Buzzy led a wonderful Nature Games workshop at the Fall Southern Conference at Pathfinder Ranch. He wants the readers to know that his game was passed on to him by other Naturalists, he did not make it up. We will be featuring new nature games every issue. Please send your submissions to the editor.
Introduce the game by talking about Scrub-Jays (or Steller's Jays) & Dark-eyed Juncos (what they eat, where they live, etc.).
I select one Jay for every 7 Juncos (so usually in my group I'll have 14 Juncos and two jays). If, like at AEOE, you have over 30 people you simply team up people so that each junco shares a cup and they work as a two parent family. The goal for everyone one is to GET SEEDS so they can MAKE BABIES. Isn't that the goal of every species?
Let five seeds equal one baby. The juncos have to acquire their seeds from the tree—which is the person handing out the seeds (usually me and/or a teacher). Give about 30 seconds for the Juncos to hide their nests (anywhere they want). Once the Juncos have hidden their nests, they cannot move it at all (it must not be attached to them -- like in their pocket). The Jays, however, get to run around with their nest (I usually color two cups blue so that the Juncos can readily see who the jays are). When you reach thirty seconds, yell, "go." The Jays can now open their eyes. Jays get their seeds by robbing Junco nests. The Juncos, because they are smaller, cannot physically stop the Jay but can try to psych them out, using any psychological tactics they can think of. After a few minutes you yell stop and everyone counts their seeds and determines the amount of babies. You can keep track of this on a graph to show them some population trends. After a round or two you can add another player, a hawk. The hawk (I use only one) can steal (by tagging) Jays' seeds. This sets up a difficult dynamic for the Jays because they are still nest robbing but they have to worry about the hawk. Thus, the Juncos have an easier time and see the importance of the hawk to smaller critters.
The big AH HA is that all the creatures are connected even if they don't appear to be at first. It's fun to watch the Juncos call the hawk over if they see the Jay is near. That's a great time to discuss bird calls and alarms, stressing why birds are so vocal.
HAVE FUN!!!