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Students and Teachers!
Blue Thumb is currently in discussion about how best we can support your efforts for the 2020/2021 school year. A few teachers agreed to participate with us in telephone conversations so we can learn directly from you how best we can help. It is not too late for you to weigh in and make suggestions. Call or email me to talk about it.
Bit by bit, I am making some appearances at streams and working with very small groups on stream ecology education. I enjoyed a day at Baron Fork, where the volunteers asked me to provide an introduction to their stream to six children and two adults. We had a wonderful time. If you check out the Blue Thumb Facebook page, you probably saw the photographs.
Would you like to do something like this? Shall we get together at your stream for a short education event? We will stay outside, stay away from each other, and let people have some exciting moments studying fish and bugs - with nobody rushing them or getting in their personal space. Your group can be tiny or up to ten people. I understand if it is too soon for this in your view. But Blue Thumb is here for you, the world is different, and the outdoors are calling.
Cheryl Cheadle
Volunteer Coordinator
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Greetings from the Director!
I hope you are enjoying the "dog days" of summer. I have enjoyed meeting a few of you during our fish collections, and I look forward to meeting more of you as the summer progresses. The fish collections have included many memorable moments, but one of my favorites was when we pulled up a net with four rambunctious longnose gar at Clear Boggy Creek near Ada. It was exciting!
Another source of summer enjoyment is the prairie pollinator plot in my front yard. In October, I took a class offered by the Oklahoma County Conservation District about creating a pollinator garden. During the class, we learned how to prepare and plant the plot. I prepared the plot in fall, and planted it early this spring. The wildflowers are going CRAZY, and there really are more pollinators in the prairie plot compared to anywhere else in my yard. The plot provides food and habitat for butterflies, bees, and other pollinators, and encourages rain to soak in the soil instead of flowing into the nearest storm drain. The native plants increase the capacity of the soil to hold water because the long roots of the plants make the soil more porous, essentially creating a giant sponge.
Over time, the health of the soil in the plot will improve as some plants return nitrogen to the soil, and microbes and earthworms do their magic. I have not fertilized the plot, and I have only watered it once, and yet it is exploding with life. If you are interested in doing something similar in your yard, contact Amy Seiger, Cheryl Cheadle, or Kevin Mink. You might also be interested in participating in the new Yard-By-Yard Program. Yard-By-Yard is an effort to support and thank people who are making lawn management choices that improve soil health and water quality, while educating their neighbors in the process. Again, if you are interested, contact Amy, Cheryl, or Kevin.
Happy Summer!
 Rebecca Bond
Blue Thumb Director
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To our Monthly Monitors:
Howdy Howdy from your QA Officer,
Hope you all are taking care. Still unusual times we are living. But trying to keep to the normal, let's talk a bit about summer bug collections. Our summer collection window is June 1 - September 15. It takes about 30 minutes to get a collection done. At this time, we will also have onsite QA's that will take an additional 5-10 minutes. We will restock you with reagents as well. The tricky part is trying to schedule these bug collections between the rains and before some sites might dry up or lose flow. Seems like we are getting June rains in July this year; good for the ground and plants and soil, but bad for us bug collectors. As long as the rains are light and don't raise creek levels too much, it's okay. But if creeks rise to slightly elevated or more, then we have to wait for the creek to come back to base flow and then wait an additional 10 days. This waiting time is to give the larval bugs hopefully enough time to come back and repopulate as "normal". We also need some flow at the creek site to make a collection. Larval bugs will be at the site even if there is no flow, but how we do our collections require the creek to flow to carry the sample into our net. If a site dries up, then we have to wait for rain, then wait an additional 30 days for larval bugs to hopefully come back to a place that was once dry but now has water. So summer collections can be pretty tricky to schedule, and reschedule. If your site is a long way from OKC or Stillwater and it is getting towards the middle or end of the collection period, then we might go ahead and schedule your onsite QA and bypass the bug collection. Those volunteers/sites closer to OKC/Stillwater we can better reschedule on a day’s notice if we get rained out. So please get in touch with your Blue Thumb staff person about scheduling your bug collection and onsite QA super soon, if you haven't already. Take care!
Kim Shaw
Blue Thumb QA Officer
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 Blue Thumb Volunteer Trainings
Claremore: September 19 (Stream Ecology Education) September 20 (Stream Monitoring)*
McAlester: November 7 (Stream Ecology Education) November 8 (Stream Monitoring)*
*Stream Ecology Education Training is a prerequisite to take this training*
Sign up here!
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 Yard-By-Yard
Volunteers! Many of you work hard to manage your lawns so that they are chemical-free and habitat rich. Blue Thumb is a partner in the brand new "certified yards" program that offers education and recognition to citizens who manage their lawns for "resiliency". If your yard has native plants, good diversity, a water feature, etc., get in touch with Cheryl so you can consider nominating your yard for the "certified yard" program!
What are the benefits of having a certified yard? You will have creatures who live near you, you will provide bees and butterflies with food, you will reduce flooding with your healthy soil that soaks in water. An additional benefit is that you will get a sign that designates your yard does good things for your community! Let's make our communities stronger, healthier, and more resilient, yard by yard!
You can click here for more information.
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- Take advantage of those beautiful and cool summer nights and join the citizen science project Globe at Night to measure the night sky brightness and build a database of light pollution.
- Want something to entertain the kids while getting them outside and learn at the same time? Check out Bugs in our Backyard to look at insects and plants!
- It's summer! A trip to a coastal beach may not be in your future this year, but keep CitiClops in mind for any future trips and help acquire environmental data with your phone.
- Did you know that there is a whole association for Citizen Scientists? You can become a member and learn more about it here!
- Don't forget about the "Stream Selfie" project from the Izaak Walton League, the #trashtag movement, and tick testing!
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