My Adventure at the Fort Worth Nature Center

My family and I went to the Fort Worth Nature Center on May 16, 2012.  By going, and telling what I saw, I am completing requirement 4 for the Naturalist Activity Badge.  Additionally, requirement 8 is to find six animals in the wild, tell what kind of place they were in, and what they were doing.  While at the Nature Center, I saw all six required animals, and I will discuss them in this post.

While we were there, we hiked on several trails.  The first trail was through a forest on an island.  On that trail, we saw a hawk flying, a crane walking in some sand, and a turtle laying down in the grass.

The second trail, was through a prairie.  On that trail, we saw bison roaming and eating grass as well as  prairie dogs running around, and another hawk flying.

Here are just a few of the bison that we saw.

On the next trail that we hiked, which included a boardwalk that crossed a marsh, we saw a heron standing on the boardwalk and a catfish swimming.

This is the catfish we saw swimming in the marsh, which we took a picture of from the boardwalk.

The Nature Center also had a visitor's center, where we saw two owls that had been hit by a car.  One of these owls had a bad eye, and neither of them can be released back into the wild.

This is the owl with the bad eye, followed by the sign on his cage that tells about him.

The visitor's center also had a cross-section of a Pecan tree that was 156 years old.  On it, they had marked big things that had happened during the trees life, including the end of World War II, Fort Worth becoming a city, and Lake Worth being built.  We also looked at a tree stump along the first trail we hiked and discussed how you can tell the age of the tree by counting the rings.  (This took care of requirement 6 for the Forester Activity Badge.)

There was also a giant swallowtail, which is a type of butterfly, pictured here:

This was our adventure to the Fort Worth Nature Center, where we had a lot of fun, and accomplished some of the requirements for the Naturalist Activity Badge!!