives are for students to be able to:

- Describe why birds migrate:

- Observe and explain differences in climate, culture, and geography between southern and northern migratory habitats of four bird species;

- Discover and share how birds are tracked and researched;

- Interpret trends from long-term monitoring data for migratory birds species;

- Identify possible causes for the decline of some migratory birds that visit the forests of northern New England; and

- Appreciate how parts of forest ecosystems are interdependent and complex and explain the importance of biodiversity in forest ecosystems

Joncas and McGarry piloted the activities they created in two seventh grade classes of teacher Michelle Jutras’ at Campton Elementary School and in three sixth grade classes at Plymouth Elementary School with teacher Sara Sanborn. The middle school students were busy examining a mist net used to temporarily capture birds so they can be banded and tracked, making observations about bird habitat needs, and conducting a simulated transect to collect, identify, and graph data about the presence of insects the birds find in the forests. The birds start arriving in New Hampshire around the second week of May.

For anyone interested in learning more about the migratory birds, Hubbard Brook Research Foundation is sponsoring a Migratory Bird Symposium for educators on the evening of May 9^th at Plymouth State University and a follow-up teacher workshop at Plymouth Regional High School the morning of May 10^th. Visit the HBRF website at hubbardbrookresearch.org to learn more and register for either or both programs.