Bethpage State Park Ecology

     

 Recently, Bethpage State Park hosted Farmingdale Girl Scouts for a fun-filled nature event in our Picnic Area. This marked the second year we had this troop visit in autumn, which offered another seasonal, colorful kind of day! To kick off our event, I started the group off with a sensory experience in our Picnic Pollinator Garden! Finding dried out flower heads and seedpods atop the stems, the scouts learned that the fluff part of the seed is an adaptation that helps with its dispersal. We picked some milkweed pods that noticeably had this fluffy feature, discussed how it took over in some areas of the garden and why continuing to plant and protect milkweed was so important!    This segued us into our next topic: the Monarch butterfly's lifecycle and their magnificent migration to Mexico for overwintering. I was impressed the girls knew quite a lot about this species, their needs, and their journey. It seems we have ourselves some butterfly enthusiasts (and possibly...