During this time of sheltering in place, many of us are exhibiting symptoms of “Cabin Fever” (boredom, listlessness, feeling trapped indoors and cut off from the world). One way to combat this is to interject something new into what seems familiar. Imagine for a minute that your house or apartment, that space that’s been feeling pretty confined, is now an exotic landscape inhabited by a variety of wild creatures.
For this week’s installment of Nature In The Middle I’ll be sending you off on an Indoor Safari. Your task is to document as much wildlife as you can find, indoors. To start things off, please watch this short Maine Audubon Nature Moments video entitled House Invaders.
Ok, I’ve seen those dancing Long-bodied Cellar Spiders (Pholcus phalangioides) in my own house, but never knew that they were transplants from Europe! Wow, after doing a few minutes of research I found out more interesting and cool facts about these critters.
Tools you’ll need for your indoor safari include:
- A way to jot notes or sketch–this could be a journal, piece of paper, computer, etc.;
- A camera (optional); and
- A smart phone (optional).
Great places to hunt for this indoor “wildlife” include corners where walls meet, underneath furniture, inside window sills, inside of light fixtures (use caution!), where non-refrigerated food is stored, in basements or attic spaces. Start by seeing how many different types of critters you can find. Document each one (by sketching or taking a photo) and take some notes on where you found it, and describe what it was doing (how it’s moving, remaining stationary, etc.).
The next step is to identify what species you’ve found. A great online tool/app for this is SEEK by iNaturalist. Anyone with a computer or smartphone can use this tool. No registration is involved, and no user data is collected. It’s a super-fun app where you can “level-up,” complete challenges, or earn badges for seeing a variety of animal and plant species. Check it out!
Once you’ve identified your critters, set up a simple spreadsheet like this:
Download the chart as Excel or PDF.
The SEEK app will provide you with a lot of useful information, but once you have the individual species identified, you can gather more information by typing it into a Google search. No worries if you don’t have access to a computer or internet! Take detailed notes/sketches of your observations, keep them in a journal, and you can do more research later. There are also a number of user-friendly field guide books for insects that can be helpful (Peterson’s, Audubon, Kaufman).
Hopefully this indoor safari will be just the thing to expand your horizons and help you combat any cabin fever symptoms you may be having. Speaking of expanding horizons . . . you can expand your indoor safari to the areas outside your house. Challenge yourself (or others in your household) to see how many species you can find and identify. Are the critters natives? Or did they get transplanted here from away? What do they eat? Who eats them?
That’s it for this week. Keep expanding those horizons and be curious!
