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hi
i'm ranger miranda and i'm ranger elsie
we are going camping
up in shenandoah national park tonight
and we want to know if you want to come
along
before we get started we need to make
sure we have all the right supplies
so we can have a fun and safe experience
okay looks like we have a lot packed
here we need to make sure that we have
sleeping arrangements
i have our tent right here awesome thank
you
and it looks like we also have some
sleeping bags and
sleeping pads as well we have all of our
food
packed up in our cooler and we have some
extra jackets
these are extra layers really handy so
you can just put them on and take them
off according to the weather
now it looks like we have our backpacks
we have some water in there as well
and i think we're all ready to go
miranda how are we gonna get there
oh wow i didn't even think about that no
worries i have our map
right here with our directions so we
know exactly where we're gonna be going
and i think that we're all packed up yes
all right let's get going
follow us
thanks so when we're up here at the
campsites in shenandoah national park
we're in the middle of the forest so
we are in the middle of the home of lots
of wildlife
not just the small stuff but also the
big stuff
like bear and deer
if you didn't know marshmallows and
potato chips
aren't exactly on the menu oh man i was
really hoping that
we were gonna find a marshmallow tree
when we were out here
well they may be on our menu but not the
wildlife
so we need to make sure that it is kept
in
our food container of course not our
tent but also the bear box
or a locked car because if
that wildlife ends up eating it i mean
it might smell good to them
they are going to get a bad tummy ache
their digestive system or their bellies
cannot handle that so do you think they
could elsie
no and that's another really important
part of being a visitor here in
shenandoah in all national parks is that
we take care
of these places because it's just so
beautiful that
don't you want someone tomorrow to come
and experience the same shenandoah that
we see today
yeah so as park rangers and everyone who
visits national parks we ask them to
leave no trace and there's a pretty easy
way to remember that
there are actually seven principles
and there are different hand movements
for each and every one
all right are you ready to learn yes
okay so the first principle or first
rule
of leave no trace is to plan ahead okay
so we did a great job with that
because we have our food cooler and
we're going to put it in our bear box
and we also have our jackets
and another part of that is making a
plan so
make sure that you have enough food and
water in that map that we saw earlier
so the second principle is to stay
on the trail so get your little legs out
and it's important to stay on those
trails so number one you don't get lost
but number two so you don't crush any of
the plant life that might be there it
might be
a better snack for one of those bears
rather than the tasty marshmallows we
brought
third rule is trash your trash right we
don't like glittering
and so scoop your trash anything that
you bring
with you you want to make sure that you
take it out that includes granola bar
wrappers
gum wrappers anything like that so
either
stick it in your back so you can throw
it away later or if you're near a trash
can make sure
that your trash that litter goes right
in there what about banana peels
banana peels definitely banana peels too
and orange peels okay now people think
that they're going just to decompose or
going to rot and disappear
but they don't do that and so it's
really important to take
all of your fruit peels out with you too
okay got it
so principle number four get your two
fingers out like this
make your beautiful picture frame and
then take some photos
right so principle number four
is take only photos and leave only
footprints we have 1.2 million
visitors that come to shenandoah every
single year
can you imagine miranda if every single
one of them took
a rock oh yeah can you do you think we'd
have any more rocks left in all of
shenandoah
it would look very different if
everybody took something with them
yep so when we only take photos we make
sure that
that awesome thing that we saw on the
trail stays there for someone else to
see it
principle number five is perfect for
when you're camping it is
control your fire so we have our
beautiful little flames here
so we want to make sure if we do have a
fire because what is camping without a
good campfire
that it's in a fire pit or somewhere
contained where you're allowed to have
fires and you have a plan
for putting it out that's a really
important part
principle number six is get your deer
antlers out
is to respect the wildlife we can do
that
by making sure we store all of our food
properly
but also that we give all of the
wildlife
the birds the squirrels and especially
the bears
the space that they need and so you're
going to want to make sure you stay
far enough away that all of those
animals feel safe
okay and last but not least is to not
only respect the wildlife
but to respect your fellow visitors
because it's so exciting right to be
here in shenandoah national park i might
be
speaking so loudly and yelling at you
because i want you to be so excited
but maybe you don't want to be
yelled at or also you want a more quiet
environment
to appreciate where we are and that's
great too
and so it's really important to keep
that in mind that we might be enjoying
shenandoah in different ways
and so always say peace and hello
to your fellow visitors that's a really
good point elsie so maybe when we're
setting up our camp
i noticed a lot of other people are
around so maybe we can keep our voices
down
that sounds like a great plan all right
let's do it let's get started
i'm so glad we're done setting up camp
me too
boy it takes a lot of work for humans
to set up to be pretty ready to spend a
night out in nature
but some animals are experts at
nighttime living
they're adapted to live that way so we
have
some animals that like to live out there
during the day
those are diurnal animals do you have
anything to help us remember
what diurnal means so when i think of
diurnal i think of daytime right so yeah
the sun is up
and my one of my favorite diurnal
animals
is the contailed rabbit oh see
tons and tons so imagine during the day
this diurnal
bunny is going to be hopping around
underneath the sun
makes sense so d is for day
and diurnal they like to be awake during
the day
now another one is nocturnal
night nocturnal and an n
what do we have for nocturnal so the
moon
comes out and one of my favorite
nocturnal animals doesn't like as much
light as
our dino and our bunny so we have our
beautiful owl here
wow and you'll find our owls flapping
around
all around at night with the other
nocturnal animals
very good so if you were to guess
what humans are between nocturnal
and diurnal what would you say
i have a lot of friends who stay up
really late
yes my sister likes to stay up all night
so we could call them night owls as a
joke but
generally humans are going to be diurnal
because we're mostly awake during the
day
now there's even a third kind of type
of animals and they like to be up right
in the in between
between dusk and dawn during that low
light period
kind of like right now so they get the
kind of the best of both worlds
totally and those animals are called
crepuscular
can you say crepuscular with me i don't
know one
two three cropuscular awesome i think we
did a good job
now let's look at some specific
examples of animals
being fine-tuned to the night shall we
yeah first up we have our
bat okay one of the most famous
residents of the night
and the reason why the bats are so well
adjusted
is because they have learned how to see
without see in the dark without actually
using their eyes
but how do they do that it's really cool
they use their
ears so you know how if you yell really
loud
sometimes you might hear an echo
so that echo when we hear it
is the sound waves bouncing back to our
ears
now bats do the same thing they use this
process called echolocation
now in echolocation they kind of do
yells
the they might be not like we sound
they're like
clicks and chirps and when they do those
they
bounce off the objects in their
environment wow
yeah and they hear echoes all around
their ears are so sensitive that
when those echoes come back their mind
their brain creates a picture a mental
map
and it shows them what their environment
looks like
without even the tiniest bit of light
wow
so is that why bats are okay with living
in dark caves yes
exactly so they can
tell you or they know exactly what it
looks like
in a totally dark cave whoa yeah it's
pretty awesome now
even though bats are really awesome
they eat something that i don't really
like that much mosquitoes
oh gross and i mostly don't really love
mosquitoes so much because they give me
really itchy bug bites sometimes
too but not all bugs
give you itchy bug bites that's true
there's actually some insects that i
love seeing at night which are fireflies
oh lightning bugs yeah they just make
everything in the evening seem so
magical
but you know it's actually not real
magic
that makes our lightning bugs or our
fireflies glow
it's this wild thing called
bioluminescence
whoa right i mean it just is immediately
science word crazy
yeah but bioluminescence just means that
they can create
their own light which is pretty insane
right like in their own body so imagine
if i was bioluminescent
i could put out my hand and then i'd
start glowing
that would be pretty cool yeah so i mean
humans aren't bioluminescent i'm sure
that you've realized this at this point
in your life
but our fireflies they are and they use
that bioluminescence that blinking to be
able to communicate with each other
wow so different kinds of blinks
mean different things to different
fireflies which is wild
so somebody i was reading about them and
they told me that those blinks
they can be trying to find mates or they
can be
trying to lure prey like when you go
fishing
or even to tell their friends their
other fireflies that there's danger
coming
and i thought that was pretty cool so
my absolute favorite nighttime animal
doesn't like to be so flashy
it prefers to stay in what i like to
refer to as stealth mode
it is the owl now the owl has so many
cool adaptations
to make it a nighttime expert
elsie have you ever heard of the word
adaptation
you know it sounds familiar but can you
remind me what it means i sure can
so an adaptation is something
that a living thing does so like an
animal or a plant
and it's going to be a behavior or
something physical that helps it
live better a lot of that is kind of
confusing pretty much it's something on
your body
or something that you do and it helps
you be a better
living thing in your environment so when
i put on a jacket when i'm cold
that's an adaptation if i am going to
move out of the sun because i'm getting
sunburned that's me
adapting now sometimes we are
born with adaptations as well
for example owls they have really big
eyes why do you think elsie they might
have
really big eyes if they're nocturnal
let's let let's let our friends at home
think about it too
okay
so if they're awake at night
got any guesses what about you
is it because it's harder to see at
night and something oh bigger eyes
definitely so for humans our eyeballs
only take up about five percent of the
space in our head
not very much but owls
their eyes take up 75
of the space in their head that's a lot
of
eyes in one tiny owl head now
it's very important for them to be able
to see
they their eyes help them gather up
every little bit of light
so they can hunt and they don't only
depend on their eyesight
they also have impeccable which means
really good hearing do they hear like
bats do
very good question they don't use
echolocation
they have
ear cavities kind of like us but then
they have an
extra one so you know the outside of our
ears how we have this extra thing right
here
well they have an extra thing of
feathers it's called a
facial disc and it's a stiff ring of
feathers can you guys make a facial disc
like an
owl very good elsie
so that helps catch the sound around
them
so they can actually move that if the
sound is over there they can move that
and they don't have to move their whole
body to give away their position
because remember they're in stealth mode
think of it like
if there was a flower right flowers have
petals
and if the flower wanted to catch
sunlight it could
move those petals kind of like an owl
moves its facial disc feathers
it's pretty cool so
something else about the owls feathers
that i found to be
amazing when i found out about it is
that their feathers
are specially made well by nature at
least
to give them silent flight now think
about
why they would want to fly silently why
would that be important
well you said that they're hunters right
yes exactly
so if something is going hunting when
they're ready to
to jump on their prey or their food they
don't want to make a lot of noise
because then they'll scare away the prey
so when they decide that they're going
to go for it
they can swoop down virtually undetected
whoa and get their tasty prey i think
that's so awesome
now you guys might have seen or heard
that owls can move their necks around
a lot more than humans they can move
them almost all the way back
and look in back of them that's so they
don't have to turn around their whole
bodies and give away their position
okay so even if you don't
hear an owl or see an owl
that's okay we do have
something else in the park that you
might
want to see and hear
any ideas on what they might be hmm
well i don't hear as well as an owl does
no
but when i get really quiet
i can hear a lot still i hear the trees
i hear some of our neighbors
exactly sometimes nature can be pretty
loud
so out here in shenandoah sometimes i
hear
bugs so i'll hear cicadas or crickets
things like that or i'll hear the hoot
of an owl the barred owl
says
can you guys do that it says who cooks
for you
let's do it together one two
three for you
very good now
um we can hear that here what does it
sound like
at your house
sometimes we hear cars if you live in a
city you might hear some horns honking
sometimes
all of the sounds put together at any
one time
wherever you are that's the soundscape
you may have heard of things like
landscapes when you look out
that's what you see with your eyes what
you hear with your ears that's the
soundscape
here in shenandoah national park
especially if you get away from the
campsites
it can be we can have a pretty nice
soundscape
and one of my favorite things to do
on a dark night
is to look up and
out here we are far enough away from the
cities
that we have a pretty dark sky you can
see something called the milky way
if the moon isn't out and too bright
now when the city is too bright
there's an extra glow that's called a
sky glow
and you want to kind of get away from
the city to see extra things
elsie do you know any constellations
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i've heard of a few of them i always
try and find the big dipper do you know
of any constellations
for those of you wondering what a
constellation is it's
a whole bunch of stars that are kind of
drawn together in our minds and we think
of it like a picture
now you mentioned the big dipper
depending on
where or when you are you might know the
big
dipper as other things some
think of it as ursa major and that
translates in english
to the big bear yeah
pretty cool so we have different stories
associated with different
cultures and different times
i hope you guys get a chance soon to
come out to shenandoah
and have your own experiences out in the
park and if not
you can go out into your own backyard in
a dark night
and try to see the skies and the sounds
and maybe the fireflies too thank you so
much for joining us and helping us set
up camp
we will see you next time bye
you