It was a normal Sunday for us.  Mid-morning, we walked down to the creek to throw some rocks in the water and look for critters.

My boys were standing on the bridge, throwing stones, and I walked down the road to get them a few more rocks.  My five year old, Ben, said to me, “Mom, don’t go over there.”

I asked why and he said, “Because there is a bird asleep in that tree.”

I looked up and sure enough, a nighthawk was sound asleep on one of the horizontal branches.  I asked Ben how he knew it was there and he looked at me like I was not the smartest person in the world and said, “Because there’s a bunch of bird poop on the ground there.”

Watching my boys grow up on The Nature Conservancy’s Silver Creek Preserve in south-central Idaho–where I work as manager–I am amazed on a daily basis how much they notice. 

They know exactly where to find big spiders (“where there are lots of bugs, Mom”), the big black beetles (walking across the dry spots along the road, of course), the ladybugs (on that pokey green plant) and the frogs (where the banks hang over the water).

They have learned habitats simply by looking for the bugs and critters that live there.  Long before formal training, they have keen observational skills and know what questions to ask.

They are, in essence, highly effective little scientists.