Up Close To Animals

With summer here, Squam Lakes Natural Science Center has started its Up Close to Animals Series! Come see as our naturalists give mini presentations on the animals here at the Science Center, including the peregrine falcon, porcupine, skunk, great horned, northern saw-whet, and barred owls, opossum, snakes, woodchuck, hawks, turtles, and bats! At today's presentation, Beth showed us all about the barred owl, explaining its different senses and how it hunts and eats its prey. We then got to hear its different calls and see how its feathers and talons are constructed. It was very interesting!

Presentations are held daily at the amphitheater (in Classroom 3 in the Webster Building if raining) from 11 - 3 on the hour and last about 20 minutes. The Up Close to Animals talks are free as part of your trail admission. Click here to view the daily schedule.

We want your old cell phones!

Squam Lakes Natural Science Center wants your old cell phones! Why? To recycle! We have been working with Eco-Cell to collect old cell phones and recycle them in an environmentally friendly way. So if you have any old or broken cell phones that you would like to get rid of, bring them in to Squam Lakes Natural Science Center and we'll take care of it for you!
For more information on Eco-Cell, visit their website at www.eco-cell.com.

Science Center Lake Cruises

A tour of Squam Lake on the Science Center's Lake Cruise revealed many exciting sights! Summer is in full swing here on the lake, and it couldn't be more beauitful! As we left Cotton Cove, we came into full view of the Sandwich Mountains. Along the way, we spotted several loon nests with our binoculars, the loons not far away! Finally, we caught a glimpse of the house occupied by Katharine Hepburn and Henry Fonda in the film On Golden Pond. It was a great afternoon.

See our Photo Set on Flickr:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/slnsc/sets/72157619847911305/

Kirkwood Gardens

These Yellow Lady Slippers are now blooming at Kirkwood Gardens and aren't they big and beautiful!

Go to our Flickr account and see what else is blooming at http://www.flickr.com/photos/slnsc/sets/

Today was another busy day at the Squam Lakes Natural Science Center, despite the rain.

More than 300 students visited from the following schools and camps:

• Camp Calumet, Ossipee, NH
• Enfield Village School, Enfield, NH
• Groveton Elementary School, Groveton, NH
• Heavenly Sunshine Pre School and Kindergarten, Belmont, NH
• Lafayette Regional School, Franconia, NH
• Milton Elementary School, Milton, NH
• New Franklin School, Portsmouth, NH
• Saint Elizabeth Seton School, Rochester, NH.

We had as many as nine school buses today:

Black Bear Day

On May 16 Squam Lakes Natural Science Center hosted a special day to teach about the fascinating and resourceful native New Hampshire Black Bear. All ages were admitted to the trails for a special reduced fee of $8 (admission, as always, was free for members and children ages 2 and under). New Hampshire Fish & Game Biologist Andrew Timmons presented a talk about Black Bear ecology at 10:30 a.m. Visitors viewed the Science Center’s two resident Black Bears and volunteer docents were on hand to answer Bear trivia questions. There were crafts and story time for children.

See our Photo Set on Flickr:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/slnsc/sets/72157618494185705/

New Hampshire Day - May 2, 2009

New Hampshire Day on May 2 was generously sponsored by the New Hampshire Electric Co-op Foundation. The weather cooperated and 1,229 people from across the state got “Nearer to Nature.”

Squam Lakes Natural Science Center has a series of special days planned this year, which include discounts on Mother’s and Father’s Day (moms or dads admitted for free with a matching paid admission), Black Bear Day on May 16 – a special day to learn about New Hampshire’s bruins with reduced admission fees, Get Outdoors Day on June 13 (when youth will be admitted for free with a paid adult admission) and Coyote Day on June 20. Many libraries across the state purchase memberships for use by their patrons, which also provide admission discounts.

Check out lots more photos on our Flickr site at:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/slnsc/sets/72157618871479944/

OtterCam

We are delighted to finally have our first CritterCam live on our website. The OtterCam has been a long-time coming with many false starts along the way. Like any new technology, we went through a lot of trial and error and we will still adapt as we go along. Ultimately, we hope to have multiple webcams that will allow visitors to our website to have a "virtual visit" to the Science Center (particularly in the winter-time, when the trails are closed).

We are using a wireless camera which sends a streaming image via a transmitter mounted near the River Otter enclosure to a receiver on the Webster Building. From there a cable takes the received images to a network switch, then to a 16-input DVR and then to our website. We chose the otter for our first camera because it is the furthest exhibit from the Webster Building and we wanted to be sure that the wireless technology would work on our campus.

So . . . please let us know what you think. What should be our next CritterCam -- Mountain Lion? Bobcat?

Back to OtterCam